There have been many events and processes in American society that diverted public and political attention from the plight of African-Americans in the post war period during the Reconstruction. Abraham Lincoln tried to make his own reconstruction and Congress didn't agree with him. While Andrew Johnson tried to take over after Lincoln's death winning Congress' vote. Frederick Douglas wanted black men to be able to vote. I'll also explain how white northerners stopped caring about Reconstruction and black civil rights.
It all started with the emancipation proclamation under Lincoln's Reconstruction. He felt that the emancipation was of the slaves was necessary in order to secure military victory (Encyclopedia Britannica). The radical republicans felt the emancipation would not work unless the government could guarantee equality of all citizens including black men. In December 1863 Lincoln declared a general plan for Reconstruction promising to recognize the government of any state that pledged to support the Constitution and the Union and to emancipate the slaves if it was backed by at least 10 percent of the number of voters in the 1860 presidential election (Encyclopedia Britanncia). The radical republicans became furious with this plan.
They were outraged. The Radicals set up their own plan of Reconstruction in the Wade-Davis Bill which required not 10 percent but a majority of the white male citizens in each Southern state to participate in the reconstruction process (Encyclopedia Britannica). The bill did not enfranchise blacks, but it did impose such stringent loyalty requirements on southern whites that few of them could take the required oath. Lincoln did not agree with the plan at all and later vetoed it (Murrin 600). After Lincoln's assassination Andrew Johnson became president.
Republicans like Johnson. He was the only senator from a seceding state who refused to support the Confederacy knowing he was a Democrat.