Page:Confederate Portraits.djvu/131

 IV

p. G. T. BEAUREGARD

We are apt to feel that at the time of the Civil War the South was more homogeneous, more typically Anglo- Saxon than the North. Yet among the Confederate leaders we find Longstreet the Dutchman, Benjamin the Jew, and Beauregard, who was French as if from Paris.

Born in French Louisiana, Beauregard carried his French traditions and manners to West Point and through the Mexican War, in which he served with dis- tinguished gallantry. He was a small, dark man, of French physique, justly proud of great muscular strength, compact, alert, thoroughly martial. For the most part, his face was grave and quiet, but in battle it lighted up with a splendid glory. During the war his hair grew suddenly gray. This was attributed by some to over- whelming anxiety, by others, ill-naturedly, to the scar- city of imported Parisian cosmetics.

He had too much real genius to ape any one. Yet being a Frenchman and a soldier, he could not but dream nightly and daily of Napoleon, and that over- shadowing influence modeled, perhaps unconsciously, a good many of his habits and methods. ** He possesses large concentrativeness and vivid perception ; and hav- ing once formed his determinations, is inflexible in his

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