General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War
Although victorious in 1872, the Louisiana Republican Party had faltered. ...
Into this Chaotic moment, the Unification Movement emerged, with leading men from both races. It was, however, predominantly Creole in its membership and made up of some of the richest men in the city. The platform called for low taxes and civil and voting rights for black people. It also argued against nascent segregation laws and proposed to expand black property ownership and political appointments.
Beauregard, after meeting with Rosecrans, became the spokesman for the movement and introduced the platform with a banner behind him that read, “Equal Rights, One Flag, One Country, one People” …
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The general and the writer did not finish their book before Davis published The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government in 1881. Davis had written particularly harsh criticism toward Beauregard, blaming him for Shiloh and barely praising his victories at Charleston and Petersburg. Beauregard replied with venom. In a letter to Hagood, he said, “It is a fiction, a romance which should have been called ‘The Rise & Fall of Jeff. Davis’ by himself.” Beauregard revised his memoirs—The Military Operations of General Beauregard on the War Between the States—attacking Davis without restraint.
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… In 1889, Beauregard expressed admiration for Lincoln, and declared “His life was of extraordinary importance to the country he served so well, with a clear intellect—and loved so profoundly, with a big & guileless heart.”
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In 1892, Murphy J. Foster won the governorship. He oversaw the gradual destruction of the lottery but also the full implementation of the Jim Crow system. Beauregard’s comrades in the Unification Movement, the wealthy Afro-Creoles, decided to take on segregation, challenging it in Plessy v. Ferguson. In a 7-1 decision, segregation was upheld. ...
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Beauregard attracted the attention of Frances Parkinson Keyes, a prolific novelist who wrote more than fifty books. After 1944, she renovated Beauregard’s postwar Chartres home, which the Beauregard Memorial Association had saved from demolition. Beauregard appeared in two novels by Keyes: The Chess Players and Madame Castel’s lodger. ...
--Sean Michael Chick