The Coolidge examiner., 1933-06-02

and said he would be gone a fortnight. He was
gone four years
During those four years he rose TO the height
of his military ambition and sank to the depths.
Within a short time after Manassas he was
definitely lin bad with Davis and the secretary
OF war, Benjamin. He was sent 10 the Depart
ment of the West as second in command TO Al
bert Sidney Johnston. At the Battle OF Shiloh
or Pittsburg Landing a bullet struck down
Johnston and the command devolyed upon
Beauregard But with certain victory in sight,
when he could have annihilated Grants army,
he ordered the fighting stopped. He retreated
TO Corinth leaving Grant in possession.
After Shiloh the whisperings against Beaure-
gard began There began TO be doubts as to the
greatness Of the hero of Sumter and the victor
of Manassas But he did score a victory Of
sorts in his skillful evacution OF Corinth when
Halleck might have crushed him. Despite this
fact he was relieved of his command and sue
ceeded by Gen. Braxton Bragg, one of Davis
pets"
The illness which had troubled him since the
beginning OF the war made long leave of alb
sence necessary and after he had somewhat re
gained his health he was placed in command at
Charleston again There he successfully re-
sisted a Federal attack aimed at this breeding
place of secession" In 1864 he was serving un-
der Lee in resisting the sledge hammer strokes
of Grant around Richmond. At Petersburg he
beat off an attack which saved Richmond for
nine more months year later, after Lee had
surrendered, there was a dramatic meeting be-
tween Davis and Beauregard Davis was plead
ing for a continuance of the war But Beaure-
gard and Gen. Joseph Johnston told him plainly
that it was no use to struggle longer against
the inevitable.
So Johnston surrendered to Sherman and the
With only S1.15 in his pocket
Beauregard started back to Louisiana In New
Orleans he found himself still hero to his peo-
pie. But in the years that followed the hero
worship, even in Louisiana, faded. There was
the matter of the Louisiana lottery, the gam
bling scheme which so bitterly assailed as
menace to the morals and character of the
nation. Its directors needed the association of
some man whose greatness of name would lend
character and dignity to the lottery and GER
tify to the fairness of the drawings
Finally they got such names, two of them.
One was Gen. Jubal A. Early and the other was
Gen Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard. "The
South astonished, a little shocked g. .
and made apologies for her distinguished sons.
But though it apologized for him and
tried to forget his association with the octopus.
it never really forgave him. 1t was not the
thing for Civil war general to do
Came the 1890s. The Civil war was becoming
dim memory. Most Of the great figures in it
were dead Only few fingered on, among them
the Great Creole. In his seventy-ffth year the
old illness assailed him. He felt as if knives
were sticking in his throat; he could feel the
pulse of fever behind his eyes. Sometimes, in
the evening, his officers would come to his quar-
ters to cheer him up. The fire leaped and
roared, and those who liked whisky had nip
or two, and Stuart sang in his great booming
voice Perhaps, as he went up the stairs,
the echo of Stuart's song went softly into his
darkened room, perhaps the dark was poignant
with the ghosts of men in weathered gray. And
perhaps as he fell asleep, there was the past
again, and the days Of golden glory, when his
name was banner in the Southern SUM- Or
perhaps there was nothing only quiet and
the ceasing of his heart and the peaceful COM
ing of the end"
&c by Western Newspaper Unon)