July/Aug 2004

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When Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard issued orders for the bombardment of Fort Sumter, he did so with a slight French accent. And why not? A Creole from the old Louisiana Territory, Beauregard's first language was French. Not long after Sumter, Beauregard helped orchestrate the Confederate victory at First Manassas in Virginia. His achievement at Manassas was abetted significantly by the Louisiana Tigers, destined to attain mythic status as Southern warriors. (It was a myth grounded in reality; their Hibernian-Gallic ferocity, their appetite and talent for fighting, made the Tigers, man for man, possibly the most feared and formidable of any Confederate soldiers.) Beauregard would serve credibly, if not always with unmixed distinction and success, in every major theater of the war. (He even recommended the pattern for the Confederate battle flag.) In 1864, he blunted a Federal thrust at Petersburg, and so prolonged, by several more murderous months, the agony involved in restoring the Union. According to the distinguished Civil War scholar T. Harry Williams, during the war years and for several decades following, Beauregard ranked among a very select group of gray-clad leaders who served as the symbolic embodiments of the Old South and the Lost Cause. 1

Williams was probably right. And it may be that Beauregard also serves as a useful symbol of La Cession de la Louisiane—its promise and its price. As soldier and engineer, Beauregard had employed his services ably on behalf of the United States before Sumter. After 1861, he-with thousands more from the former Territory-did all in his power to undo the nation and to reverse La Cession. Stated another way, while the Louisiana Purchase had doubled the nation's expanse in 1803, ...