Gov. Landry restores Beauregard name to Louisiana National Guard facility 

Gov. Jeff Landry announced Monday he will name the state’s largest National Guard training site after a little-known early 19th century Louisiana militia member and slaveowner, the father of the Confederate general whose name the facility originally carried. 

The Louisiana National Guard Training Facility in Pineville will once again be known as Camp Beauregard, which had been its name until 2023 when the state joined a nationwide effort to remove monuments and honorifics to Confederate veterans and leaders. 

The site was previously named after Gen. Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard, who initiated the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, to begin the Civil War. It will now be named after Capt. Jacques Toutant Beauregard, a member of the Louisiana Militia who reportedly fought in the 1815 Battle of New Orleans. Jacques Toutant Beauregard is P.G.T. Beauregard’s father, Louisiana National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Noel Collins confirmed to the Illuminator. 

Landry announced the renaming of the facility with a social media post that included a seemingly AI-generated image of a headstone that reads “Wokeism.” 

“By restoring the name Camp Beauregard, we honor a legacy of courage and service that dates back over two centuries,” Landry said in a news release. “Let this also be a lesson that we should always give reverence to history and not be quick to so easily condemn or erase the dead, lest we and our times be judged arbitrary by future generations.”

The governor’s news release does not mention the Beauregards are related to each other. 

P.G.T. Beauregard, a native of St. Bernard Parish, was the first Confederate to receive the rank of general after Louisiana seceded from the United States. He would later take advantage of the mass pardons for treason offered to former Confederate officers and officials by President Andrew Johnson. The former general was reportedly reluctant to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States but was persuaded to do so by Johnson and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. 

After his return to Louisiana, P.G.T. Beauregard became a railroad superintendent and argued for Black voting rights in order to remove the radical Republicans who had gained control of state and local government during the Reconstruction period. 

According to a Louisiana National Guard news release, Jacques Toutant Beauregard was a member of the Louisiana Militia whose regiment took part in a fight that was a prelude to the Battle of New Orleans.

Jacques Toutant Beauregard was the owner of a sugarcane farm in St. Bernard Parish later named the Contreras Plantation, where P.G.T. Beauregard was born. The Beauregard family owned slaves on the plantation, according to T. Harry Williams’ biography “P.G.T. Beauregard, Napoleon in Gray.” 

In the news release, Maj. Gen. Thomas Friloux, adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard, praised Jacques Toutant Beauregard as an American hero.

“We’re naming our premier training installation after an American hero and patriot who fought for the freedom of the city of New Orleans, the State of Louisiana, and the United States of America against a foreign invader,” Friloux said.