Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (28 May 1818-20 February 1893) was a General of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Beauregard was the first Brigadier-General in the Confederate army during the war, and he was best-known for his capture of Fort Sumter and his victory at Bull Run at the start of the war in 1861.
Biography[]
Beauregard in battle
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was born in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana on 28 May 1818 to a French Creole and Welsh father and an Italian mother. He graduated from West Point and became a US Army engineer, fighting in the Mexican-American War. In 1861, Beauregard briefly served as superintendent of West Point, only to resign and join the Confederate States Army at the start of the American Civil War, remaining loyal to his home state. He became the first Brigadier-General in the CSA, and he commanded the garrison of Charleston, South Carolina; he presided over the capture of Fort Sumter in April 1861 before leading the victory at the First Battle of Bull Run. Beauregard would then be transferred to the western theater of the war, being defeated by Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh in Tennessee and Corinth in Mississippi. In 1863, Beauregard arrived in Charleston to defend the port city from Union assaults during the intense Union siege, and he saved Petersburg, Virginia from a Union assault in June 1864 by reinforcing Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, Beauregard became a railroad executive and lottery promoter, and he died in 1893 at the age of 74.
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