A Horse is A Horse--of Course - Page 2

The crusade to secure the humane treatment of animals, a product of the "demetaphorization" of certain abolitionist tropes, supplied the remedy for the historical disappointment of Reconstruction. The cumulative impact of the disasters of the late 1860s and 1870s, culminating in the withdrawal of the occupying federal army from the South in 1877, tarnished the appeal of social justice initiatives in the eyes of most activists during this period. Rather than continue to campaign against the resurgence of white supremacist power in the South, and the manifest inability of the capitalist system to provide for the Northern poor, the spiritual descendants of the abolitionists turned their backs upon the sham of emancipation and rededicated their lives to the quest for individual moral perfection--a quest which now included the duty to extend their sympathies beyond the confines of a human sphere abandoned to ceaseless conflict.   

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