First and foremost the end of slavery freed the African-Americans who had been restrained for so long. This meant a new found freedom for them and during the period of reconstruction, some 2000 African-Americans held government jobs. However life in the years after slavery also proved to be difficult. Although slavery was over, the brutality of white rice prejudiced persisted.
If you're referring to the Civil War era, in the years leading up to the war, once such compromise could have been that slavery could continue to exist where it was, but not spread to other states.
