Why was support for reform in the South dwindling?

African-American freed slaves in the South faced a number of struggles after the Civil War.

General William Tecumseh Sherman passed an ordinance guaranteeing recently freed slaves land after his March to the Sea, but his orders had no force of law and were overturned.

In the 1870s, Democrats gradually returned to power in the Southern states, sometimes as a result of elections in which paramilitary groups intimidated opponents, attacking blacks or preventing them from voting.

Blacks were still elected to local offices in the 1880s, but the establishment Democrats were passing laws to make voter registration and electoral rules more restrictive. As a result, political participation by most blacks and many poor whites began to decrease.

Those who could not vote were not eligible to serve on juries and could not run for local offices. They effectively disappeared from political life, as they could not influence the state legislatures, and their interests were overlooked.

Explanation:

by creating a labor shortage that pushed the continent toward a market economy