At the end of the war the northern leaders accepted that the victory would require more than the end of the armed struggle. It had to cover both ends of the war: secession should be completely stopped and any kind of slavery should disappear. In what they disagreed was in the criteria of those ends, on the level of federal control that should be imposed on the South and on the process by which southern states should be reintegrated into the Union.
Therefore a good topic of organization on the part of the federal state would be to discuss how people of color would be integrated into the social and political life of the nation. How could they guarantee civil rights to these people by holding the whole nation together?