Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (May 28, 1818 – February 20, 1893) was an American military officer known for being the Confederate general who started the American Civil War at the Battle of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Today, he is commonly referred to as P. G. T. Beauregard, but he rarely used his first name as an adult. He signed correspondence as G. T. Beauregard.
Trained in military and civil engineering at the United States Military Academy, West Point, Beauregard served with distinction as an engineer officer in the Mexican–American War. Following a brief appointment as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy in 1861, and after Louisiana seceded, he resigned from the United States Army and became the first brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. He commanded the defenses of Charleston, South Carolina, at the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Three months later he helped win the First Battle of Manassas near Bull Run Creek.
Beauregard held several key commands in the Western Theater, including control of armies at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the Siege of Corinth in northern Mississippi, both in 1862. He returned to Charleston and defended it in 1863 from repeated naval and land attacks by Union forces. He is most known for his defense of the industrial city of Petersburg, Virginia, from Union troops in June 1864, which delayed the eventual fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, in April 1865.
His influence over Confederate strategy was lessened by his poor professional relationships with President Jefferson Davis and other senior generals and officials. In April 1865, Beauregard and his commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, convinced Davis and the remaining cabinet members that the war needed to end. Johnston surrendered most of the remaining armies of the Confederacy, including Beauregard and his men, to Union Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.
After his military career, Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he advocated Black civil rights including suffrage as a means of voting out Radical Republicans, served as a railroad executive, and became wealthy as a promoter of the Louisiana Lottery.
Early life and education
Beauregard was born at the "Contreras" sugar-cane plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, about outside New Orleans, to a Louisiana Creole family. Beauregard was the third child of Hélène Judith de Reggio, of mixed French and Italian ancestry and descendant of Francesco Maria de Reggio, member of an Italian noble family whose family had migrated first to France and then to Louisiana, and her husband, Jacques Toutant-Beauregard, of French and German ancestry.Williams, pp. 2–3. He had three brothers and three sisters. As was typical for Louisiana Creoles, his family spoke French and practiced Catholicism.Williams, p. 5.
Beauregard had several Creole of color cousins and uncles; the Creole of color side of Beauregard's family came from a marriage between Marguerite Pantalon (daughter of a prominent New Orleans Creole of color family) and one of Beauregard's uncles, Martin Barthelemy Toutant Beauregard.
As a child, he befriended and played with slave boys his own age, including his favorite friend, the tall and strong storyteller Baptiste; Beauregard was often seen following and frolicking by Baptiste's side. Beauregard was nursed by a slave woman from Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) named Mamie Françoise Similien.Williams, pp. 3
Similien and Beauregard had a very close relationship, often seen giving each other hugs and kisses. Similien was held in the Beauregards' highest esteem, and after Pierre's grandfather died, the Beauregard family gave Similien a Creole Cottage in the Faubourg Treme of New Orleans.
Pierre often visited with Mamie, and during an interview with a reporter of the New Orleans Times in 1882, while sharing stories of Pierre's youth and growing up, Mamie pointed to a personal portrait that Pierre gave her during a visit in 1867, saying "that's my son".Williams, pp. 12–13
Beauregard grew up in a large one-story house, unlike the "later plantation palaces, but a mansion of aristocracy by the standards of its time." He hunted and rode in the woods and fields around his family's plantation and paddled his boat in its waterways. Beauregard attended New Orleans private schools and then went to a "French school" in New York City. During his four years in New York, beginning at age 12, he learned to speak English, as French had been his first and only language in Louisiana.Williams, p. 5; Detzer, Allegiance, p. 207.
In 1841, Beauregard married Marie Antoinette Laure Villeré (1823–1850), the daughter of a Louisiana sugarcane planter. The two had three children – Rene (1843–1910), Henri (1845–1915), and Laure (1850–1884). Marie died giving birth to the latter, her only daughter.Williams, pp. 10, 36, 324-36, 328. In 1860, Beauregard married Caroline Deslonde (1831–1864), who died in New Orleans following a long illness.Williams, pp. 35-36, 205-204.
Beauregard was related to the inventor/firearms engineer and physician Jean Alexandre LeMat, who had married Beauregard's cousin Justine Sophie LePretre in 1849.
West Point Beauregard attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. One of his instructors was Robert Anderson, the later commander of Fort Sumter; he surrendered to Beauregard at the start of the Civil War. Upon enrolling at West Point, Beauregard dropped the hyphen from his surname and treated Toutant as a middle name, to fit in with his classmates. From that point on, he rarely used his first name, preferring "G. T. Beauregard."; these name changes also served as part of a process of Americanization.Williams, p. 6; Woodworth, p. 72. He graduated second in his class in 1838 and excelled both as an artilleryman and military engineer. His Army friends gave him many nicknames: "Little Creole", "Bory", "Little Frenchman", "Felix", and "Little Napoleon".Eicher, pp. 123–124.
In February 1845, Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he moved into the French Quarter of New Orleans, living in a prominent Creole of color neighborhood on St. Louis Street. Beauregard maintained an office on Bourbon Street, where he continued his work for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. In the meantime, he worked on an improved furnace for boiling sugar.
Early military career Mexican-American War
During the Mexican–American War, Beauregard served as an engineer under General Winfield Scott. He was appointed brevet captain for the battles of ContrerasSmith (2001) p. 43 and Churubusco and major for Chapultepec, where he was wounded in the shoulder and thigh. He was noted for his eloquent performance in a meeting with Scott in which he convinced the assembled general officers to change their plan for attacking the fortress of Chapultepec. He was one of the first officers to enter Mexico City. Beauregard considered his contributions in dangerous reconnaissance missions and devising strategy for his superiors to be more significant than those of his engineer colleague, Captain Robert E. Lee, so he was disappointed when Lee and other officers received more brevets than he did.Williams, pp. 13–33; Woodworth, p. 73.
Return to New Orleans Beauregard returned from Mexico in 1848. For the next 12 years, he was in charge of what the Engineer Department called "the Mississippi and Lake defenses in Louisiana." Much of his engineering work was done elsewhere, repairing old forts and building new ones on the Florida coast and in Mobile, Alabama. He also improved the defenses of Forts St. Philip and Jackson on the Mississippi River below New Orleans. He worked on a board of Army and Navy engineers to improve the navigation of the shipping channels at the mouth of the Mississippi. He created and patented an invention he called a "self-acting bar excavator" to be used by ships in crossing bars of sand and clay. While serving in the Army, he actively campaigned for the election of Franklin Pierce, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1852, and a former general in the Mexican War who had been impressed by Beauregard's performance at Mexico City. Pierce appointed Beauregard as superintending engineer of the U.S. Custom House in New Orleans, a huge granite building that had been built in 1848. As it was sinking unevenly in the moist soil of Louisiana, Beauregard had to develop a renovation program. He served in this position from 1853 to 1860 and stabilized the structure successfully.Williams, pp. 34–41.
Peacetime Officer, West Point Superintendent During his service in New Orleans, Beauregard became dissatisfied as a peacetime officer. He informed the U.S. Army Engineer Department late in 1856 that he was going to join the filibuster with William Walker, who had seized control of Nicaragua; he had offered Beauregard the rank of second-in-command of his army. Senior officers, including general-in-chief Winfield Scott, convinced Beauregard to stay in the United States.Williams, pp. 42–44; Hattaway & Taylor, p. 21.
Beauregard briefly entered politics as a reform candidate for mayor of New Orleans in 1858, where he was promoted by both the Whig and Democratic parties to challenge the Know Nothing party candidate. Beauregard was narrowly defeated.
Employing the political influence of his brother-in-law, John Slidell, Beauregard obtained an appointment as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy on January 23, 1861. However, when Louisiana seceded from the Union, the Federal Government immediately revoked his orders and he subsequently relinquished his office after only five days. He protested to the U.S. War Department that they had cast "improper reflection upon [his] reputation or position in the Corps of Engineers" by forcing him out as a Southern officer before any hostilities began.Williams, pp. 45–47; Hattaway & Taylor, p. 21; Woodworth, pp. 74–75.
Civil War First CSA General
Beauregard traveled by steamship from New York to New Orleans and immediately began giving military advice to the local authorities in his home state of Louisiana, which included further strengthening Forts St. Philip and Jackson, which guarded the Mississippi approaches to New Orleans. He hoped to be named commander of the Louisiana state army, but was disappointed that the state legislature appointed Braxton Bragg. Aware that Beauregard might resent him, Bragg offered him the rank of colonel. Instead Beauregard enrolled as a private in the "Orleans Guards", a battalion of French Creole aristocrats. At the same time, he communicated with Slidell and the newly chosen President Davis, angling for a senior position in the new Confederate States Army. Rumors that Beauregard would be placed in charge of the entire Army infuriated Bragg. Concerned about the political situation regarding the Federal presence at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Davis selected Beauregard to take command of Charleston's defenses. Beauregard seemed the perfect combination of military engineer and charismatic Southern leader needed at that time and place.Williams, pp. 47–50; Hattaway & Taylor, p. 21; Woodworth, p. 75.
Beauregard became one of the most frequently described generals in Confederate chronicles, and almost all of which noted his foreign French visage. Biographer T. Harry Williams describes the Beauregard gave as "courteous, grave, sometimes reserved and severe, sometimes abrupt with people who displeased him." Many compared his appearance to that of a French marshal. Beauregard was accompanied by a sizable military staff, which included many former politicians serving as aides. He received gifts from admiring women across the Confederacy, which fueled rumors about womanizing, some of which had anti-Creole bases.Williams, pp. 51–52