When the war ended, blacks remained on the margins of northern society, deprived almost everywhere of the right to vote, and largely relegated to low-wage unskilled labor. Moreover, during the war new governments in a number of slave states abolished slavery but gave little thought to the freed people’s rights and prospects. Conventions that drafted new constitutions for Louisiana and Maryland offered almost nothing to blacks beyond abolition, and delegates strenuously denied “any sympathy with Negro equality.” Their actions reinforced a growing conviction in the Republican North that the
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