previous next
[11]

He appears to us now to be precisely the same as when, on the second day of the battle of Shiloh, he led, flag in hand, one of the charges of the 18th Louisiana regiment. A hail-storm of minie-balls was then pouring into that gallant corps. One of his staff, expostulating with him, and almost rebuking his too-rash exposure of his person, he said: ‘At such moments as these, the order must not be “go,” but “follow!” ’ And he still tightly grasped the battle-flag. The whole man is portrayed in this brief sentence. His words were ever few at headquarters or on the field, but terse and to the point. One could read, by the flash of his eyes, that he meant what he said.

If, as we firmly believe, traits of character, scope of mind, even tastes and prejudices, can be transmitted from generation to generation, we can understand how and why Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard displayed the capacity for command and the inspiring influence which so distinguished him during our four years war, when we glance back over the long line of his ancestors, where, love of liberty and soldierly qualities were so conspicuous. We very much mistake, or there is still a goodly current of the Celtic Tider's blood running through General Beauregard's veins, and the high-toned chivalric courtesy, coupled with irreproachable integrity, so remarkable in him, must certainly be derived from the stately old Dukes of Reggio and Modena, the heads of the House of Este.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide People (automatically extracted)
Sort people alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a person to search for him/her in this document.
Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (2)
Judith De Reggio (1)
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: