Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard was a Confederate general officer who started the American Civil War by leading the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. 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 in military and civil engineering at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, Beauregard served with distinction as an engineer officer in the Mexican–American War. Following a brief appointment as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy in 1861, and after Louisiana seceded, he resigned from the United States Army and became the first brigadier general in the Confederate States Army. He commanded the defenses of Charleston, South Carolina, at the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Three months later he won the First Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia.
Beauregard held several key commands in the Western Theater, including control of armies at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee, and the Siege of Corinth in northern Mississippi, both in 1862. He returned to Charleston and defended it in 1863 from repeated naval and land attacks by Union forces.