P. G. T. Beauregard P. G. T. Beauregard Pierre-Gustave Toutant de Beauregard (May 28, 1818 – February 20, 1893) was an American military officer who was the first prominent general of the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. Today, he is commonly referred to as P. G. T. Beauregard, but he rarely used his first name as an adult. He signed correspondence as G. T. Beauregard. Trained as a civil engineer at the United States Military Academy, Beauregard served with distinction as an engineer in the Mexican–American War. Following a brief appointment as superintendent at West Point in 1861, after the South
West Virginia in the American Civil War West Virginia in the American Civil War The U.S. state of West Virginia was formed out of western Virginia and added to the Union as a direct result of the American Civil War (see History of West Virginia), in which it became the only state to declare its independence from the Confederacy. In the summer of 1861, Union troops, which included a number of newly-formed Unionist "Virginia" regiments under General George McClellan, drove off Confederate troops under General Robert E. Lee. This essentially freed Unionists in the northwestern counties of Virginia to form a functioning government of their own as