ST. BERNARD PARISH — Before being elevated by Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, the slave-owning new namesake of the state’s largest National Guard training facility was at best a footnote in history, according to a review of what few documents are available to trace his background.
Camp Beauregard, founded in 1917 in Pineville, was originally named after Confederate Gen. Pierre Gustav Toutant Beauregard, a St. Bernard Parish native who initiated the attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, to begin the Civil War. In 2023, Beauregard’s name was removed from the facility amid a nationwide effort to remove monuments and honorifics to Confederate veterans and leaders.
Landry announced in July the facility would be renamed after the Confederate general’s father, Jacques Toutant-Beauregard.
The governor’s decision to restore the Beauregard name is in keeping with the style of President Donald Trump’s administration, which has restored the former Confederate names of military installations by selecting unrelated military heroes.
But Landry’s choice of honoree is different.
For starters, Camp Beauregard’s new namesake is shown in nearly every historical document and on his grave as Jacques Toutant. According to a biography of his son, “P.G.T. Beauregard, Napoleon in Gray,” by historian T. Harry Williams, the future Confederate general began going by a single last name, Beauregard, when he enrolled at West Point in an attempt to Americanize himself.
Jacques Toutant is also different from Trump’s other restored honorees as he is related to the original namesake. He also does not have any distinctive military accomplishments and was a slave owner, which to many make him a worse choice than his son, who adopted more racially moderate stances after the war.
“It signals to the Black citizens in [Louisiana] that [Landry] thinks you’re second-class and he doesn’t care if you’re offended,” University of North Carolina Charlotte historian Karen Cox, a scholar on the legacy of Confederate monuments, said of Landry’s decision.
Landry spokeswoman Kate Kelly did not respond to a request for comment as to why the National Guard facility was being renamed, who was involved in the decision or why Landry opted to name it after a slave owner.
Little is known about Jacques Toutant other than that he owned a sugarcane plantation in St. Bernard Parish that was later named Contreras. Enslaved people were forced to work on his fields and in his home. Toutant also served as a captain in the Louisiana Militia, though historical records don’t tie him to any particular battle.
Six historians at four universities contacted for this report declined to comment on his history, citing how little they as individuals – and historians as a group – know about the elder Beauregard.
“Very little has been written on Contreras Plantation or on Jacques Beauregard, apart from brief mentions in biographies of P.G.T Beauregard,” LSU historian John Bardes said.
The most detailed records of Toutant’s life come in the Slave Schedules of the 1850 census, which list the age, residence and owner of each enslaved person in the United States.
Toutant is listed as the owner of 86 enslaved people, ranging from a 60-year-old Black woman to a 2-year-old mixed-race child. The names of the enslaved people Toutant owned were never recorded.
According to P.G.T. Beauregard’s biographer, T. Harry Williams, Toutant forced an enslaved woman to nurse his children, a practice that often forcefully separated Black women from their own infants.
Even on his home turf in St. Bernard Parish, the name Jacques Toutant is all but forgotten.
The site of the Contreras Plantation, where a large home burned down in the mid-20th century, is marked with a decrepit memorial to P.G.T. Beauregard. Enclosed on three sides by barbed-wire topped fences, the grassy patches that surround the memorial were littered with empty beer cans and rotted picnic tables when visited by a reporter in late July.
The white brick pyramid memorial at the Contreras site was financed by Judge Leander Perez, according to local historian and author Sean Michael Chick. Perez is remembered as a dogged segregationist who was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for his efforts to obstruct the integration of schools in New Orleans. He also attempted to stop civil rights workers from entering Plaquemines Parish to help Black residents register to vote.
Once pristine, the pyramid was covered in grayish muck during a reporter’s recent visit. It only mentions Toutant as among the general’s ancestors.
Less than 2 miles down the road, Toutant is buried in the St. Bernard Parish Catholic Cemetery. The engraved door to his tomb is broken in over a dozen places, his name hardly legible through the cracks and the wear of time.
The grave also bears a medallion commemorating Toutant as a veteran of the War of 1812.
It is on this veteran status that Landry chose to honor Toutant.
“By restoring the name Camp Beauregard, we honor a legacy of courage and service that dates back over two centuries,” Landry said in his announcement about the renaming.
Through a public records request, the Illuminator obtained the historical documents the Louisiana National Guard said it used to justify renaming its Pineville training base after Toutant. They included militia payroll records that span from Dec. 16, 1814, to March 20, 1815. They indicate Toutant served under Col. Pierre Denys de la Ronde, who led the Louisiana Militia at the Battle of New Orleans and later earned the rank of major general.
The records do not definitively place Toutant at the site of any particular battle or indicate he earned any military honors. A Louisiana National Guard press release announcing the renaming notes his regiment took part in a prelude to the Battle of New Orleans, although historians have noted only minor skirmishes along Lake Borgne before the war’s final conflict in Chalmette.
Despite having no details on Toutant’s militia service, Maj. Gen. Thomas Friloux, adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard, praised him 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.
When asked about this discrepancy, Louisiana National Guard spokeswoman Lt. Col. Noel Collins referred questions to the Society of the War of 1812’s Louisiana chapter, which she said was consulted for information about Toutant.
Chapter president Brig. Gen. Rodney Painting, who is listed online as an assistant adjutant general in the Louisiana National Guard, did not respond to a request for comment.