In 1868, the abolitionist and orator Anna E. Dickinson published What Answer?, a novel that explored, in a manner revolutionary for its time, the subject of interracial marriage. The Atlantic assigned its assistant editor, William Dean Howells, to review the book. Howells, who would later become the magazine’s editor in chief, was, in the years following the Civil War, something of a racial optimist. He opened his review by recounting a story told to him by one of The Atlantic’s most important contributors: