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Emerging Civil War
Dreams of Victory: General P. G. T. Beauregard in the Civil War
Few Civil War generals attracted as much debate and controversy as Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard. He combined brilliance and charisma with arrogance and histrionics. He was a Catholic Creole in a society dominated by white Protestants, which made him appear exotic next to the likes of Albert Sidney Johnston and Robert E. Lee.
He was reviled by Jefferson Davis and often mocked by Mary Chesnut in her diary. Yet, he was popular with his soldiers and subordinates. Outside of Lee, he was the South's most consistently successful commander, winning at Bull Run, defending Charleston in 1864, and defeating Benjamin Butler at Bermuda Hundred and Ulysses Grant and George Meade at Petersburg. Yet, he lived his life in the shadow of his one major defeat: Shiloh.
Beauregard's career before and after the war was no less tumultuous than his Civil War record. He was born among the Creole elite of Louisiana, but rejected the life of a planter in favor of the military, inspired by tales of Napol�on. He was considered a shining light of the antebellum army and performed superbly in the Mexican-American War. Yet, he complained about a lack of promotion and made a frustrating stab at being mayor of New Orleans in 1858.
After the war, he was a successful railroad executive and took a stand against racism, violence, and corruption during Reconstruction. Yet, he was ousted from both railroads he oversaw and his foray into Reconstruction politics came to naught. Although he provided for his family and left them a hefty sum after his death, the money was mostly gained by working for the corrupt Louisiana Lottery.
In Dreams of Victory: General P. G. T. Beauregard in the Civil War, Sean Michael Chick explores a life of contradictions and dreams unrealized--the first real hero of the Confederacy who sometimes proved to be his own worst enemy.
He was reviled by Jefferson Davis and often mocked by Mary Chesnut in her diary. Yet, he was popular with his soldiers and subordinates. Outside of Lee, he was the South's most consistently successful commander, winning at Bull Run, defending Charleston in 1864, and defeating Benjamin Butler at Bermuda Hundred and Ulysses Grant and George Meade at Petersburg. Yet, he lived his life in the shadow of his one major defeat: Shiloh.
Beauregard's career before and after the war was no less tumultuous than his Civil War record. He was born among the Creole elite of Louisiana, but rejected the life of a planter in favor of the military, inspired by tales of Napol�on. He was considered a shining light of the antebellum army and performed superbly in the Mexican-American War. Yet, he complained about a lack of promotion and made a frustrating stab at being mayor of New Orleans in 1858.
After the war, he was a successful railroad executive and took a stand against racism, violence, and corruption during Reconstruction. Yet, he was ousted from both railroads he oversaw and his foray into Reconstruction politics came to naught. Although he provided for his family and left them a hefty sum after his death, the money was mostly gained by working for the corrupt Louisiana Lottery.
In Dreams of Victory: General P. G. T. Beauregard in the Civil War, Sean Michael Chick explores a life of contradictions and dreams unrealized--the first real hero of the Confederacy who sometimes proved to be his own worst enemy.
192 pages, Paperback
First published June 19, 2020
About the author
Sean Michael Chick
8 books1,114 followersSean Michael Chick graduated from University of New Orleans with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Communications and from Southeastern Louisiana University with a Master of Arts in History. He currently works in New Orleans, leading historic tours of his hometown and helping residents and visitors appreciate the city’s past. He is also a boardgame designer, concentrating on the period of Western warfare from 1685-1866. His main American Civil War research interests include Shiloh, the Army of Tennessee, New Orleans during the Civil War, P.G.T. Beauregard, the Petersburg Campaign, and Civil War tactics in relation to linear tactics from 1685-1866.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 20, 2022
A New Biography Of General P.G.T, Beauregard
The Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard (1818 -- 1893) has long been a controversial figure even though he has not received the attention of other Civil War leaders. In this new short book, "Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War" (2022), Sean Michael Chick offers a thoughtful, frequently eloquent portrait of Beauregard. A native of New Orleans, as was Beauregard, Chick leads historic tours of his hometown as well as writing about Civil War history.
The focus of the book is on the Civil War, but Chick offers an insightful view of Beauregard's entire long life. He was born to a wealthy French Creole family in New Orleans, and Chick explores this culture and its differences from the rest of the South and from the United States. Beauregard attended West Point, served in the Mexican War, ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New Orleans in 1858, and served for days as Superintendent of West Point at the outbreak of the Civil War.
The book captures Beauregard with his virtues and his flaws. He had an excellent mind, was a skilled engineer, and had a great deal of charisma. He had a strong sense of military strategy and was particularly influenced by Napoleon. He also tended to bluster, to be arrogant with colleagues and superiors, particularly the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. He was erratic and full of himself.
With his faults, Chick points out Beauregard's accomplishments throughout the Civil War in both the Eastern and Western Theaters. He was the commanding general at both Fort Sumter and at First Bull Run where he briefly became a national hero. He later served, more controversially at Shiloh and at Corinth. He then returned and performed ably at Charleston and at Bermuda Hundred before holding off the Union Army brilliantly at Petersburg and preventing an immediate collapse of the Confederacy.
I got a sense of Beauregard from Chick's account, particularly his discussion of the Battle of Petersburg and of Beauregard's actions during the long siege of Petersburg. Still, the part of this book I most enjoyed was the discussion of Beauregard's life following the war. He put his engineering skills to use working for the railroads and then, for tarnished his reputation by working for the Louisiana Lottery. He wrote his Civil War Memoirs. He also appeared committed to reconciliation of the Union and advocated for legal equality and civil rights for African Americans. New Orleans constructed a large statue in honor of Beauregard which was removed in 2017. The book discusses briefly the history of the statue and of Beauregard's fading reputation.
The book includes maps and by photographs, some of which are rare and greatly enhance the text.
As the author points out, many Civil War leaders, including Lincoln, Lee, or Grant, often are portrayed as symbols more than persons. Chick's goal was to portray Beauregard as a person and as an individual worth getting to know. He succeeds in this effort.
This book is part of the Emerging Civil War Series a public history forum which in its words "offers compelling easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War's most important battles and stories".
The Emerging Civil War Series is published by Savas Beatie, which kindly sent me a review copy of this book.
Robin Friedman
The Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard (1818 -- 1893) has long been a controversial figure even though he has not received the attention of other Civil War leaders. In this new short book, "Dreams of Victory: General P.G.T. Beauregard in the Civil War" (2022), Sean Michael Chick offers a thoughtful, frequently eloquent portrait of Beauregard. A native of New Orleans, as was Beauregard, Chick leads historic tours of his hometown as well as writing about Civil War history.
The focus of the book is on the Civil War, but Chick offers an insightful view of Beauregard's entire long life. He was born to a wealthy French Creole family in New Orleans, and Chick explores this culture and its differences from the rest of the South and from the United States. Beauregard attended West Point, served in the Mexican War, ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New Orleans in 1858, and served for days as Superintendent of West Point at the outbreak of the Civil War.
The book captures Beauregard with his virtues and his flaws. He had an excellent mind, was a skilled engineer, and had a great deal of charisma. He had a strong sense of military strategy and was particularly influenced by Napoleon. He also tended to bluster, to be arrogant with colleagues and superiors, particularly the Confederate President, Jefferson Davis. He was erratic and full of himself.
With his faults, Chick points out Beauregard's accomplishments throughout the Civil War in both the Eastern and Western Theaters. He was the commanding general at both Fort Sumter and at First Bull Run where he briefly became a national hero. He later served, more controversially at Shiloh and at Corinth. He then returned and performed ably at Charleston and at Bermuda Hundred before holding off the Union Army brilliantly at Petersburg and preventing an immediate collapse of the Confederacy.
I got a sense of Beauregard from Chick's account, particularly his discussion of the Battle of Petersburg and of Beauregard's actions during the long siege of Petersburg. Still, the part of this book I most enjoyed was the discussion of Beauregard's life following the war. He put his engineering skills to use working for the railroads and then, for tarnished his reputation by working for the Louisiana Lottery. He wrote his Civil War Memoirs. He also appeared committed to reconciliation of the Union and advocated for legal equality and civil rights for African Americans. New Orleans constructed a large statue in honor of Beauregard which was removed in 2017. The book discusses briefly the history of the statue and of Beauregard's fading reputation.
The book includes maps and by photographs, some of which are rare and greatly enhance the text.
As the author points out, many Civil War leaders, including Lincoln, Lee, or Grant, often are portrayed as symbols more than persons. Chick's goal was to portray Beauregard as a person and as an individual worth getting to know. He succeeds in this effort.
This book is part of the Emerging Civil War Series a public history forum which in its words "offers compelling easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War's most important battles and stories".
The Emerging Civil War Series is published by Savas Beatie, which kindly sent me a review copy of this book.
Robin Friedman
October 4, 2022
This is an excellent, brief biography of the Confederacy's second-best army commander. The chapters on Beauregard's post-war life are the best in the book, in terms of providing new material for the seasoned Civil War reader.
August 17, 2022
The last full biography of this important Confederate general was, surprisingly, in 1955, T Harry Williams's "Napoleon in Gray". This concise volume of the Emerging Civil War series does not seek to supplant Williams but is an introductory overview of Beauregard's life. Like other volumes in the series, it is only around 150 pages of text, with numerous illustrations and maps.
I was hoping for new insights into Beauregard, but Chick mainly just reasserts the positives about Beauregard that any knowledgeable Civil War buff will be aware of. As a native of New Orleans, however, Chick does a good job of conveying the Creole foundations of Beauregard's personality that impacted his military career so profoundly: his rhetorical flourishes and dramatic persona, his often abrasive interactions with superiors.
Chick's previous books were very good tactical micro-histories of the early Petersburg battles of 1864. It might have been more effective in this volume if, given the space constraints, he had omitted some of the battle details of this story and instead concentrated more on Beauregard's interactions with Davis and other generals. Deeper coverage of his strategic concepts and why they were usually impractical would have been welcome as well.
The maps are very good, although they would probably have been better in a Kindle edition where they could be enlarged. The illustrations were mostly poor, washed out and difficult to discern. For the scholarly type, there is a link to footnotes online, although they are generalized for each chapter rather than specific to the content.
The best feature of the book, in my opinion, is the discussion of Beauregard's place in New Orleans history, specifically the unfortunate removal of his statue and other historical monuments. Chick does an excellent job of explaining the negative side to the removal of monuments.
If this concise introduction gives you a deeper appreciation for Beauregard the man and the general, be sure to move on to Williams's 1955 full biography, which still stands the test of time.
I was hoping for new insights into Beauregard, but Chick mainly just reasserts the positives about Beauregard that any knowledgeable Civil War buff will be aware of. As a native of New Orleans, however, Chick does a good job of conveying the Creole foundations of Beauregard's personality that impacted his military career so profoundly: his rhetorical flourishes and dramatic persona, his often abrasive interactions with superiors.
Chick's previous books were very good tactical micro-histories of the early Petersburg battles of 1864. It might have been more effective in this volume if, given the space constraints, he had omitted some of the battle details of this story and instead concentrated more on Beauregard's interactions with Davis and other generals. Deeper coverage of his strategic concepts and why they were usually impractical would have been welcome as well.
The maps are very good, although they would probably have been better in a Kindle edition where they could be enlarged. The illustrations were mostly poor, washed out and difficult to discern. For the scholarly type, there is a link to footnotes online, although they are generalized for each chapter rather than specific to the content.
The best feature of the book, in my opinion, is the discussion of Beauregard's place in New Orleans history, specifically the unfortunate removal of his statue and other historical monuments. Chick does an excellent job of explaining the negative side to the removal of monuments.
If this concise introduction gives you a deeper appreciation for Beauregard the man and the general, be sure to move on to Williams's 1955 full biography, which still stands the test of time.
June 23, 2025
This is actually a fairly short biography; about 190 pages, and a lot of room is taken up by photographs.
Frankly, I wish more biographies would devote the amount of space to pictures as this one does. To give an idea, there's ten just in the first appendix (on P.G.T. Beauregard's oldest son).
So, don't go in expecting a lot of analytical detail, as there's just not room for it. But Sean Chick does well with the space he uses.
Naturally, the ACW takes up the bulk of the attention, but the first three chapters cover Beauregard's family background, and his early life. There is some discussion in here, and later, about creole culture's tendency towards braggadocio, and how that shows up in many of Beauregard's wartime pronouncements, but there's not enough room to really dig into this aspect of his background, and how it was expressed in his writings.
The central thesis of the book is Beauregard as under-appreciated tactician. This is the sort of thing that needs more detailed analysis than this book can provide to really defend, but there is plenty of material here with his disagreements with Jefferson Davis and other Confederates around him. This also could use some more digging, but it is more than apparent enough (and well-known elsewhere) that political feuding helped keep him out of the spotlight. There's some discussion of Davis' moves of various top people, but with more room really looking at what options were open, and if he could have assigned people differently could be interesting.
Similarly, there is a good amount of attention to his defense of Petersburg before Lee understood how close Grant was getting to taking it. Part of the trouble is Beauregard's own vacillating over his position, constantly contradicting himself in messages to Lee. While this is the natural result of the stresses of battle and seeing despair in every reverse and triumph in every advance, these are the tendencies that a good commander must master. While he held on with good positions and inadequate troops, events mastered him instead of the reverse.
This is a good overall look at P.G.T. Beauregard and his immediate family, and will certainly lead to me paying more attention to him in other books. The photographs and illustrations, and a few maps are also worth the price of admission.
Frankly, I wish more biographies would devote the amount of space to pictures as this one does. To give an idea, there's ten just in the first appendix (on P.G.T. Beauregard's oldest son).
So, don't go in expecting a lot of analytical detail, as there's just not room for it. But Sean Chick does well with the space he uses.
Naturally, the ACW takes up the bulk of the attention, but the first three chapters cover Beauregard's family background, and his early life. There is some discussion in here, and later, about creole culture's tendency towards braggadocio, and how that shows up in many of Beauregard's wartime pronouncements, but there's not enough room to really dig into this aspect of his background, and how it was expressed in his writings.
The central thesis of the book is Beauregard as under-appreciated tactician. This is the sort of thing that needs more detailed analysis than this book can provide to really defend, but there is plenty of material here with his disagreements with Jefferson Davis and other Confederates around him. This also could use some more digging, but it is more than apparent enough (and well-known elsewhere) that political feuding helped keep him out of the spotlight. There's some discussion of Davis' moves of various top people, but with more room really looking at what options were open, and if he could have assigned people differently could be interesting.
Similarly, there is a good amount of attention to his defense of Petersburg before Lee understood how close Grant was getting to taking it. Part of the trouble is Beauregard's own vacillating over his position, constantly contradicting himself in messages to Lee. While this is the natural result of the stresses of battle and seeing despair in every reverse and triumph in every advance, these are the tendencies that a good commander must master. While he held on with good positions and inadequate troops, events mastered him instead of the reverse.
This is a good overall look at P.G.T. Beauregard and his immediate family, and will certainly lead to me paying more attention to him in other books. The photographs and illustrations, and a few maps are also worth the price of admission.
November 25, 2023
This book is a biography of an Army General for the Confederate States of America. He was one of the highest-ranking generals in that army. H ranked just below Robert E. Lee and Joseph E. Johnston. However, the mutual personal dislike between Beauregard and President Jefferson Davis prevented Beauregard from receiving commands commiserate with his rank. In particular, he was often denied sole command of a field army. He often served as second in command of a field army (the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Tennessee are two examples) or as the commander in a less significant front during the war. Beauregard had successes (First Manassas, defending Charlton S.C., Bermuda 100 and so forth); but Jefferson Davis lacked confidence in him as well as harboring a personal dislike of Beauregard. This biography provides insight to Beauregard’s personality and military leadership traits. He was certainly a proud man who admired Napoleon and modeled his own leadership style after that French emperor. It also provides background on his early life and his post-Civil War life. It is a very well-done biography on a Confederate general who doesn’t receive the attention and credit his military career deserves.
June 9, 2024
Sean Michael Chick does such a good job of showing his readers the person of General P.G.T. Beauregard. The general seems eccentric, charismatic, and intelligent, yet seeks the recognition that all generals of this time (South and North) seem to desire. His is also a sad story, choosing duty to his command over being with his wife as she was dying.
Beauregard struggled to really find his place in the post war South, as did many confederate officers. He held jobs with two railroads after the war, yet lost both jobs. He also took a position against racism after the war.
The author does such a good job, in a short volume, of really showing us Beauregard. Thanks to this volume, I attend to do a deeper dive into the General. Would highly recommend this book.
Beauregard struggled to really find his place in the post war South, as did many confederate officers. He held jobs with two railroads after the war, yet lost both jobs. He also took a position against racism after the war.
The author does such a good job, in a short volume, of really showing us Beauregard. Thanks to this volume, I attend to do a deeper dive into the General. Would highly recommend this book.
January 18, 2023
Excellent book. Very well researched and insightful on a very complex man. Sean included more about Beauregard’s family than any other biography ever written about him…excluding Francis Keyes partially fictional “ Madame Castel’s Lodger”. Great Read
5 Stars !!!
5 Stars !!!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews