rginia. On April 9, 1865, the Civil War was over. To the horror of the newly reunited nation, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, while attending a play at Ford's Theater in Washington on April 14. He died the next day. With the rest of the country, Douglass mourned the man he had grown to respect. No sadness could completely overshadow Douglass's joy at this time, however. A single, glorious fact remained: the war to end slavery had been won. Life After the 13th Amendment -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- With the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865, slavery was officially abolished in all areas of the United States. The Reconstruction era was under way in the South, the period during which the 11 Confederate states would be gradually reintroduced to the Union. In the meantime, Norhern armies continued to occupy the South and to enforce the decrees of Congress. Frederick Douglass was then 47 years old, an active man in the prime of his life. No longer enlisted in the war on slavery, he thought about buying a farm and settling down to a quiet life. But black Americans still desperately needed an advocate, and Douglass soon rejected any notion of an early retirement. In many parts of the South, the newly freed slaves labored under conditions similar to those existing before the war. The Union army could offer only limited protection to the ex-slaves, and Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, clearly had no interest in ensuring the freedom of southern blacks. The new president's appointments as governors of sourthern states formed conservative, proslavery governments. The new state legislatures passed laws designed to keep blacks in poverty and in positions of servitude. Under these so-called black codes, ex-slaves who had no steady employment could be arrested and ordered to pay stiff fines. Prisoners who could n...
