1. The Revolutionary War was not a particularly horrendous war - didn't have an exceedingly large death toll. Few civilians were injured or killed and there wasn't widespread suffering.
2. The Civil War started as a war and became a revolution. The War of Independence started as a revolution and became a war. This is important because to those in the Revolutionary era, war and breaking from the monarchy was unheard of at the start of the Revolution. On the contrary, the Civil War was a fight to save the Union from the beginning.
3. Besides Abe Lincoln, the best remembered members of the Civil War were all military men - Generals Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman, and Stonewall Jackson. That differs completely from the best remembered members of the Revolutionary War - Ben Franklin, Jon Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock.
4. Unconsciously, the next generation of Americans (post Independence era) downplayed the significance of the Revolutionary War because the Civil War had six times as many people perish. This also occurred with the "Great War" (WWI) to WWII. When World War II came around, it was a greater war than WWI, and many people in the new generation forgot how terrible the first World War truly was.
5. During the Revolutionary War, the British were never forced to overcome such large hardships as the Patriots had to. For example, when the Americans who invaded Canada ran so short of food, they consumed pet dogs and made a soup form boiled shoes and melted candles. George Washington wrote many times that his men were nearly naked, not having many clothes, and leaving bloody footprints on the snow because they didn't have shoes.
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