title: Country pop

text: Oak Ridge Boys, Alabama, Eddie Rabbitt, Juice Newton, Bertie Higgins, and Ronnie Milsap also had crossover success during the early 1980s. The Oak Ridge Boys gained crossover hit "Elvira" in 1981. Four of Alabama's most successful songs of the early 1980s—"Feels So Right", "Love in the First Degree", Take Me Down", and "The Closer You Get" (the last two of which were covers of songs by then-pop band Exile)—all reached the Top 40 of the "Billboard" Hot 100, while four of Ronnie Milsap's No. 1 songs between 1980 and 1982 reached the Hot 100s Top 20, the most successful of which was the No. 5 hit "(There's) No Gettin' Over Me". Rabbitt had three top-5 pop songs in 1980–1981, and "I Love a Rainy Night" reached No. 1 on both the Hot 100 and "Billboard" Hot Country Singles chart. Country star Juice Newton also achieved country-pop success with several crossover hits in the early '80s, including "Queen of Hearts", "The Sweetest Thing (I've Ever Known)", and Grammy-winner "Break It To Me Gently," also penning "Sweet Sweet Smile," the only country hit for easy-listening act The Carpenters. Former pop acts, such as Exile, Merrill Osmond (both solo and with his fellow Osmond Brothers; sister Marie Osmond also had a career renaissance in this period), Bill Medley (formerly of The Righteous Brothers), Tom Jones, Michael Johnson, Billy Joe Royal, B. J. Thomas, Nicolette Larson, Paul Davis and Dan Seals ("England Dan" of England Dan and John Ford Coley) began targeting their music at the country market in the early 1980s with a country-pop sound. In 1976 Engelbert Humperdinck gained crossover hit between pop and country top-40 hit "After the Lovin'".


title: Country pop

text: Although a number of country pop artists continued to have hits, most notably Alabama, Parton, Mandrell, Rabbitt, and Milsap, the mid-1980s saw a major sea change within the country music industry and the revival of traditional country sounds, as the boost in country's crossover popularity had collapsed; by 1984, country record sales had fallen to the point they were before "Urban Cowboy" was released.


title: Country pop

text: Country pop enjoyed a resurgence in the 1990s, primarily because of the beginning proliferation of country music to the FM radio dial, which in turn was aided by the increase of FCC licenses for suburban and rural FM stations in the late 1980s and an increase in talk radio on the AM dial, as well as a decision by "Billboard" to no longer count record sales toward the country singles chart, giving country radio full power to determine a chart ranking by their collective airplay. The commercial boom in the industry during this time was also attributable to the rise of talented artists who coincided with the implementation of new marketing strategies that were meant to attract a larger fan base; this further pushed the genre into a pop musical style with an emerging new image. Garth Brooks rose to fame during the 1990s with a string of several extremely successful albums and songs. Shania Twain would rival this success with her three albums "The Woman in Me", "Come On Over", and "Up!". In the last few years, country singer LeAnn Rimes has proved her ability to sing country pop songs such as the record-setting "How Do I Live", which spent 69 weeks on the "Billboard" Hot 100, the second longest single in the record history. This achievement came in spite of the fact that a nearly identical version of the same song by Trisha Yearwood was released at the same time and was also a hit. Rimes also had a hit with the pop songs "Can't Fight the Moonlight" and "I Need You", the latter of which required a remix to be suitable for country radio.


title: Country pop

text: Incorporating elements of pop into country music became extremely popular by the late '90s, thus producing many crossover hits and artists, especially on the adult contemporary charts. Country love songs also became more popular with songs like "To Make You Feel My Love", "Cowboy Take Me Away", "I Love You", "Breathe", "It's Your Love", "Just to See You Smile", "This Kiss", "The Way You Love Me", "You're Still the One", "From This Moment On", "You've Got a Way", "Valentine", etc.


title: Country pop

text: In the 1990s, many country artists experienced huge crossover success. In addition to Brooks, Twain, McBride and Rimes, Billy Ray Cyrus, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Dixie Chicks, Jo Dee Messina, Martina McBride, Lonestar, Mary-Chapin Carpenter and Wynonna Judd all had songs cross over to Top 40 and/or Adult Contemporary radio, sometimes with remixes eliminating steel guitars and other "country" elements to be more suitable for pop radio. Brooks, Reba McEntire, and other artists also maintained high profiles on the album charts despite having less radio crossover success.


title: Country pop

text: The early 2000s also saw continued success of these artists. Lee Ann Womack scored a big hit with "I Hope You Dance", peaking at number one on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart. The Dixie Chicks had continued success with a less mainstream country-pop sound when they released their bluegrass-influenced album "Home" in 2002. However, by the mid-2000s there were fewer country acts having crossover success. That was until singer Carrie Underwood won the fourth season of "American Idol" in May 2005.


title: Country pop

text: With her exposure from "American Idol," Underwood's debut single, "Inside Your Heaven", became the first song by a prominently country artist to ever debut at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100. Underwood continued to have crossover success in 2006 and 2007, with her hit single "Before He Cheats", which was notable for becoming a success on mainstream pop radio "without" a more "pop-friendly" remix. Underwood has had additional, but more spotty, success on pop radio since. Nonetheless, she disproved the notion that country artists, especially country female artists, were limited to success only within one genre. Further supplying that evidence was the success of Taylor Swift, who released her debut album in 2006.


title: Country pop

text: Swift rose to fame in the late 2000s as a teenage artist, buoyed by the success of her country pop singles "Teardrops On My Guitar" and "Our Song", with the latter making Swift the youngest person in history to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the "Billboard" Hot Country Songs chart. Her chart-topping second studio album "Fearless" was released in 2008; it spawned international hit singles "Love Story" and "You Belong With Me", becoming two of the best selling singles of all time. In 2009, Swift became the first country artist in history to win an MTV Video Music Award. Later in 2010, Swift won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and Best Country Album for "Fearless", becoming the youngest artist to win the top prize at that time. "Fearless" went on to become Diamond certified by Recording Industry Association of America for moving over 10 million units in the U.S. Her subsequent albums "Speak Now" (2010) and "Red" (2012) topped multiple charts globally, including the Top Country Albums and "Billboard" 200; both of those albums sold 1 million copies in their debut week sales, opening 1.0 million for "Speak Now" and 1.2 million for "Red". On "Red", Swift incorporated elements of electronic and dance such as dubstep and worked with pop producers Max Martin and Shellback on several tracks, including the pop hits "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together", "I Knew You Were Trouble", and "22", which were more favored by pop radio over country radio. Swift collaborated with rapper B.o.B on his country rap single "Both of Us", and dueted with Tim McGraw on his 2013 single "Highway Don't Care" featuring Keith Urban. Swift labeled herself as a pop artist since 2014's "1989", which also won the Grammy awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal album, making Swift the first and only artist to win those awards in both pop and country genres. The subsequent "Reputation" (2017) and "Lover" (2019) were pop albums, though "Lover" drew on country influences in songs like "Lover" and "Soon You'll Get Better"; the latter being a collaboration with Dixie Chicks. Swift has also written songs for other country pop acts, such as Little Big Town's "Better Man" and Sugarland's "Babe". Achieving both national and international prominence through her tour gross, sales records and critical acclaim, Swift has been credited for bringing recognition of country music "within the broad expanse of music worldwide"; the Country Music Association acknowledged that her talent and presence "will have a long-term positive impact on the appreciation of country music for generations to come".


title: Country pop

text: Other examples of prominent country-pop artists from this decade included Lady A, Sugarland, Keith Urban, and Kenny Chesney.


title: Country pop

text: The 2010s saw many changes for the country-pop genre, not only in sound, but also in values; there was a significant shift away from big-voiced power ballads to more irreverent, casual, hip-hop influenced styles. One such trend was the controversial bro-country subgenre, which "Vulture" described as "music by and of the tatted, gym-toned, party-hearty young American white dude."


title: Country pop

text: During this decade, Uncle Kracker achieved success when his number 3 adult contemporary hit "Smile" also became a number 6 country hit. Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson hit number 3 on adult contemporary, 9 on adult pop and 1 on country charts with the song "Don't You Wanna Stay". Other records to hit on both the pop and country charts included Miley Cyrus' "The Climb", Lady A's "Just A Kiss", The Band Perry's "If I Die Young", Kelly Clarkson's "Mr. Know It All", Hunter Hayes' "Wanted", and Florida Georgia Line's "Cruise". Sam Hunt has also earned significant crossover appeal. His 2014 debut album "Montevallo" reached No. 1 on Top Country Albums and number 3 on the "Billboard" 200. His 2017 single "Body Like a Back Road" reached No. 1 on Hot Country Songs, number 6 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and number 11 on Adult Top 40.


title: Country pop

text: In 2018, many country artists achieved international pop hit singles in collaborations with mainstream pop artists. This included Chris Stapleton who collaborated with Justin Timberlake on Hot 100 top ten single "Say Something"; Urban-pop star Bebe Rexha whose duet with the country duo Florida Georgia Line "Meant to Be" reached No. 2 both in Australia and in the U.S.; and German DJ Zedd whose dance hit "The Middle" featured main vocals from Maren Morris and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.


title: Country pop

text: Of particular note, in 2012, "Billboard" restored recording sales to the chart formula but also added airplay from non-country stations, giving an inherent advantage to country pop crossover songs, at the same time maintaining the 1990 formula solely to measure country radio airplay. After the change, crossover songs have increasingly set the record for the longest run atop the country chart for longer and longer stretches; "Meant to Be" currently holds the record, 50 weeks and counting as of November 2018, more than double the pre-2012 record (Leroy Van Dyke's "Walk On By" was atop the chart for 19 weeks in 1963, during the 1958-1990 period of a unified sales, jukebox and airplay chart; three songs topped the various separate country charts for 21 weeks each between 1948 and 1955).


title: Country pop

text: The way audiences consumed their music also changed during the 2010s decade, as streaming services became more prominent, thus affecting how artists marketed their songs. Being played on the radio was no longer a requirement to be a contender in the country industry, as it had been for decades before; one such example was Kacey Musgraves. Despite receiving little airplay for her singles sent to country radio, Musgraves won the Grammy award for Album of the Year in 2019, for her fourth studio album "Golden Hour". Musgraves’ success was unprecedented in the sense that she earned fans from both the pop and country genres without the benefit of airplay on country radio, instead promoting her music through online media platforms such as YouTube and Apple Music. "The Hoya" pointed out Musgraves' groundbreaking approach, writing, "Musgraves’ refusal to bend the knee for Nashville record label executives, coupled with her massive success, proves she is the Nashville big machine’s worst nightmare. She is a female artist who managed to find widespread success in an industry that endlessly tried to muzzle her."


title: Country pop

text: The disparity between male and female artists on country radio became even more obvious during the back half of this decade, with one study finding that male artists accounted for 5.5 to 1 in total airplay during the years 2000–2018. In 2018, that number only increased, with a ratio of male vs. female at 9.7 to 1. In 2015, radio consultant Keith Hill made controversial comments about why women received less representation on the radio, referring to male artists as the "salad" and women as "tomatoes"; the controversy became known as Tomato-gate.


title: Country pop

text: Collaborations between country and pop artists became even more popularized during this decade, as well. In October 2019, country duo Dan + Shay released a joint single with pop singer-songwriter Justin Bieber, "10,000 Hours", which went to number one on both the Billboard Hot Country Songs and Country Airplay charts. In April 2020, country singer-songwriter Kelsea Ballerini released "The Other Girl" as a joint single with pop singer Halsey from her third studio album "kelsea". The single peaked within the top twenty of both the Hot Country Songs and U.S. Adult Top 40 charts. At the February 2020 Country Radio Seminar, there was discussion on the increase in fan attention to pop and country collaborations, in addition to an increase in the use of streaming services.


title: Country pop

text: In 2020, "American Idol" finalist Gabby Barrett topped Billboard's Hot Country Songs for over 20 weeks with her single, "I Hope", which was later remixed into a duet with pop singer-songwriter Charlie Puth. Their collaboration went on to top "Billboard's" Adult Pop Songs chart in October 2020. In its 45th week, the single reached the top five of the all-genre "Billboard" Hot 100, achieving the slowest climb to the top five in the chart's history.


title: Country pop

text: Two artists that were influential in shifting mainstream attitudes about the genre's more pop-inflected sound were Sam Hunt and Maren Morris. As "NPR Music" wrote, "Sam Hunt and Maren Morris arrived on the scene in the years that followed, each of them possessing fluency in the postures and cadences of millennial pop that turned heads and blurred boundaries. "Modern country singers love to flaunt phrases and attitudes borrowed from hip-hop, but Hunt's borrowings are softer and sneakier," noted Kelefa Sanneh. Jon Caramanica said: "Think of all the ways dissenters have tried to upend country in recent years: by sneaking in rhythmic vocal tics learned from rappers, by thinning out the genre's musical baggage, by pledging inclusive values. Ms. Morris, an astute synthesizer, has studied and perfected them all." In an article published in 2019, "Time" called Morris "the future of country music." In November 2020, Morris won three Country Music Association awards, including two for her 2019 single "The Bones"; it also received a Grammy nomination for Best Country Song. The year previously, she won Album of the Year for her sophomore effort "Girl," signifying a critical, mainstream shift in attitude about what constituted the country sound. "The Bones" also received Song of the Year at the 56th ACM awards.


title: Country pop

text: In January 2021, "Nashville Scene" pointed out the commercial impact and critical acclaim brought on by songs considered to be crossover hits, writing, "The walls around the country genre seem evermore flimsy these days. Thanks in part to streaming, “Old Town Road” became the most-certified song in RIAA history earlier this month, racking up 14 million sales. Morris’ “The Bones,” winner of two CMA Awards and nominated for a Grammy, topped four different "Billboard" charts and peaked at No. 12 on the weekly Hot 100. “The Middle,” her 2018 dance-pop collaboration with producers Zedd and Grey, peaked at No. 5 on the weekly Hot 100 Songs and was nominated for three Grammys." Still, the debate on what constituted the country sound continued into the 2020s decade. Despite placing at the top of Billboard's Top Country Albums chart, Kacey Musgraves' album Star-Crossed was deemed ineligible for nomination in the Grammy's Best Country Album category for the 64th Grammys, owing to the policy that potential nominated albums must contain at least "51 percent of new country recordings". "Billboard", however, pointed out that Musgraves was hardly the first to face controversy from the Grammys; previous records nominated in Pop categories included Dolly Parton's "Here You Come Again" and "Rhinestone Cowboy" by Glen Campbell. Musgraves did, however, earn two nominations for Best Country Song and Best Country Performance for the album track, "Camera Roll."


title: John Bell Hood

text: John Bell Hood (June 1 or June 29, 1831 – August 30, 1879) was a Confederate general during the American Civil War. Although brave, Hood's impetuosity led to high losses among his troops as he moved up in rank. Bruce Catton wrote that "the decision to replace Johnston with Hood was probably the single largest mistake that either government made during the war." Hood's education at the United States Military Academy led to a career as a junior officer in the infantry and cavalry of the antebellum U.S. Army in California and Texas. At the start of the Civil War, he offered his services to his adopted state of Texas. He achieved his reputation for aggressive leadership as a brigade commander in the army of Robert E. Lee during the Seven Days Battles in 1862, after which he was promoted to division command. He led a division under James Longstreet in the campaigns of 1862–63. At the Battle of Gettysburg, he was severely wounded, rendering his left arm useless for the rest of his life. Transferred with many of Longstreet's troops to the Western Theater, Hood led a massive assault into a gap in the Union line at the Battle of Chickamauga, but was wounded again, requiring the amputation of his right leg.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood returned to field service during the Atlanta Campaign of 1864, and at the age of 33 was promoted to temporary full general and command of the Army of Tennessee at the outskirts of Atlanta, making him the youngest soldier on either side of the war to be given command of an army. There, he dissipated his army in a series of bold, calculated, but unsuccessful assaults, and was forced to evacuate the besieged city. Leading his men through Alabama and into Tennessee, his army was severely damaged in a massive frontal assault at the Battle of Franklin and he was decisively defeated at the Battle of Nashville by his former West Point instructor, Major General George Henry Thomas, after which he was relieved of command.


title: John Bell Hood

text: After the war, Hood moved to Louisiana and worked as a cotton broker and in the insurance business. His business was ruined by a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans during the winter of 1878–79 and he succumbed to the disease himself, dying just days after his wife and oldest child, leaving ten destitute orphans.


title: John Bell Hood

text: John Bell Hood was born in Owingsville, Kentucky, the son of John Wills Hood (1798–1852), a doctor, and Theodosia French Hood (1801–1886). He was a cousin of future Confederate general G. W. Smith and the nephew of U.S. Representative Richard French. French obtained an appointment for Hood at the United States Military Academy, despite his father's reluctance to support a military career for his son. Hood graduated in 1853, ranked 44th in a class of 52 that originally numbered 96, after a near-expulsion in his final year for excessive demerits (196 of a permissible 200). At West Point, as well as during his later Army years, he was known to friends as "Sam." His classmates included James B. McPherson and John M. Schofield, while he received instruction in artillery from George Henry Thomas. These three men all became Union Army generals who would later oppose Hood in battle during the Civil War. The superintendent between 1852 and 1855 was Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, who would become Hood's commanding general in the Eastern Theater. Notwithstanding his modest record at the academy, in 1860, Hood was appointed chief instructor of cavalry at West Point, a position he declined, citing his desire to remain with his active field regiment and to retain all of his options in light of the impending war.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood was commissioned a brevet second lieutenant in the 4th U.S. Infantry, served at Fort Jones, California, and later transferred to the 2nd U.S. Cavalry in Texas, where he was commanded by Col. Albert Sidney Johnston and Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee. While commanding a reconnaissance patrol from Fort Mason on July 20, 1857, Hood sustained the first of many wounds that marked his lifetime in military service – an arrow through his left hand during action against the Comanches at Devil's River, Texas. He was promoted to first lieutenant in August 1858.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood resigned from the United States Army immediately after the Battle of Fort Sumter and, dissatisfied with the neutrality of his native Kentucky, decided to serve his adopted state of Texas. He joined the Confederate army as a cavalry captain, then was promoted to major and sent to command Brigadier General John B. Magruder's cavalry in the lower Virginia Peninsula. Hood and his horsemen took part in a "brilliant" July 12 skirmish at Newport News, capturing 12 men of the 7th New York Regiment of Volunteers as well as two deserters from Fort Monroe. They received high praise from Generals Lee and Magruder. By September 30, the Texan was promoted to be colonel of the 4th Texas Infantry Regiment.


title: John Bell Hood

text: On February 20, 1862, Hood was assigned to command a new brigade of mainly Texas regiments that would soon become known as the Texas Brigade. The brigade had been initially formed the previous fall and had initially been led by ex-US Senator Louis T. Wigfall, but he resigned his command to take a seat in the Confederate Congress. On March 26, Hood was promoted to brigadier general. Leading the Texas Brigade as part of the Army of Northern Virginia in the Peninsula Campaign, he established his reputation as an aggressive commander, eager to lead his troops personally into battle, and the Texans quickly gained a reputation as one of the army's elite combat units. At the Battle of Eltham's Landing, Hood's men were instrumental in nullifying an amphibious landing by a Union division. When commanding general Joseph E. Johnston, reflected upon the success Hood's men enjoyed in executing his order "to feel the enemy gently and fall back," he humorously asked, "What would your Texans have done, sir, if I had ordered them to charge and drive back the enemy?" Hood replied, "I suppose, General, they would have driven them into the river, and tried to swim out and capture the gunboats." The Texas Brigade was held in reserve at Seven Pines.


title: John Bell Hood

text: At the Battle of Gaines's Mill on June 27, Hood distinguished himself by leading his brigade in a charge that broke the Union line, which was the most successful Confederate performance in the Seven Days Battles. Hood himself survived unscathed, but over 400 men and most of the officers in the Texas Brigade were killed or wounded. He broke down and wept at the sight of the dead and dying men on the field. After inspecting the Union entrenchments, Maj. Gen. Stonewall Jackson remarked "The men who carried this position were truly soldiers indeed."


title: John Bell Hood

text: When Maj. Gen. William H.C. Whiting left the army on medical furlough July 26, Hood became permanent division commander, and his command was reassigned to Maj. Gen James Longstreet's corps. While the division had numbered five brigades at Seven Pines, a couple of army reorganizations since then reduced it to just two—the Texas Brigade and a brigade of Mississippians commanded by Col. Evander M. Law. Also accompanying them during the Northern Virginia Campaign was the independent South Carolina brigade of Brig. Gen. Nathan "Shanks" Evans, who technically had authority over Hood, his junior in rank, for the campaign. At Second Bull Run, Hood spearheaded the assault on the Union left flank that forced them to retreat from the field. Hood's two brigades lost over 1000 men in the battle, and if Evans's brigade is also counted in, the total would be near 1500 casualties.


title: John Bell Hood

text: In the pursuit of Union forces, Hood was involved in a dispute with Evans over captured ambulances. Evans arrested Hood, but Gen. Lee intervened and retained him in service. During the Maryland Campaign, just before the Battle of South Mountain, Hood was in the rear, still in virtual arrest. His Texas troops shouted to General Lee, "Give us Hood!" Lee restored Hood to command, despite Hood's refusal to apologize for his conduct. For an analysis of the performance of BG Hood at the Battle of South Mountain, see "Hood's Defeat Near Fox's Gap September 14, 1862".


title: John Bell Hood

text: During the Battle of Antietam, Hood's division came to the relief of Stonewall Jackson's corps on the Confederate left flank, fighting in the infamous cornfield, and turning back an assault by the Union I Corps in the West Woods. Afterward, they became engaged with the Union XII Corps. In the evening after the battle, Gen. Lee asked Hood where his division was. He responded, "They are lying on the field where you sent them. My division has been almost wiped out." Of his 2,000 men, almost 1,000 were casualties. Jackson was impressed with Hood's performance and recommended his promotion to major general, which occurred effective October 10, 1862.


title: John Bell Hood

text: In the Battle of Fredericksburg in December, Hood's division saw little action, placed in the center, between Longstreet's lines on Marye's Heights, and Jackson's lines. And in the spring of 1863, he missed the Battle of Chancellorsville because most of Longstreet's First Corps was on detached duty in Suffolk, Virginia, involving Longstreet himself and Hood's and George Pickett's divisions. When he heard news of Stonewall Jackson's death after Chancellorsville, he expressed grief for the man he most deeply admired, personally and militarily.


title: John Bell Hood

text: It was to Hood that Lee wrote on May 21, 1863, prior to the Gettysburg Campaign on their growing confidence in the Army of Northern Virginia:


title: John Bell Hood

text: At the Battle of Gettysburg, Longstreet's Corps arrived late on the first day, July 1, 1863. General Lee planned an assault for the second day that would feature Longstreet's Corps attacking northeast up the Emmitsburg Road into the Union left flank. Hood was dissatisfied with his assignment in the assault because it would face difficult terrain in the boulder-strewn area known as the Devil's Den. He requested permission from Longstreet to move around the left flank of the Union army, beyond the mountain known as [Big] Round Top, to strike the Union in their rear area. Longstreet refused permission, citing Lee's orders, despite repeated protests from Hood. Yielding to the inevitable, Hood finally gave in and his division stepped off around 4 p.m. on July 2, but a variety of factors caused it to veer to the east, away from its intended direction, where it would eventually meet with Union forces at Little Round Top. Just as the attack started, however, Hood was the victim of an artillery shell exploding overhead, severely damaging his left arm, which incapacitated him (although the arm was not amputated). His ranking brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law, assumed command of the division, but confusion as to orders and command status dissipated the direction and strength of the Confederate attack, significantly affecting the outcome of the battle.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood recuperated in Richmond, Virginia, where he made a social impression on the ladies of the Confederacy. In August 1863, famous diarist Mary Boykin Chesnut wrote of Hood:


title: John Bell Hood

text: As he recuperated, Hood began a campaign to win the heart of the young, prominent South Carolina socialite, Sally Buchanan Preston, known as "Buck" to her friends, whom he had first met while traveling through Richmond in March 1863. Hood later confessed that the flirtatious Southern belle had caused him to "surrender at first sight." As he prepared to return to duty in September, Hood proposed marriage to Buck, but received only a noncommittal response.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Meanwhile, in the Western Theater, the Confederate army under General Braxton Bragg was faring poorly. Lee dispatched two divisions of Longstreet's Corps to Tennessee, and Hood was able to rejoin his men at Chickamauga Creek on September 18. Bragg ordered him to form a "mini-corps," merging one of the brigades he had with him on the field with Brig. Gen. Bushrod Johnson's division. It was then that Hood participated in the Battle of Chickamauga, driving Col. Robert Minty's Union brigade from Reed's Bridge and stopping only at Alexander's Bridge, where John T. Wilder's men fired their Spencer repeating rifles on the Confederates. As darkness set in, he chanced upon Gen. John C. Breckinridge, former vice president of the United States, presidential candidate and senator from Kentucky, who also happened to be a cousin of Buck Preston. The remaining two units of Hood's division regrouped with their commander to prepare for the next day's battle.


title: John Bell Hood

text: On the afternoon of the 19th, Hood repulsed an attack by Jefferson C. Davis's Union division. He then advanced to assist Brig. Gen Henry D. Clayton's outnumbered men near the Lafayette Road. Around this time, Longstreet had arrived; Hood was to be in temporary command of the I Corps, which would serve as part of the Confederate left wing under Longstreet.


title: John Bell Hood

text: On the 20th, Hood led Longstreet's assault that exploited a gap in the Federal line, which led to the defeat of Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans's Union Army of the Cumberland. However, Hood was once again wounded severely; his right femur was fractured and his leg was amputated four inches (100 mm) below the hip. Hood's condition was so grave that the surgeon sent the severed leg along with him in the ambulance, assuming that they would be buried together. Hood was taken to the home of Col. Francis Little to recover for several weeks before going to Richmond to continue his recovery. Because of Hood's bravery at Chickamauga, Longstreet recommended that he be promoted to lieutenant general as of that date, September 20, 1863; the confirmation by the Confederate Senate occurred on February 11, 1864, as Hood was preparing to return to duty.


title: John Bell Hood

text: During Hood's second recuperation in Richmond that fall, he befriended Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who would subsequently promote him to a more important role. He also resumed his courtship of Buck Preston—a cousin of Breckinridge's—who, despite giving him some ambiguously positive signals, dashed his hopes on Christmas Eve. Hood confided to Mary Chesnut that the courtship "was the hardest battle he had ever fought in his life." In February, Hood proposed again to Buck and this time demanded a specific response, which was a reluctant, embarrassed agreement. However, the Preston family did not approve of Hood, who left for the field unmarried.


title: John Bell Hood

text: In the spring of 1864, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, was engaged in a campaign of maneuver against William T. Sherman, who was driving from Chattanooga toward Atlanta. Despite his two damaged limbs, Hood performed well in the field, riding as much as 20 miles a day without apparent difficulty, strapped to his horse with his artificial leg hanging stiffly, and an orderly following closely behind with crutches. The leg, made of cork, was donated (along with a couple of spares) by members of his Texas Brigade, who had collected $3,100 in a single day for that purpose; it had been imported from Europe through the Union blockade. On May 12, Hood was baptized by Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, the former Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana. Col. Walter H. Rodgers, a witness to the baptism, stated that Hood "looked happy and as though a great burden had been lifted."


title: John Bell Hood

text: During the Atlanta Campaign, Hood urged the normally cautious Johnston to act aggressively, but Johnston usually reacted to flanking maneuvers by Sherman with timely withdrawals, rather similar to his strategy in the Peninsula Campaign. One attempt by Johnston to act decisively in the offensive, during the Battle of Cassville, ironically was foiled by Hood, who had been ordered to attack the flank of one column of Sherman's army, but instead pulled back and entrenched when confronted by the unexpected arrival of a small detachment of that column.


title: John Bell Hood

text: The Army of Tennessee continued withdrawing until it had crossed the last major water barrier before Atlanta, the Chattahoochee River. During this time, Hood had been sending the government in Richmond letters very critical of Johnston's conduct, bypassing official communication channels. The issue came to a head when Gen. Braxton Bragg was ordered by President Jefferson Davis to travel to Atlanta to personally interview Johnston. After meeting with Johnston, he interviewed Hood and another subordinate, Joseph Wheeler, who told him that they had repeatedly urged Johnston to attack. Hood presented a letter that branded Johnston as being both ineffective and weak-willed. He told Bragg, "I have, General, so often urged that we should force the enemy to give us battle as to almost be regarded reckless by the officers high in rank in this army [meaning Johnston and senior corps commander William J. Hardee], since their views have been so directly opposite." Johnston's biographer, Craig L. Symonds, judges that Hood's letter "stepped over the line from unprofessional to outright subversive." Civil War historian Steven E. Woodworth wrote that Hood was "letting his ambition get the better of his honesty" because "the truth was that Hood, more often than Hardee, had counseled Johnston to retreat." However, Hood was not alone in his criticism of Johnston's timidity. In William Hardee's June 22, 1864, letter to General Bragg, he stated, "If the present system continues we may find ourselves at Atlanta before a serious battle is fought." Other generals in the Army agreed with that assessment.


title: John Bell Hood

text: On July 17, 1864, Davis relieved Johnston. He considered replacing him with the more senior Hardee, but Bragg strongly recommended Hood. Bragg had not only been impressed by his interview with Hood, but he retained lingering resentments against Hardee from bitter disagreements in previous campaigns. Hood was promoted to the temporary rank of full general on July 18, and given command of the army just outside the gates of Atlanta. (Hood's temporary appointment as a full general was never confirmed by the Senate. His commission as a lieutenant general resumed on January 23, 1865.) At 33, Hood was the youngest man on either side to be given command of an army. Robert E. Lee gave an ambiguous reply to Davis's request for his opinion about the promotion, calling Hood "a bold fighter, very industrious on the battlefield, careless off". Lee also stated in the same letter to Davis that he had a high opinion of Hood's "gallantry, earnestness, and zeal"; however, he remained "doubtful" as to whether Hood possessed all of the qualities necessary to command an army in the field.


title: John Bell Hood

text: The change of command in the Army of Tennessee did not go unnoticed by Sherman. His subordinates, Maj. Gen. James McPherson and Maj. Gen. John Schofield, shared their knowledge of Hood from their time together at West Point. Upon learning of his new adversary's perceived reckless and gambling tendencies, Sherman planned to use that to his advantage.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood conducted the remainder of the Atlanta Campaign with the strong aggressive actions for which he had become famous. He launched four major attacks that summer in an attempt to break Sherman's siege of Atlanta, starting almost immediately with an attack along Peachtree Creek. After hearing that McPherson was mortally wounded in the Battle of Atlanta, Hood deeply regretted his loss. All of the offensives failed, particularly at the Battle of Ezra Church, with significant Confederate casualties. Finally, on September 2, 1864, Hood evacuated the city of Atlanta, burning as many military supplies and installations as possible.


title: John Bell Hood

text: As Sherman regrouped in Atlanta, preparing for his March to the Sea, Hood and Jefferson Davis met to devise a strategy to defeat him. Their plan was to attack Sherman's lines of communications between Chattanooga and Atlanta, and to move north through Alabama and into central Tennessee, assuming that Sherman would be threatened and follow. Hood's ambitious hope was that he could maneuver Sherman into a decisive battle, defeat him, recruit additional forces in Tennessee and Kentucky, and pass through the Cumberland Gap to come to the aid of Robert E. Lee, who was besieged at Petersburg. However, the plan proved a failure since Sherman felt this development furthered his current objective by removing opposing forces in his path, noting: "If he [Hood] will go to the Ohio River, I'll give him rations. ...my business is down south." Instead of pursuing Hood with his army, he sent Maj Gen. George Henry Thomas to take control of the Union forces in Tennessee and coordinate the defense against Hood, while the bulk of Sherman's forces prepared to march toward Savannah.


title: John Bell Hood

text: During their conference, Davis expressed his disappointment in Hood's performance in defending Atlanta, losing almost 20,000 men in ill-advised frontal assaults for no significant gains, and implied that he was considering replacing Hood in command of the army. After the president's departure for Montgomery, Alabama, he telegraphed Hood that he had decided to retain him in command and, acceding to Hood's request, transferred Hardee out of the Army of Tennessee. He also established a new theater commander to supervise Hood and the department of Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, although the officer selected for the assignment, Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, was not expected to exert any real operational control of the armies in the field.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Hood's Tennessee Campaign lasted from September to December 1864, comprising seven battles and hundreds of miles of marching. He attempted to trap a large part of the Union Army of the Ohio under Major General Schofield at Spring Hill, Tennessee, before it could link up with Thomas in Nashville, but command failures and misunderstandings allowed Schofield's men to safely pass by Hood's army in the night. The next day at the Battle of Franklin, Hood sent his men across nearly two miles of open ground without the support of artillery in a last gasp effort to destroy Schofield's forces before they could withdraw across the Harpeth River and reach the safety of Nashville, which was only a night's march from Franklin. His troops were unsuccessful in their attempt to breach the Union breastworks, suffering severe casualties in an assault that is sometimes called the "Pickett's Charge of the West." Hood's exhausted army was unable to interfere as the Union force withdrew into Nashville. He later wrote that "[n]ever did troops fight more gallantly" than at Franklin. Some popular histories assert that Hood acted rashly in a fit of rage, resentful that the Federal army had slipped past his troops the night before at Spring Hill and that he wanted to discipline his army by ordering his men to assault against strong odds. Recent scholarship by Eric Jacobson and Stephen M. Hood discounts this as unlikely, as it was not only militarily foolish, but Hood was observed to be determined, not angry, by the time he arrived in Franklin.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Unwilling to abandon his original plan, Hood stumbled toward the heavily fortified capital of Tennessee, and laid siege with inferior forces, which endured the beginning of a severe winter. Two weeks later, Maj. Gen. Thomas attacked and completely routed Hood at the Battle of Nashville. During the battle and the subsequent relentless pursuit to the south, the Army of Tennessee ceased to be an effective fighting force, as the campaign cost the army about 23,500 of its initial strength of 38,000. Hood and the remnants of the army retreated as far as Tupelo, Mississippi. Some of the survivors eventually joined Joseph E. Johnston for the Carolinas Campaign against Sherman. P.G.T. Beauregard sought permission to replace Hood with Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor, and the change of command occurred January 23, 1865. In a speech to his men, Hood expressed the hope that they would give their support to Taylor and avenge their comrades "whose bones lay bleaching upon the fields of Middle Tennessee." He returned to Richmond on February 8.


title: John Bell Hood

text: In March 1865, Hood requested assignment to the Trans-Mississippi Theater to report on the situation there and to assess the possibility of moving troops across the Mississippi River to reinforce the East. He met with Lt. Gen. Taylor in Mississippi in late April and agreed with Taylor's proposal that his force should surrender. He departed to take this recommendation to the commanders remaining in the field, but before he arrived in Texas, General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered his forces, and Hood surrendered himself in Natchez, Mississippi, where he was paroled on May 31, 1865.


title: John Bell Hood

text: In a letter Hood wrote to Sherman on September 12, 1864, Hood described his conviction that "negroes" were an inferior race: "You came into our country with your Army, avowedly for the purpose of subjugating free white men, women, and children, and not only intend to rule over them, but you make negroes your allies, and desire to place over us an inferior race, which we have raised from barbarism to its present position, which is the highest ever attained by that race, in any country in all time."


title: John Bell Hood

text: In the same letter, Hood responded to Sherman's accusation that he did not care for the well-being of the women and children of Atlanta, writing: "I believe, for all the true men, aye, and women and children, in my country, we will fight you to the death. Better die a thousand deaths than submit to live under you or your Government and your Negro allies." Within a year Hood had surrendered.


title: John Bell Hood

text: After the war, Hood moved to Louisiana and became a cotton broker and worked as president of the Life Association of America, an insurance business. In 1868, he married New Orleans native Anna Marie Hennen, with whom he had 11 children over 10 years, including three pairs of twins. He also served the community in numerous philanthropic endeavors, assisting in fund-raising for orphans, widows, and wounded soldiers.


title: John Bell Hood

text: During the postwar period, he began a memoir, "Advance and Retreat: Personal Experiences in the United States and Confederate States Armies". Though rough, incomplete and not published until after his death, this work served to justify his actions, particularly in response to what he considered misleading or false accusations made by Joseph E. Johnston, and to unfavorable portrayals in William Tecumseh Sherman's memoirs.


title: John Bell Hood

text: His insurance business collapsed during a yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans during the winter of 1878–79. Soon after, in a single week, the epidemic killed Hood himself, Hood's wife, and his eldest daughter Lydia. His other ten children were left orphaned and penniless. The Texas Brigade Association provided support for the children for more than 20 years and all ten were eventually adopted by seven different families in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and New York.


title: John Bell Hood

text: John Bell Hood is interred in the Hennen family tomb at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. He is memorialized by Hood County in Texas and the U.S. Army installation, Fort Hood, in central Texas.


title: John Bell Hood

text: The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, passed over an attempted veto by President Trump, includes a provision that all 10 Army bases named after prominent Confederate military leaders, including Fort Hood, be renamed.


title: John Bell Hood

text: There was a John B. Hood Junior High School at 7625 Hume Dr. in Dallas, Texas, but it was renamed in 2016.


title: John Bell Hood

text: There was a John B. Hood Junior High School at 601 E. 38th St. in Odessa, Texas, but it was renamed in 2015.


title: John Bell Hood

text: Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Infantry "Maury Greys" wrote the following epitaph to Hood, published in various editions of his memoirs "Company Aytch":


title: John Bell Hood

text: Watkins was also sympathetic with the Texas general, and in several passages recounts the private Tennessean soldiers' honor of having to serve under him. While previously critical of Hood after Nashville, he later changed his opinion. In one of the "Other Sketches" of his aforementioned memoir, he offers the following appraisal of Hood:


title: John Bell Hood

text: In Bell I. Wiley’s 1943 book, "The Life of Johnny Reb, the Common Soldier of the Confederacy", he recounts that after the defeats in the Franklin-Nashville Campaign, Hood's troops sang with wry humor a verse about him as part of the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas".


title: John Bell Hood

text: In the 1993 film "Gettysburg" (the adaptation of Michael Shaara's novel "The Killer Angels"),and Gods and Generals, adapted from the book by Jeff Shaara, Hood was portrayed by Patrick Gorman.


title: Bedrock

text: In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material (regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet.


title: Bedrock

text: Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of bedrock is often called an outcrop. The various kinds of broken and weathered rock material, such as soil and subsoil, that may overlie the bedrock are known as regolith.


title: Bedrock

text: The surface of the bedrock beneath the soil cover (regolith) is also known as "rockhead" in engineering geology, and its identification by digging, drilling or geophysical methods is an important task in most civil engineering projects. Superficial deposits can be very thick, such that the bedrock lies hundreds of meters below the surface.


title: Bedrock

text: Exposed bedrock experiences weathering, which may be physical or chemical, and which alters the structure of the rock to leave it susceptible to erosion. Bedrock may also experience subsurface weathering at its upper boundary, forming saprolite.


title: Bedrock

text: A geologic map of an area will usually show the distribution of differing bedrock types, rock that would be exposed at the surface if all soil or other superficial deposits were removed. Where superficial deposits are so thick that the underlying bedrock cannot be reliably mapped, the superficial deposits will be mapped instead (for example, as alluvium).


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: Alphonse Puthren is an Indian film director, producer, actor, editor, writer, and ad film maker. He works mainly in the Malayalam Cinema. He made his directional debut with the critically acclaimed Malayalam - Tamil bilingual suspense-thriller "Neram" (2013). His second film was the sensational blockbuster coming-of-age romantic film "Premam" (2015). After 7 years, he is coming back with his new film titled Gold starring Prithviraj Sukumaran and Nayanthara in the lead roles.


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: Alphonse Puthren was born in Aluva, Kerala, to Daisy Chacko and Puthren Paul. He attended schools including Mount Tabor School Kalamassery, St. Aloysius High School Paravur and higher secondary from Amrita Vidyalayam. He did his Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA) from MES College Marampally, Aluva and later moved on to Chennai, earning a diploma in film making from S. A. E. College, Chennai.


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: Alphonse is married to Aleena Mary Anthony since 26 August 2015. She is the daughter of popular film producer Alwyn Anthony, who is the owner of Ananya Films. They have a son Ethan (born 2016) and daughter Aina (born 2018).


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: After graduating, Alphonse started making short films and music videos. "Arkan" and "Sutrum Vizhi" were his earliest works, completed in college. In 2008, he made the short film "Cling Cling". His next work was "Neram", a short film which featured Vijay Sethupathi playing a pivotal character. Alphonse later made the music video "Flavours", the video of which was shot using stop motion technique. His next short film was "The Angel", employing actors Vijay Sethupathi and Bobby Simha in lead roles. Puthren directed the Malayalam music video "Dhaaham", with music by Rajesh Murugesan. Puthren directed the music video "Nenjodu Cherthu" from the album "Yuvvh", with music by Saachin-Sreejith. The video starring Nivin Pauly and Nazriya Nazim became "hugely popular". His next short film was "Eli - a sexy tale" which had Bobby Simha, Nivin Pauly and Rajeev Pillai as part of the cast and was produced by actor/director/singer Vineeth Sreenivasan.


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: Puthren made his entry into the field of advertising by directing the commercial for Bangs Fried Chicken, a fast food chain.


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: He made his debut in feature films in 2013 with "Neram", the full-length feature film version of his short film. The film is bilingual in Tamil and Malayalam and starred Nivin Pauly, Nazriya Nazim and Bobby Simha in lead roles. He wrote the screenplay and also edited the film. He directed the film Premam in 2015 which starred Nivin Pauly, while also writing the screenplay, editing and acting in a cameo role in the film. The film went on to become a blockbuster at the box office and became one of the highest grossing Malayalam films of all time. In April 2017, Alphonse issued a statement in his social media saying that his third directorial film would be a Tamil language film.


title: Alphonse Puthren

text: Alphonse Puthren edited the trailers of "Thattathin Marayathu" (directed by Vineeth Sreenivasan) and "Oppam" (directed by Priyadarshan) and (directed by Priyadarshan).


title: Teleportation

text: Teleportation is the hypothetical transfer of matter or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction literature and in other popular culture. Teleportation is often paired with time travel, being that the travelling between the two points takes an unknown period of time, sometimes being immediate. An apport is a similar phenomenon featured in parapsychology and spiritualism.


title: Teleportation

text: There is no known physical mechanism that would allow for teleportation. Frequently appearing scientific papers and media articles with the term "teleportation" typically report on so-called "quantum teleportation", a scheme for information transfer which, due to the no-communication theorem, still would not allow for faster-than-light communication.


title: Teleportation

text: The use of the term "teleport" to describe the hypothetical movement of material objects between one place and another without physically traversing the distance between them has been documented as early as 1878.


title: Teleportation

text: American writer Charles Fort is credited with having coined the word "teleportation" in 1931 to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies, which he suggested may be connected. As in the earlier usage, he joined the Greek prefix "tele-" (meaning "remote") to the root of the Latin verb "portare" (meaning "to carry"). Fort's first formal use of the word occurred in the second chapter of his 1931 book "Lo!":


title: Teleportation

text: Teleportation is a common subject in science fiction literature, film, video games, and television. The use of matter transmitters in science fiction originated at least as early as the 19th century. An early example of scientific teleportation (as opposed to magical or spiritual teleportation) is found in the 1897 novel "To Venus in Five Seconds" by Fred T. Jane. Jane's protagonist is transported from a strange-machinery-containing gazebo on Earth to planet Mars – hence the title.


title: Teleportation

text: The earliest recorded story of a "matter transmitter" was Edward Page Mitchell's "The Man Without a Body" in 1877.


title: Teleportation

text: Quantum teleportation is distinct from regular teleportation, as it does not transfer matter from one place to another, but rather transmits the information necessary to prepare a (microscopic) target system in the same quantum state as the source system. The scheme was named quantum “teleportation”, because certain properties of the source system are recreated in the target system without any apparent quantum information carrier propagating between the two.


title: Teleportation

text: In many cases, such as normal matter at room temperature, the exact quantum state of a system is irrelevant for any practical purpose (because it fluctuates rapidly anyway, it "decoheres"), and the necessary information to recreate the system is classical. In those cases, quantum teleportation may be replaced by the simple transmission of classical information, such as radio communication.


title: Teleportation

text: In 1993, Bennett "et al" proposed that a quantum state of a particle could be transferred to another distant particle, without moving the two particles at all. This is called quantum state teleportation. There are many following theoretical and experimental papers published. Researchers believe that quantum teleportation is the foundation of quantum calculation and quantum communication.


title: Teleportation

text: In 2008, M. Hotta proposed that it may be possible to teleport energy by exploiting quantum energy fluctuations of an entangled vacuum state of a quantum field. There are some papers published but no experimental verification.


title: Teleportation

text: In 2014, researcher Ronald Hanson and colleagues from the Technical University Delft in the Netherlands, demonstrated the teleportation of information between two entangled quantumbits three metres apart.


title: Teleportation

text: In 2016, Y. Wei showed that in a generalization of quantum mechanics, particles themselves could teleport from one place to another. This is called particle teleportation. With this concept, superconductivity can be viewed as the teleportation of some electrons in the superconductor and superfluidity as the teleportation of some of the atoms in the cellular tube. This effect is not predicted to occur in standard quantum mechanics.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: Kevin Chamberlin (born November 25, 1963) is an American actor. He is known for his theatre roles such as Horton in "Seussical" and Uncle Fester in "The Addams Family". For his theatre work, he received three Tony Award and three Drama Desk Award nominations. He also starred as Bertram Winkle in the Disney Channel Original Series sitcom "Jessie" from 2011 to 2015. From 2018 to 2019, he starred as The Wizard of Oz in "Wicked" on Broadway.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: Chamberlin was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and was raised in Moorestown, New Jersey. In elementary school, he starred as Huck Finn in the school's production of "Tom Sawyer". After he graduated from Moorestown High School in 1981, Chamberlin studied acting at Rutgers University's Mason Gross School of the Arts in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and graduated with a B.F.A. in acting in 1985.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: Chamberlin has since acted on Broadway, having been nominated for three Tony Awards, and has an extensive list of film and television credits. According to "Playbill", "Chamberlin moves back and forth in theatre, TV and movies, but 'I kind of get sick of each medium after a while, if I have a bad experience.'"


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: Chamberlin has been nominated for Drama Desk and Tony Awards for "Dirty Blonde" (as Charlie), "Seussical" (as Horton), and "The Addams Family" (as Uncle Fester). Additional Broadway theatre credits include "My Favorite Year", "Triumph of Love", "Abe Lincoln in Illinois", "Chicago", "The Ritz" and "Wicked".


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: He appeared in the 1999 film "Trick." He also appeared in "Die Hard with a Vengeance" as an enthusiastic NYPD bomb defusal expert. In "Lucky Number Slevin", he again had a supporting role as a New York police officer. Chamberlin's most recent work includes the role of Aron Malsky in the NBC prime-time series "Heroes". He also made an appearance in a "" episode titled "" where he played a man named Roger Berry. He was also a guest on the sitcom "Frasier", in season 10 episode 13. Chamberlin previously appeared as Uncle Fester in the musical "The Addams Family", a role for which he won a Broadway.com Audience Award for Favorite Performance By a Featured Actor In a Broadway Musical. Brad Oscar replaced him in the role of Uncle Fester on March 8, 2011.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: Chamberlin also starred as Dr. Fusion in "Teen Beach Movie", a Disney Channel Original Movie starring Ross Lynch, Maia Mitchell, Barry Bostwick, and Steve Valentine which aired July 19, 2013.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: In 2019, Chamberlin appeared as Mr. Mushnik in the Pasadena Playhouse production of "Little Shop of Horrors" alongside George Salazar, Mj Rodriguez, Amber Riley and Matthew Wilkas.


title: Kevin Chamberlin

text: In 2020, Chamberlin was one of the many TikTok users who created an internet meme of a musical version of the 2007 Disney/Pixar film "Ratatouille". On December 28, 2020, it was announced that Chamberlin would star as Gusteau in a benefit concert presentation of the musical. The concert streamed exclusively on TodayTix on January 1, 2021.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: As of 2014, cigarettes were smoked by over 1 billion people, nearly 20% of the world's population then. About 800 million of those smokers were male. While smoking rates have stagnated or decreased in developed nations, the tobacco consumption in developing nations is increasing, especially among men.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: As of 2018, tobacco use has massively decreased since the 1950s and is projected to decrease even faster in the future.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: More than 80% of all smokers now live in countries with low or middle incomes, and 60% in just 10 countries, a list headed by China. China is the world's most populated country, and is also the leading country in the cigarette industry. In 2014, China produced and consumed more than 30% of the cigarettes in the world. There is a strong relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and smoking behaviours. According to research, developing countries have the highest rate of tobacco use. "China was found to be one of the countries with the highest male-to-female ratio of smoking prevalence": 74% of males and 8% of females were smokers.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: Smoking rates in the United States dropped by half from 1965 to 2006, from 42% to 20.8% of adults, with further significant decreasing to 14% by 2018. There are large regional differences in smoking rates.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: In Australia, the incidence of smoking is decreasing, with figures from 2018 showing 16.2% of the population (over 15) to be smokers, a decline from 27.6% in 2000. Young adults are the most likely age group to smoke, with a marked decline in smoking rates with increasing age. The prevalence of smoking is strongly associated with socioeconomic disadvantage (low earners), with over double the rate in the most disadvantaged quintile of the population as compared to the least. Smoking rates in rural areas tend to be higher than in city areas.


title: Tobacco consumption by country

text: This list is biased for some of the countries with the highest consumption, such as Andorra, Luxembourg and Belgium. These countries are known to sell cigarettes at lower prices than their neighbours, and as such attract foreign buyers. Andorra, for instance, is known for its duty-free shops where Europeans can find alcohol, cigarettes, electronics and clothes which can be up to 20 percent cheaper than in the neighbouring countries.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: William Walker (May 8, 1824September 12, 1860) was an American physician, lawyer, journalist, and mercenary. In the era of the expansion of the United States, driven by the doctrine of "manifest destiny", Walker organized unauthorized military expeditions into Mexico and Central America with the intention of establishing SLAVE-HOLD colonies. Such an enterprise was known at the time as "filibustering".


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: After settling in California and motivated by an earlier filibustering project of Gaston de Raousset-Boulbon, Walker attempted in 1853–54 to take Baja California and Sonora. He declared those territories to be an independent Republic of Sonora, but he was soon driven back to California by the Mexican forces. Walker then went to Nicaragua in 1855 as leader of a mercenary army employed by the Democratic Party in its civil war against the Legitimists. He took control of the Nicaraguan government and in July 1856 set himself up as the country's president.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker's regime was recognized as the legitimate government of Nicaragua by US President Franklin Pierce and it initially enjoyed the support of some important sectors within Nicaraguan society. However, Walker antagonized the powerful Wall Street tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt by expropriating Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company, which operated one of the main routes for the transport of passengers going from New York City to San Francisco. The British Empire saw Walker as a threat to its interests in the possible construction of a Nicaragua Canal. As ruler of Nicaragua, Walker re-legalized black slavery and threatened the independence of the other Central American republics. A military coalition led by Costa Rica defeated Walker and forced him to resign the presidency of Nicaragua on May 1, 1857.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker then tried to re-launch his filibustering project and in 1860 he published a book, "The War in Nicaragua", which cast his efforts to conquer Central America as tied to the geographical expansion of slavery. In that way, Walker sought to gain renewed support from pro-slavery forces in the Southern United States, in the eve of the American Civil War. That same year Walker returned to Central America, but the British Navy handed him over to the government of Honduras, which executed him.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: William Walker was born in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1824 to James Walker and his wife Mary Norvell. His father was an English immigrant. His mother was the daughter of Lipscomb Norvell, an American Revolutionary War officer from Virginia. One of Walker's maternal uncles was John Norvell, a U.S. Senator from Michigan and founder of "The Philadelphia Inquirer". Walker was engaged to Ellen Martin, but she died of yellow fever before they could be married, and he died without children.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker graduated "summa cum laude" from the University of Nashville at the age of 14. In 1843, at the age of 19, he received a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Walker then continued his medical studies at Edinburgh and Heidelberg. He practiced medicine briefly in Philadelphia, but soon moved to New Orleans where he studied law privately.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker practiced law for a short time, then quit to become co-owner and editor of the "New Orleans Crescent" newspaper. In 1849, he moved to San Francisco, where he worked as editor of the "San Francisco Herald" and fought three duels; he was wounded in two of them. Walker then conceived the idea of conquering vast regions of Central America and creating new slave states to join those already part of the Union. These campaigns were known as filibustering, or freebooting, and were supported by the Southern expansionist secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker gained national attention by dueling with law clerk William Hicks Graham on January 12, 1851. Walker criticized Graham and his colleagues in the "Herald", which angered Graham and prompted him to challenge Walker to a duel. Graham was a notorious gunman, having taken part in a number of duels and shootouts in the Old West. Walker, on the other hand, had experience dueling with single-shot pistols at one time, but his duel with Graham was fought with revolvers.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: The combatants met at Mission Dolores, where each was given a Colt Dragoon with five shots. They stood face to face at ten paces, and each aimed and fired at the signal of a referee. Graham managed to fire two bullets, hitting Walker in his pantaloons and his thigh, seriously wounding him. Walker tried a number of times to shoot his weapon, but he failed to land even a single shot and Graham was left unscathed. The duel ended when Walker conceded. Graham was arrested but was quickly released. The duel was recorded in "The Daily Alta California".


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: In the summer of 1853, Walker traveled to Guaymas in Mexico, seeking a grant from the Mexican government to establish a colony. He proposed that his colony would serve as a fortified frontier, protecting U.S. soil from Indian raids. Mexico refused, and Walker returned to San Francisco determined to obtain his colony regardless of Mexico's position. He began recruiting American supporters of slavery and of the Manifest Destiny doctrine, mostly inhabitants of Tennessee and Kentucky. Walker's plans then expanded from forming a buffer colony to establishing an independent Republic of Sonora, which might eventually take its place as a part of the Union (as the Republic of Texas had done in 1845). He funded his project by "selling scrips which were redeemable in lands of Sonora".


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: On October 15, 1853, Walker set out with forty-five men to conquer the Mexican territories of Baja California Territory and Sonora State. He succeeded in capturing La Paz, the capital of sparsely populated Baja California, which he declared the capital of a new "Republic of Lower California" (declared November 3, 1853), with himself as president and his former law partner, Henry P. Watkins, as vice president. Walker then put the region under the laws of the American state of Louisiana, which made slavery legal. Whether Walker at this stage intended to tie his filibustering expedition to the cause of slavery is a matter of dispute.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Fearful of attacks by Mexico, Walker moved his headquarters twice over the next three months, first to Cabo San Lucas, and then further north to Ensenada to maintain a more secure base of operations. Although he never gained control of Sonora, less than three months later, he pronounced Baja California part of the larger Republic of Sonora. Lack of supplies and strong resistance by the Mexican government quickly forced Walker to retreat.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Back in California, Walker was indicted by a federal grand jury for waging an illegal war in violation of the Neutrality Act of 1794. However, in the era of Manifest Destiny, Walker's filibustering project had popular support in the southern and western U.S. Walker was tried before Judge I. S. K. Ogier in the US District Court for the Southern District of California. Although two of Walker's associates had already been convicted of similar charges and Judge Ogier summarized the evidence against Walker for the jury, the jury deliberated for only eight minutes before acquitting Walker.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Since there was no inter-oceanic route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at the time, and the transcontinental railway did not yet exist, a major trade route between New York City and San Francisco ran through southern Nicaragua. Ships from New York entered the San Juan River from the Atlantic and sailed across Lake Nicaragua. People and goods were then transported by stagecoach across a narrow strip of land near the city of Rivas, before reaching the Pacific and ships to San Francisco. The commercial exploitation of this route had been granted by Nicaragua to the Accessory Transit Company, controlled by shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: In 1854, a civil war erupted in Nicaragua between the Legitimist Party (also called the Conservative Party), based in the city of Granada, and the Democratic Party (also called the Liberal Party), based in León. The Democratic Party sought military support from Walker who, to circumvent U.S. neutrality laws, obtained a contract from Democratic president Francisco Castellón to bring as many as three hundred "colonists" to Nicaragua. These mercenaries received the right to bear arms in the service of the Democratic government. Walker sailed from San Francisco on May 3, 1855, with approximately sixty men. Upon landing, the force was reinforced by 110 locals. With Walker's expeditionary force was the well-known explorer and journalist Charles Wilkins Webber, as well as the English adventurer Charles Frederick Henningsen, a veteran of the First Carlist War, the Hungarian Revolution, and the war in Circassia. Besides Henningsen, three members of Walker's forces who became Confederate officers were Birkett D. Fry, Robert C. Tyler, and Chatham Roberdeau Wheat.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: With Castellón's consent, Walker attacked the Legitimists in Rivas, near the trans-isthmian route. He was driven off, but not without inflicting heavy casualties. In this First Battle of Rivas, a school teacher called (1834–1872) burned the Filibuster headquarters. On September 3, during the Battle of La Virgen, Walker defeated the Legitimist army. On October 13, he conquered Granada and took effective control of the country. Initially, as commander of the army, Walker ruled Nicaragua through provisional President Patricio Rivas. U.S. President Franklin Pierce recognized Walker's regime as the legitimate government of Nicaragua on May 20, 1856, and on June 3 the Democratic national convention expressed support of the effort to "regenerate" Nicaragua. However, Walker's first ambassadorial appointment, Colonel Parker H. French, was refused recognition. On September 22, Walker repealed Nicaraguan laws prohibiting slavery, in an attempt to gain support from the Southern states.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker's actions in the region caused concern in neighboring countries and potential U.S. and European investors who feared he would pursue further military conquests in Central America. C. K. Garrison and Charles Morgan, subordinates of Vanderbilt's Accessory Transit Company, provided financial and logistical support to the Filibusters in exchange for Walker, as ruler of Nicaragua, seizing the company's property (on the pretext of a charter violation) and turning it over to Garrison and Morgan. Outraged, Vanderbilt dispatched two secret agents to the Costa Rican government with plans to fight Walker. They would help regain control of Vanderbilt's steamboats which had become a logistical lifeline for Walker's army.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Concerned about Walker's intentions in the region, Costa Rican President Juan Rafael Mora Porras rejected his diplomatic overtures and began preparing the country's military for a potential conflict. Walker organized a battalion of four companies, of which one was composed of Germans, a second of Frenchmen, and the other two of Americans, totaling 240 men placed under the command of Colonel Schlessinger to invade Costa Rica in a preemptive action. This advance force was defeated at the Battle of Santa Rosa on March 20, 1856.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: The most important strategic defeat of Walker came during the Campaign of 1856–57 when the Costa Rican army, led by Porras, General José Joaquín Mora Porras (the president's brother), and General José María Cañas (1809–1860), defeated the Filibusters in Rivas on April 11, 1856 (the Second Battle of Rivas). It was in this battle that the soldier and drummer Juan Santamaría sacrificed himself by setting the Filibuster stronghold on fire. In parallel with Enmanuel Mongalo y Rubio in Nicaragua, Santamaría would become Costa Rica's national hero. Walker deliberately contaminated the water wells of Rivas with corpses. Later, a cholera epidemic spread to the Costa Rican troops and the civilian population of Rivas. Within a few months nearly 10,000 civilians had died, almost ten percent of the population of Costa Rica.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: From the north, President José Santos Guardiola sent Honduran troops under the leadership of the Xatruch brothers, who joined Salvadoran troops to fight Walker. Florencio Xatruch led his troops against Walker and the filibusters in la Puebla, Rivas. Later, because of the opposition of other Central American armies, José Joaquín Mora Porras was made Commandant General-in-Chief of the Allied Armies of Central America in the Third Battle of Rivas (April 1857).


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: During this civil war, Honduras and El Salvador recognized Xatruch as brigade and division general. On June 12, 1857, after Walker surrendered, Xatruch made a triumphant entrance to Comayagua, which was then the capital of Honduras. Both the nickname by which Hondurans are known today, Catracho, and the more infamous nickname for Salvadorans, "Salvatrucho", are derived from Xatruch's figure and successful campaign as leader of the allied armies of Central America, as the troops of El Salvador and Honduras were national heroes, fighting side by side as Central American brothers against William Walker's troops.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: As the general and his soldiers returned from battle, some Nicaraguans affectionately yelled out ("Here come Xatruch's boys!") However, Nicaraguans had trouble pronouncing the general's Catalan name, so they altered the phrase to "los catruches" and ultimately to "los catrachos".


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: A key role was played by the Costa Rican Army in unifying the other Central American armies to fight against Filibusters. The "Campaign of the Transit" (1857) is the name given by Costa Rican historians to the groups of several battles fought by the Costa Rican Army, supervised by Colonel Salvador Mora, and led by Colonel Blanco and Colonel Salazar at the San Juan River. By establishing control of this bi-national river at its border with Nicaragua, Costa Rica prevented military reinforcements from reaching Walker and his Filibuster troops via the Caribbean Sea. Also Costa Rican diplomacy neutralized U.S. official support for Walker by taking advantage of the dispute between the magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt and William Walker.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker took up residence in Granada and set himself up as President of Nicaragua, after conducting a fraudulent election. He was inaugurated on July 12, 1856, and soon launched an Americanization program, reinstating slavery, declaring English an official language, and reorganizing currency and fiscal policy to encourage immigration from the United States. Realizing that his position was becoming precarious, he sought support from the Southerners in the U.S. by recasting his campaign as a fight to spread the institution of black slavery, which was the basis of the Southern agrarian economy. With this in mind, Walker revoked Nicaragua's emancipation edict of 1821. This move increased Walker's popularity among Southern whites and attracted the attention of Pierre Soulé, an influential New Orleans politician, who campaigned to raise support for Walker's war. Nevertheless, Walker's army was weakened by massive defections and an epidemic of cholera, and was finally defeated by the Central American coalition led by Costa Rican President Juan Rafael Mora Porras (1814–1860).


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: On October 12, 1856, Guatemalan Colonel José Víctor Zavala crossed the square of the city to the house where Walker's soldiers took shelter. Under heavy fire, he reached the enemy's flag and carried it back with him, shouting to his men that the Filibuster bullets did not kill.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: On December 14, 1856, as Granada was surrounded by 4,000 troops from Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, along with independent Nicaraguan allies, Charles Frederick Henningsen, one of Walker's generals, ordered his men to set the city ablaze before escaping and fighting their way to Lake Nicaragua. When retreating from Granada, the oldest Spanish colonial city in Nicaragua, he left a detachment with orders to level it in order to instill, as he put it, "a salutary dread of American justice". It took them over two weeks to smash, burn and flatten the city; all that remained were inscriptions on the ruins that read ("Here was Granada").


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: On May 1, 1857, Walker surrendered to Commander Charles Henry Davis of the United States Navy under the pressure of Costa Rica and the Central American armies, and was repatriated. Upon disembarking in New York City, he was greeted as a hero, but he alienated public opinion when he blamed his defeat on the U.S. Navy. Within six months, he set off on another expedition, but he was arrested by the U.S. Navy Home Squadron under the command of Commodore Hiram Paulding and once again returned to the U.S. amid considerable public controversy over the legality of the navy's actions.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: After writing an account of his Central American campaign (published in 1860 as "War in Nicaragua"), Walker once again returned to the region. British colonists in Roatán, in the Bay Islands, fearing that the government of Honduras would move to assert its control over them, approached Walker with an offer to help him in establishing a separate, English-speaking government over the islands. Walker disembarked in the port city of Trujillo, but soon fell into the custody of Nowell Salmon, an officer of the Royal Navy. The British government controlled the neighboring regions of British Honduras (modern-day Belize) and the Mosquito Coast (now part of modern-day Nicaragua) and had considerable strategic and economic interest in the construction of an inter-oceanic canal through Central America. It therefore regarded Walker as a menace to its own affairs in the region.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Rather than return him to the US, for reasons that remain unclear, Salmon sailed to Trujillo and delivered Walker to the Honduran authorities, together with his chief of staff, Colonel A. F. Rudler. Rudler was sentenced to four years in the mines, but Walker was sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad, near the site of the present-day hospital, on September 12, 1860. William Walker was 36 years old. He is buried in the "Old Cemetery", Trujillo, Colón, Honduras.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: William Walker convinced many Southerners of the desirability of creating a slave-holding empire in tropical Latin America. In 1861, when U.S. Senator John J. Crittenden proposed that the 36°30' parallel north be declared as a line of demarcation between free and slave territories, some Republicans denounced such an arrangement, saying that it "would amount to a perpetual covenant of war against every people, tribe, and State owning a foot of land between here and Tierra del Fuego".


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Before the end of the American Civil War, Walker's memory enjoyed great popularity in the southern and western United States, where he was known as "General Walker" and as the "gray-eyed man of destiny". Northerners, on the other hand, generally regarded him as a pirate. Despite his intelligence and personal charm, Walker consistently proved to be a limited military and political leader. Unlike men of similar ambition, such as Cecil Rhodes, Walker's grandiose scheming ultimately failed.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: In Central American countries, the successful military campaign of 1856–1857 against William Walker became a source of national pride and identity, and it was later promoted by local historians and politicians as substitute for the war of independence that Central America had not experienced. April 11 is a Costa Rican national holiday in memory of Walker's defeat at Rivas. Juan Santamaría, who played a key role in that battle, is honored as one of two Costa Rican national heroes, the other one being Juan Rafael Mora himself. The main airport serving San José (in Alajuela) is named in Santamaría's honor.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: To this day, a sense of Central American "coalition" among the "catracho" nations of Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, along with independent Nicaraguan allies, is remembered and celebrated as a unifying shared history.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker's campaigns in Lower California and Nicaragua are the subject of a historical novel by Alfred Neumann, published in German as "Der Pakt" (1949), and translated in English as "Strange Conquest" (a previous UK edition was published as "Look Upon This Man").


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: Walker's campaign in Nicaragua has inspired two films, both of which take considerable liberties with his story: "Burn!" (1969) directed by Gillo Pontecorvo, starring Marlon Brando, and "Walker" (1987) directed by Alex Cox, starring Ed Harris. Walker's name is used for the main character in "Burn!", though the character is not meant to represent the historical William Walker and is portrayed as British. On the other hand, Alex Cox's "Walker" incorporates into its surrealist narrative many of the signposts of William Walker's life and exploits, including his original excursions into northern Mexico to his trial and acquittal on breaking the neutrality act to the triumph of his assault on Nicaragua and his execution.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: In Part Five, Chapter 48, of "Gone with the Wind", Margaret Mitchell cites William Walker, "and how he died against a wall in Truxillo", as a topic of conversation between Rhett Butler and his filibustering acquaintances, while Rhett and Scarlett O'Hara are on honeymoon in New Orleans.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: A poem written by Nicaraguan Catholic priest and minister of culture from 1979 to 1987 during the Sandinista period Ernesto Cardenal, "Con Walker En Nicaragua," translated as "With Walker in Nicaragua", gives a historical treatment of the affair from the Nicaraguan perspective.


title: William Walker (filibuster)

text: The villain of the Nantucket series, by science fiction writer S. M. Stirling, is a 20th-century American mercenary named William Walker, who is time-displaced from AD 1998 to 1250 BC. Walker demonstrates a similar personality to his historical namesake, leading a kind of filibuster force to Mycenaean Greece and initiating a version of the Trojan War with machine guns.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (May 28, 1818 - February 20, 1893) was a Confederate general officer of Louisiana Creole descent 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.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Trained in military and civil engineering at the United States 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.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: 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. He is most known for his defense of the industrial city of Petersburg, Virginia, from Union troops in June 1864, which delayed the eventual fall of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia in April 1865.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: His influence over Confederate strategy was lessened by his poor professional relationships with President Jefferson Davis and other senior generals and officials. In April 1865, Beauregard and his commander, General Joseph E. Johnston, convinced Davis and the remaining cabinet members that the war needed to end. Johnston surrendered most of the remaining armies of the Confederacy, including Beauregard and his men, to Major General William Tecumseh Sherman.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: After his military career, Beauregard returned to Louisiana, where he advocated black civil rights including suffrage, served as a railroad executive, and became wealthy as a promoter of the Louisiana Lottery.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Beauregard was born at the "Contreras" sugar-cane plantation in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, about outside New Orleans, to a Louisiana Creole family. Beauregard was the third child of Hélène Judith de Reggio, of mixed French and Italian ancestry and descendant of Francesco M. de Reggio, member of an Italian noble family whose family had migrated first to France and then to Louisiana, and her husband, Jacques Toutant-Beauregard, of French and Welsh ancestry. He had three brothers and three sisters. As was typical for Louisiana Creoles, his family spoke French and practiced Roman Catholicism.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: As a child, Beauregard befriended and played with slave boys his own age, and was weaned as a baby by a St. Dominican slave woman. He grew up in a large one-story house, unlike the "later plantation palaces, but a mansion of aristocracy by the standards of its time." Beauregard hunted and rode in the woods and fields around his family's plantation and paddled his boat in its waterways. Beauregard attended New Orleans private schools and then went to a "French school" in New York City. During his four years in New York, beginning at age 12, he learned to speak English, as French had been his first and only language in Louisiana.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: He then attended the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. One of his instructors was Robert Anderson, who later became the commander of Fort Sumter and surrendered to Beauregard at the start of the Civil War. Upon enrolling at West Point, Beauregard dropped the hyphen from his surname and treated Toutant as a middle name, to fit in with his classmates. From that point on, he rarely used his first name, preferring "G. T. Beauregard." He graduated second in his class in 1838 and excelled both as an artilleryman and military engineer. His Army friends gave him many nicknames: "Little Creole", "Bory", "Little Frenchman", "Felix", and "Little Napoleon".


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: During the Mexican–American War, Beauregard served as an engineer under General Winfield Scott. He was appointed brevet captain for the battles of Contreras and Churubusco and major for Chapultepec, where he was wounded in the shoulder and thigh. He was noted for his eloquent performance in a meeting with Scott in which he convinced the assembled general officers to change their plan for attacking the fortress of Chapultepec. He was one of the first officers to enter Mexico City. Beauregard considered his contributions in dangerous reconnaissance missions and devising strategy for his superiors to be more significant than those of his engineer colleague, Captain Robert E. Lee, so he was disappointed when Lee and other officers received more brevets than he did.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Beauregard returned from Mexico in 1848. For the next 12 years, he was in charge of what the Engineer Department called "the Mississippi and Lake defenses in Louisiana." Much of his engineering work was done elsewhere, repairing old forts and building new ones on the Florida coast and in Mobile, Alabama. He also improved the defenses of Forts St. Philip and Jackson on the Mississippi River below New Orleans. He worked on a board of Army and Navy engineers to improve the navigation of the shipping channels at the mouth of the Mississippi. He created and patented an invention he called a "self-acting bar excavator" to be used by ships in crossing bars of sand and clay. While serving in the Army, he actively campaigned for the election of Franklin Pierce, the Democratic presidential candidate in 1852, and a former general in the Mexican War who had been impressed by Beauregard's performance at Mexico City. Pierce appointed Beauregard as superintending engineer of the U.S. Custom House in New Orleans, a huge granite building that had been built in 1848. As it was sinking unevenly in the moist soil of Louisiana, Beauregard had to develop a renovation program. He served in this position from 1853 to 1860 and stabilized the structure successfully.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: During his service in New Orleans, Beauregard became dissatisfied as a peacetime officer. He informed the U.S. Army Engineer Department late in 1856 that he was going to join the filibuster with William Walker, who had seized control of Nicaragua; he had offered Beauregard the rank of second-in-command of his army. Senior officers, including general-in-chief Winfield Scott, convinced Beauregard to stay in the United States. He briefly entered politics as a reform candidate for mayor of New Orleans in 1858, where he was promoted by both the Whig and Democratic parties to challenge the Know Nothing party candidate. Beauregard was narrowly defeated.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Employing the political influence of his brother-in-law, John Slidell, Beauregard obtained an appointment as superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy on January 23, 1861. When Louisiana seceded from the Union, the Federal Government immediately revoked his orders and he subsequently relinquished his office after only five days. He protested to the U.S. War Department that they had cast "improper reflection upon [his] reputation or position in the Corps of Engineers" by forcing him out as a Southern officer before any hostilities began.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Beauregard traveled by steamship from New York to New Orleans and immediately began giving military advice to the local authorities in his home state of Louisiana, which included further strengthening Forts St. Philip and Jackson, which guarded the Mississippi approaches to New Orleans. He hoped to be named commander of the Louisiana state army, but was disappointed that the state legislature appointed Braxton Bragg. Aware that Beauregard might resent him, Bragg offered him the rank of colonel. Instead Beauregard enrolled as a private in the "Orleans Guards", a battalion of French Creole aristocrats. At the same time, he communicated with Slidell and the newly chosen President Davis, angling for a senior position in the new Confederate States Army. Rumors that Beauregard would be placed in charge of the entire Army infuriated Bragg. Concerned about the political situation regarding the Federal presence at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Davis selected Beauregard to take command of Charleston's defenses. Beauregard seemed the perfect combination of military engineer and charismatic Southern leader needed at that time and place.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Beauregard became one of the most frequently described generals in Confederate chronicles, and almost every observer noted his foreign French visage. His comportment was "courteous, grave, sometimes reserved and severe, sometimes abrupt with people who displeased him." Associates saw him go months without smiling. "Many who saw him thought he looked like a French marshal or like Napoleon in a gray uniform - which was what he wanted them to think."


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: "Because he was French and seemed different, he was the victim of all kind of rumors, most of them baseless. The charge of immorality was, of course, inevitable. Some soldiers believed that he was accompanied by a train of concubines and wagons loaded with cases of champagne. Even in Louisiana it was said, by non-Creoles, that he was unfaithful to his wife, infidelity being allegedly a Creole characteristic."


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: "[Beauregard's] military retinue was a wonderful collection in itself to inspire rumor. His staff glittered with former governors and senators serving as voluntary aides." Beauregard also kept the company of Frederick Maginnis, a slave he had rented from a South Carolinian woman. "Another eminent camp follower was a young Spaniard who served as Beauregard's barber and valet."


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Beauregard became the first Confederate general officer, appointed a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States on March 1, 1861. (On July 21, he was promoted to full general in the Confederate Army, one of only seven appointed to that rank; his date of rank made him the fifth most senior general, behind Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and Joseph E. Johnston.)


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Arriving in Charleston on March 3, 1861, Beauregard met with Governor Francis Wilkinson Pickens and inspected the defenses of the harbor, which he found to be in disarray. He was said to display "a great deal in the way of zeal and energy ... but little professional knowledge and experience." Major Robert Anderson at Fort Sumter wrote to Washington, D.C., that Beauregard, who had been his student at West Point in 1837, would guarantee that South Carolina's actions be exercised with "skill and sound judgment." Beauregard wrote to the Confederate government that Anderson was a "most gallant officer". He sent several cases of fine brandy and whiskey and boxes of cigars to Anderson and his officers at Sumter, but Anderson ordered that the gifts be returned.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: By early April, political tensions were mounting and Beauregard demanded that Sumter surrender before a planned Union expedition to re-provision the fort could arrive. Early on the morning of April 12, negotiations with Anderson had failed. Beauregard ordered the first shots of the American Civil War to be fired from nearby Fort Johnson. The bombardment of Fort Sumter lasted for 34 hours. After a heavy bombardment from batteries ringing the harbor, Anderson surrendered Fort Sumter on April 14. Biographer T. Harry Williams described the extravagant praise from throughout the Confederacy that "The Hero of Fort Sumter" received for his victory: "He was the South's first paladin."


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: Summoned to the new Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, Beauregard received a hero's welcome at the railroad stations along the route. He was given command of the "Alexandria Line" of defenses against an impending Federal offensive that was being organized by Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell (one of Beauregard's West Point classmates) against the Confederate railroad junction at Manassas. Beauregard devised strategies to concentrate the forces of (full) General Joseph E. Johnston from the Shenandoah Valley with his own, aiming not only to defend his position, but to initiate an offensive against McDowell and Washington. Despite his seniority in rank, Johnston lacked familiarity with the terrain and ceded tactical planning of the impending battle to Beauregard as a professional courtesy. President Davis considered many of Beauregard's plans to be impractical for an army as inexperienced as the Confederates could field in 1861; throughout the war, Davis and Beauregard would argue about Beauregard's tendencies to devise grand strategies based on formal military principles. Davis believed he lacked a pragmatic grasp of logistics, intelligence, relative military strengths, and politics.


title: P. G. T. Beauregard

text: The First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas) began early on July 21, 1861, with an element of surprise for both armies— both McDowell and Beauregard planned to envelop their opponent with an attack from their right flank. McDowell struck first, crossing Bull Run and threatening Beauregard's left flank. For a while, Beauregard persisted in moving his troops for an attack on his right flank (McDowell's left, toward Centreville), but Johnston urged him to travel with him to the threatened flank at Henry House Hill, which was weakly defended. Seeing the strength of the Union attack at that point, Beauregard insisted that Johnston leave the area of immediate action and coordinate the overall battle from a position to the rear. Beauregard rallied the troops, riding among the men, brandishing regimental colors, and giving inspirational speeches. The Confederate line held.