I’ve been poking around in our newly liberated archives for interesting things to link to, and it’s just such an incredibly rich source. The December 1866 issue had, for example, a Frederick Douglass essay setting forth his view of what was needed to make Reconstruction successful:
The plain, common-sense way of doing this work is simply to establish in the South one law, one government, one administration of justice, one condition to the exercise of the elective franchise, for men of all races and colors alike. This great measure is sought as earnestly by loyal white men as by loyal blacks, and is needed alike by both. Let sound political prescience but take the place of an unreasoning prejudice, and this will be done.
Needless to say, it didn’t happen.