| Known as “The Little Creole”, Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was the first Confederate hero of the Civil War. Born on May 28, 1818 in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana to a wealthy Creole family, Beauregard attended the US Military Academy at West Point. He was appointed to the prestigious Corps of Engineers upon graduation in 1838. During the Mexican war he was on the staff of Winfield Scott and received brevets to the rank of major. When Beauregard resigned from the U.S. Army in February 1861, the Confederate government gave him command of the batteries surrounding Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor. He began the bombardment on April 12 which led to surrender of the fort the next day. In June he was sent to Manassas, Va., to defend it against a Union advance from Washington, D.C. He planned to attack the Federal forces across Bull Run on July 21, but Union general Irvin McDowell struck first against the Confederate left flank. Both he and Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, whose troops arrived from the Shenandoah Valley during the fighting, drove the Federal army from the field in the afternoon to win the first major battle of the war. Promoted to full general, he assumed command of the Southern army after Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston's death during the Battle of Shiloh. He defended Charleston brilliantly from late 1862 to 1864. In 1864, he assisted Robert E. Lee in the defense of Richmond and defeated Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler in the Bermuda Hundred Campaign near Drewry's Bluff. He followed this victory with a desperate defense of Petersburg, when his tiny 2,200-man force resisted an assault by 16,000 Federals, known as the Second Battle of Petersburg. He gambled by withdrawing his Bermuda Hundred defenses to reinforce Petersburg, assuming that Butler would not capitalize on the opening. His gamble succeeded, and he held Petersburg long enough for Lee's army to arrive. Beauregard was then appointed commander of Confederate forces in the West. Since all of his forces were engaged elsewhere (in Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi), he had insufficient resources to halt the superior Union forces under Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman in their march to the sea. He and Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Sherman near Durham, North Carolina, in April 1865. After the war Beauregard considered several foreign military offers but remained in the South to serve as president of the New Orleans, Jackson, and Great Northern Railroad and of the New Orleans and Carrolton streetcar line, which he revitalized. He served until his death as a commissioner of the highly profitable Louisiana Lottery and as state adjutant general from 1879 to 1888. He died on Feb. 20, 1893. |
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| Pierre G.T. Beauregard |