Scope and Content Note
The papers of Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard (1818-1893) consist of a diary, personal letterbooks, military records, the manuscript of "Reminiscences" which served as the basis for Alfred Roman's The Military Operation of General Beauregard (1884), scrapbooks, and miscellaneous material spanning the years 1844-1883. All but a few items are dated during or concern the Civil War.
The few early items in the collection relate to Beauregard's career as an engineer in New Orleans and on the staff of General Winfield Scott in Mexico, where Beauregard took part in the siege of Vera Cruz and the battles of Cerro Gordo, Contreras, and Mexico City. The bulk of the correspondence, the military papers, and the "Reminiscences" relate to Beauregard's service as an officer of the Confederate Army. He was in command of the troops at Charleston, South Carolina, when the Civil War began with the siege of Fort Sumter. The papers also document his role in the battles of First Manassas and Shiloh, in the sieges of Corinth, Charleston, and Petersburg, and in the consolidation of Southern forces after the battle of Atlanta.
Material on Beauregard's career as a railroad executive and public official in New Orleans and supervisor of the Louisiana lottery can be found in his letterbooks. Three volumes of scrapbooks of newspaper clippings are devoted almost exclusively to the Civil War.
Principal correspondents include Milledge L. Bonham, Braxton Bragg, Howell Cobb, Samuel Cooper, Jefferson Davis, Augusta J. Evans, Wade Hampton, William Joseph Hardee, Daniel Harvey Hill, John Bell Hood, Joseph E. Johnston, Thomas Jordan, Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, F.W. Pickens, Leonidas Polk, R. S. Ripley, Joseph Gilbert Totten, Earl Van Dorn, and Leroy Pope Walker.