Short answers, pulled from the story.
P. G. T. Beauregard was a Confederate general born on the 28th of May, 1818, in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He is best known for ordering the bombardment of Fort Sumter on the 12th of April 1861, which started the American Civil War. He was the first brigadier general appointed in the Confederate States Army and one of only seven men to achieve the rank of full general in the Confederacy.
Beauregard ordered the first shots of the Civil War fired from Fort Johnson in the early hours of the 12th of April 1861. The bombardment lasted 34 hours before Union Major Robert Anderson, who had once been Beauregard's instructor at West Point, surrendered Fort Sumter on April 14. The victory made Beauregard the most celebrated Confederate commander in the early months of the war.
Beauregard was second-in-command to General Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh, which began on the 6th of April 1862. When Johnston was mortally wounded in the afternoon, Beauregard assumed command of the entire Army of Mississippi. He halted the Confederate assault before completing the destruction of Grant's army, a decision that became one of the most debated of the Civil War; the next morning, Buell's reinforcements arrived and drove the Confederates back to Corinth.
Davis considered Beauregard's grand strategic plans impractical and believed he lacked a realistic grasp of logistics and politics. Disputes began after First Manassas, when Beauregard's battle report, published in a newspaper, implied that Davis's interference had prevented a decisive victory. Davis later relieved Beauregard of army command without warning when Beauregard took medical leave without prior permission, and the two exchanged bitter public accusations after the war over responsibility for the Confederate defeat.
After the war Beauregard returned to Louisiana, swore his oath of loyalty before the New Orleans mayor on the 16th of September, 1865, and declined offers to lead the armies of Brazil, Romania, and Egypt. He served as a railroad executive and became wealthy as a supervisor of the Louisiana State Lottery Company alongside Jubal Early, a role he held for fifteen years starting in 1877.
Beauregard advocated for Black voting rights and political equality as part of the Louisiana Unification Movement in 1873, a coalition that sought to win Black votes to displace Radical Republican governance. Historian T. Harry Williams characterized his motivations as politically calculated rather than principled. The movement, attended by roughly one hundred prominent Louisianans divided evenly by race, ultimately failed.