Editing P. G. T. Beauregard (section)

===Political views after the end of the Civil War===
[[File:Louisiana Outrages Streetcar Barricade Colorized.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.5|The [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democrat-aligned]] [[White League]] barricading a New Orleans road]]

Reconstruction was a period of great unrest, and resulted in the rise of racial tension and political bipartisanship. Two parties, [[Republican Party (United States)|Republican]] and [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic]], now controlled the political power in the [[United States|American Union]], and they also had to contend with the lower classes having the right to vote.

In Louisiana, for example, laws had been put in place ever since Louisiana's admission into the Union that restricted the vote to only the elite class, the ''[[aristocracy|grands habitants]]''. These were the aristocratic planters throughout the state; now all men of any class could vote, and the Republicans and Democrats sought supporters. Republicans served mainly Northern interests such as industrialization, while Democrats served mainly Southern interests such as revitalizing the plantation economy. In the South, poor whites began to vote mostly for Democrats, and freed slaves began to vote mostly for Republicans. Voting and racial tensions were being inflamed in the South, causing public demonstrations, fighting, and riots between the groups. New Orleans was split between Democrats and Republicans. Beauregard was insulted, even ridiculed at his home in New Orleans, and had the threat looming of being arrested, exiled, or executed by the [[Federal government of the United States|Federal Government]] for having joined the Confederacy.

Beauregard was in a very dark place of his life in 1865. As Reconstruction began, Southern Democrats began to blame the newly emancipated black population of their states for the widespread postwar poverty, destruction, and starvation. Beauregard wrote a letter to his brother-in-law [[John Slidell]] in regards to the newly freed slaves; his words echoed the ideas of his embittered Democratic Confederate colleagues,<ref>Williams, p. 262.</ref> that freed slaves were inferior, ignorant, and indolent; freed slaves had not yet voted in the South, and at this time it did not appear to him that they would. In this period, Beauregard was still a Democrat.<ref name="Williams, p. 266">Williams, p. 266.</ref>