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Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Originally aired on August 07, 1998 - In part 206 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the career of Confederate General Pierre GustaveToutant Beauregard, a patriotic, flamboyant and gallant man who had neither tact nor diplomacy.

#206 – P. G. T. Beauregard

His picturesque name is far more familiar than anything he did as a field commander. The dashing Creole with smoldering eyes and silver-gray goatee, he looked like a fighting general. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was the hero in the Confederacy’s first two military engagements of note. Then his flamboyant style plus his inability to keep his mouth shut got him into lasting trouble.

Born to landed aristocracy in Louisiana, Beauregard entered West Point at the age of sixteen and graduated second in his class. His army engineering duties included improving Pensacola Harbor and the mouth of the Mississippi River. In the Mexican War as a member of General Winfield Scott’s staff, Beauregard was twice wounded and twice promoted for gallantry.

He was named Superintendent of West Point in January, 1861, but dismissed five days later for his secessionist views. Beauregard then traveled to Richmond and accepted a brigadier general’s commission in the Southern army. It was Beauregard who directed the bombardment of Fort Sumter, thereby, transferring secession into war. It was Beauregard who got major accolades for the Confederate victory three months later at Manassas. Although Robert E. Lee organized the army and “Stonewall” Jackson turned the battle from defeat.

Beauregard designed the Confederate Battle Flag and became one of the first full generals for the South. With that promotion came his downfall. The Louisianan was then in his early forties. A small graceful man who wore explicitly tailored uniforms and who kept his graying hair maintained in glossy blackness by judicious applications of dye.

A man incapable of tact or diplomacy, Beauregard came at loggerheads with Commissary General Northrop and Secretary of War Benjamin. Then he ran afoul of President Jefferson Davis, who basically exiled Beauregard to the western theatre.

Beauregard was second in command of the Confederate forces at the Battle of Shiloh. He took charge after the death of General Sidney Johnston. Beauregard’s withdrawal from the field and his mishandling of the army thereafter caused Davis to remove his from command.

Out of touch with reality was Beauregard’s fundamental problem. Bombastic, egotistical, politically naïve, he proposed one impractical plan after another for a grand movement that would win the war with a single stroke. As one writer put it, “Beauregard could speak fondly of giving up Tennessee to the Federals in order to concentrate a massive force elsewhere”. Davis knew it would be political suicide to willingly yield any inch of the Confederacy. The general openly called the President “a stupid fool”. Davis just as openly stated that, “a military aide who looked good but had no sense would automatically be assigned to Beauregard’s staff”.

During 1863-64, Beauregard was in charge of defenses along the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. He performed adequately. In April, 1864, at Lee’s urging Beauregard took command of the Southern Virginia department. He blocked Grant’s advance on Petersburg long enough for Lee’s army to get there. This was Beauregard’s finest hour in the field.     

After the war he returned home to New Orleans. Beauregard became president of two railroads and with Virginian Jubal Early co-chaired the Louisiana lottery. That should have been satisfying. It was not. Beauregard spent years in a war of words with Davis and General Joseph Johnston.

A two volume biography of Beauregard appeared in 1884. It actually was an autobiography and did his reputation no good. The old soldier died in 1893. By a strange twist of circumstances he is buried in New Orleans beneath a statue of his nemesis General Sidney Johnston. Gustave Beauregard was patriotic and gallant, yet as one biographer put it, “he could never see beyond the enemy to his front and his dreams for his own reputation”.