CSA Geneneral Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard on Milk Glass

Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard on Milk Glass with backmark, "Permanent improved Ivorytypes, Lardner's Process, Philadelphia". 

Beauregard (May 28, 1818 – February 20, 1893) was a Southern military officer, politician, inventor, writer, civil servant, and the first prominent general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War.  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 as a civil engineer at the United States Military Academy, Beauregard served with distinction as an engineer in the Mexican–American War.  Following a brief appointment as superintendent at West Point in 1861, after the South 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 won the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia.

Beauregard commanded armies in the Western Theater, including at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the Siege of Corinth in northern Mississippi.  He returned to Charleston and defended it in 1863 from repeated naval and land attacks by Union forces. His greatest achievement was saving the important industrial city of Petersburg, Virginia in June 1864, and thus the nearby Confederate capital of Richmond, from assaults by overwhelmingly superior Union Army forces.

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 Major General William T. Sherman.  Following his military career, Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he served as a railroad executive, and became wealthy as a promoter of the Louisiana Lottery.

Inventory Number: HAR 064