Why didn't the zeal of social change brought by ending slavery continue after the US civil-war ended?

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Yes; the US lost appetite for the advancement of civil rights due to the high cost of Reconstruction.

Soon after the Civil War, in 1866 the landmark Civil Rights Act was passed, affirming the civil rights of all US citizens. This occurred against the backdrop of sweeping wins by Republicans, many of whom were Radical Republicans who wanted to push for civil rights. Since they were democratically elected, you can argue that by proxy, the people of the US wanted civil rights.

But Reconstruction did not progress as well as many hoped; the South was still economically devastated and suffering from endemic political violence a decade after the war, and the country lost appetite for the high costs. Reconstruction ended, leaving civil rights unenforced in the South for almost a century until the Civil Rights Movement.

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It's called war fatigue. After four years of fighting a war, people want to resume their lives and not continue agitating for the social change that brought about the war. And the level of zeal of the 1960s simply can't be sustained for long, which is why it fizzled. The main exception,the French Revolution finally fizzled out when its main instigator, Robespierre, was sent to the guillotine.

Total deaths in the Civil War, were between 600,000 and 700,000. That's more than in all the other American wars put together. More to the point, it would be the equivalent of 6-7 million men today, taking our current population as ten times our Civil War population. The war literally decimated a whole generation, and left behind a slew of widows (and orphans). Post war society was more concerned with rebuilding than with further "reform."

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