Following a string of wink-and-a-nod restorations of Confederate names to nine Army bases, the Governor of Louisiana dispensed with nuance Monday and returned the family name of a Confederate general to the state’s major National Guard training base by invoking the namesake’s father.
Camp Beauregard, which was named for Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard prior to 2023, will now be named for his father, Jacques Toutant Beauregard, local Louisiana media first reported. The elder Beauregard raised Pierre on the family’s Contreras Plantation, where fields were worked by slave labor prior to the Civil War.
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry ordered the name change Monday to the Louisiana National Guard Training Center Pineville, which was given that name in 2023 amid the removal of Confederate names from nine Army bases across the country, like Fort Bragg and Fort Benning.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered all nine of those names restored this year.
The statement from the Louisiana Guard announcing the base’s reversion to Camp Beauregard does not note that the two men were related.
Jacque Beauregard served in the Louisiana Militia and fought in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans, the final major conflict of the War of 1812, according to the Guard. In that battle, outnumbered U.S. troops led by future President Andrew Jackson repulsed a British force sent to capture the city’s port.
In a statement, Landry said, “By restoring the name Camp Beauregard, we honor a legacy of courage and service that dates back over two centuries.” The elder Beauregard, according to Landry, “stood at the front lines in defense of New Orleans during one of our nation’s most defining battles.”
Designer of the ‘Stars and Bars’ flag
The base’s original namesake, the younger Beauregard, is perhaps best remembered as a key voice in the design and adoption of the Confederate Battle Flag, and for commanding the Confederate troops in the war’s first skirmish.
Beauregard graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, in 1838 — several sites claim he was second in his class of 45 students — and spent his post-Civil War career as a businessman in New Orleans with notably pro-civil rights views for newly freed Black Americans, according to a website run by the Virginia Humanities at the University of Virginia.
As a Civil War general for the Confederacy, Beauregard could be said to have fired the war’s first shot as the commander of the Confederate siege of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1861. Beauregard captured the fort, accepting the surrender of U.S. Army Maj. Robert Anderson, who had been an instructor over Beauregard at West Point.
Beauregard led troops throughout the war, though historical views on his battlefield acumen do not generally rank him among the conflict’s top leaders.
Renaming and re-renaming
The short-lived removal of Confederate names from Army bases came to an end this year when Hegseth ordered the names of all nine federal installations restored under the names of unrelated former soldiers who shared the same last name as each base’s original Confederate namesakes.
Bragg was renamed for Pfc. Roland L. Bragg, a World War II paratrooper who earned a Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge. Benning is now named for a soldier who earned a Distinguished Service Cross in World War I and later served as mayor of a small Nebraska town. While in that role, he accidentally shot a fellow city council member when examining a handgun during a meeting.
Landry’s statement on the renaming of Beauregard noted skepticism of the 2023 renaming efforts.
“Let this also be a lesson that we should always give reverence to history and not be quick to so easily condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations,” Landry said.
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