He was too much given to outbursts of a public kind to please the
ascetic mind of the Southern leader. He had written some silly letters
to the public deriding the power of the North. No one could know better
than Davis how silly these utterances were. He "hated and despised the
Yankees." Davis feared and recognized their power. Beauregard's
assertion that the South could whip the North even if her only arms were
flintlocks and pitchforks had been often and loudly repeated.
Of the army marshaling in front of him under the command of the
venerable Winfield Scott he wrote with the utmost contempt.
"The enemies of the South," he declared, "are little more than an armed
rabble, gathered together hastily on a false pretense and for an unholy
purpose, with an octogenarian at its head!"
In spite of his small stature, Beauregard was a man of striking personal
appearance--small, dark, thin, hair prematurely gray, his manners
distinguished and severe.
It was natural that, with the fame of his first victory, itself the
provoking cause of the conflict, his distinguished foreign name and
courtly manners, he should have become the toast of the ladies in these
early days of the pomp and glory of war. He was the center of an ever
widening circle of fair admirers who lavished their attentions on him in
letters, in flags, and a thousand gay compliments.
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