Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[139] old. His family was of French extraction, and had settled in Louisiana in the reign of Louis XV. In 1838, he was graduated at West Point, taking the second honours in a class of forty-five. He entered the Mexican war as a lieutenant, obtained two brevets in it, the last that of major; and was subsequently placed by the Government in charge of the construction of some public buildings at New Orleans, as well as the fortifications on and near the mouth of the Mississippi. About the beginning of the year 1861, he was appointed superintendent of the Military Academy at West Point; but the appointment was revoked within forty-eight hours by President Buchanan, for the spiteful reason, as is alleged, that Senator Slidell of Louisiana, the brother-in-law of the nominee, had given offence by a secession speech at Washington. Subsequently, Major Beauregard resigned his commission in the service of the United States, and was appointed by Gov. Moore of Louisiana, Colonel of Engineers in the Provisional Army of the South; from which position, as we have seen, he was called by President Davis to the defence of Charleston.

Gen. Beauregard was singularly impassioned in defence of the cause which he served. He hated and despised “the Yankee;” and it must be confessed was the author of some silly letters in the early part of the war, deriding the power of the enemy. That the South would easily whip the North was his constant assertion, even if the first “had for arms only pitch-forks and flint-lock muskets.” Of the army which Gen. Scott was marshalling on the borders of Virginia, he wrote that the enemies of the South were “little more than an armed rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretence, and for an unholy purpose, with an octogenarian at its head!”

Beauregard's personal appearance could scarcely escape notice. He1 was a small, brown, thin man, with features wearing a dead expression, and hair prematurely whitened. His manners were distinguished and severe, but not cold ; they forbade intimacy; they had the abruptness without the vivacity of the Frenchman; but they expressed no conceit, and were not repulsive. He had ardour, a ceaseless activity, and an indomitable power of will. His notions of chivalry were somewhat stilted, and he had fought his first battle with an interchange of courtesies that induced a Frenchman to exclaim in Paris: “Quelle idee chevalresque! On voit que vous avez profit, vous autres Americains, de l'exemple”

It is not to be wondered that Gen. Beauregard, with the eclat of the first victory of the war, and the attractions of a foreign name and manners, should have been the ladies' favourite among the early Southern generals. He was constantly receiving attentions from them, in letters, in flags, and in hundreds of pretty missives. His camp-table was often adorned with presents of rare flowers, which flanked his maps and plans, and a bouquet