Western news and the Libby times. [volume] (Libby, Mont.) 1920-1933, 1933-06-01
The Great Creole

The Great Creole
tAH pictures from nnsso.s AHeauregnrd The Crent
Creole" courtesy Charlie. scrihn@r'. sons)
BY ELMO SCOTT WATSON
@E ORDERED the firing on Fort SUM-
ter and thus furnished the spark
| which set Off the mighty conflagra-
u u ton Of the greatest civil war In his
Htac71 tory. But this Hkindliest military
NNNV49 engagement In history, conducted
k with the utmost good nature, almost
1<&tIbs tenderness on both sides-a pleas
ant cnrtain-raiser which gave no
hint of the grimness to follow" was hailed as q
great victory and he became the Idol of new
nation, the Confederate States of America.
The Confederate congress, In behalf OF the
new nation, voted him resolution of thanks
The general assembly of South Carolina the
scene Of his great' victory did the same. cti-
zens of his native New Orleans raised funds
to buy golden sword for him. His admirers
In Montgomery, Ala. the Confederate capital,
decided to buy him new horse and present It
to- him upon his next visit there. lie received
more thHn go letters of cungratulat0n and the
manuscripts OF five poems written to him.
Then he was ordered to Richmond to confer
with President Jefferson Davis and his progress
! north was triumphai procession with cheering
crowds and blaring bands at every railroad
junction. Wherever he appeared. the crowds
demanded speech. Arriving In Richmond he
was hustled and showed and kissed and had to
stand with scarlet embarrassed face while
splndly maiden of forty, to whom forty made no
difference, shipped button from his coat
Three months later two uniformed mebs
fought battle near Manassas or Bull Run In
Virginia. The uniformed mob which had
marched south, many of them carrying lengths
of rope ito lead Rebel prisoner back to Wash
hgton" went back toward that city In panic
stricken rout almost unparalleled In history
The uniformed mob which had marched north
each man confident Of his ability to whip five
Yankees before breakfast experienced unex-
pected difficulties In whipping two But theirs
was the victory, anyway and after that another
extravaganza of hero worship /
In the South they began naming children
after him. There was talk Of making him Pres
ident Of the Confederates States of America.
He had to keep an extra supply of coat buttons
In his tent--they shipped them off SO fast
AS you have probably already guessed, the
object of all this frenzy was Pierre Gustaye
Toutant Beauregard, a general In the Confeder-
ate army In 1861.
But" you say IF he was such a great hero
then, why do we hear SO little of him now an-Io
find the answer to that question: turn to new
biography which has just been published by
Charles Scribners Sons. It Is "Beauregard, the
Great Creole written by Hamilton Basso, who
has set about the task of rescuing from OBJ
security the man once hailed as zone of the
greatest military figures In history
In the prologue to his biography, Mr.. Basso
says: occasionally, in the textbooks we came
across his name. But 1t is only rarely, and then
with scant line or two they are done with him.
HE has fallen into ohscurlty. even In the
South where once he was loved and honored as
much assLee. And So in writing of him, 1t has
interested me to seek an explanation of his neg
lect and effacement The fault, / believe and
the blame Cf there Is any bame| is that of the
traditionasts and the myth makers-all the
Happy Galahads Of the Picturesque"
Mr.. Basso then points out that In 1866 when
the civil war ended a ruined, IA defeated peo-
pie returned to the daily routine Of peace-time
life, a changed life in which they had no pres
ent and, so far as they could see, no future All
that was left inviolate the past" And the
PROSTATE South chung desperately to It's men,
cries of the beauty, the chivary and the romance
that had been in the past.
In the years that followed myths and legends
began to spring up to form the parts of the
plantation or Southern tradition" and part OF
that tradition was that of the Civil war gen.
eral. Here, fortunately. the myth-makers were
not called upon to exercise their creative In
genuty to any great extent. Their hero was
already made His name was Robert Edward
Lee Lee, then, became the legendary hero. He
was the model the others must measure up to.
few Southern generals, notably Stonewall
Jackson, Albert Sidney Johnston, and Jeb
Stuart, bore many points Of resemblance to Lee.
The tradition, therefore, could incorporate them
into its dogma"
But Beauregard could not be SO included.
For one thing he and Lee were totally unlike
In every respect Then, too, Beauregard was
Frenchman and the tradition Is essentially An
glo-Saxon. Add to this the bitter antagonlsm
that sprang up between President Jefferson