7. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, United States Army, Confederate States Army
He is known today as P. G. T. Beauregard, though in life he seldom used his first initial, signing his name as G. T. Beauregard. A West Point graduate and veteran of the Mexican-American War, Beauregard was twice wounded during the hostilities, where he served as an engineer. In early 1861, Beauregard accepted the appointment as Superintendent at West Point, a position he held for only five days. His orders were rescinded when news of the secession of Louisiana reached Washington in January. The Louisiana-born Beauregard was a supporter of slavery, having been raised in an aristocratic slave-holding family on a sugar plantation outside of New Orleans. He protested his reassignment to the War Department before departing New York for New Orleans.
There he immediately took an advisory role to the budding Confederate military, and was the first general appointed to the Confederate Army, though several generals of state troops preceded him. He arrived in Charleston in March, 1861, and commanded the troops which fired upon Fort Sumter, initiating open warfare between North and South. Known for his flamboyance, he kept slaves throughout the war in his personal retinue. After the war, in which his service frequently angered Jefferson Davis, he expressed outrage over the seizure of his property to create housing for newly freed slaves. In a letter, he expressed his opinion that blacks were wholly inferior to whites, and predicted they would vanish along with the American Indians since they were incapable of adapting to society.
Read More: Life of a Prisoner at Camp Sumter During the Civil War.