Louis Trezevant Wigfall - Trinity Episcopal Cemetery - Galveston, TX - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

His headstone reads:

Senator in the Congress
of the United States.
Senator in the Congress
of the Confederate States.
First Commander of the Texas
Brigade of the army of NMs
Born
April 21, 1816
Died
Feb 18, 1874

The 1936 Pink Granite Texas Historical Marker, behind his headstone reads:

April 21, 1816 - February 18, 1874) Native South Carolinian, Sergeant in Seminole War, lawyer, member Texas Legislature, an ardent secessionist as United States Senator from 1859 to 1861, visited Fort Sumter with surrender demand as aide to General Beauregard, member Confederate States Provisional Congress, Colonel of 1st Texas Confederate Infantry, Brigadier-General in Confederate Infantry, Brigadier-General in Confederate Army, member Confederate States Senate. Erected by the State of Texas, 1963

From the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress:

WIGFALL, Louis Trezevant, a Senator from Texas; was born near Edgefield, Edgefield District, S.C., April 21, 1816; pursued classical studies; attended the University of Virginia and graduated from South Carolina College (now the University of South Carolina) at Columbia in 1837; served as a lieutenant of Volunteers in the Seminole War in Florida in 1835; attended the law department of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville; admitted to the bar in 1839 and commenced practice in Edgefield, S.C.; moved to Marshall, Tex., in 1848; member, State house of representatives 1849-1850; member, State senate 1857-1860; elected as a Democrat to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of J. Pinckney Henderson and served from December 5, 1859, until March 23, 1861, when he withdrew; expelled from the Senate on July 11, 1861, for support of the rebellion; served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War; represented the State of Texas in the Confederate Congress; after the war moved to London, England; returned to the United States in 1873 and settled in Baltimore, Md.; died in Galveston, Tex., February 18, 1874; interment in the Episcopal Cemetery.

From The Texas State Historical Association

WIGFALL, LOUIS TREZEVANT (1816–1874). Louis T. Wigfall, secessionist, was born in Edgefield, South Carolina, on April 21, 1816, to Levi Durand and Eliza (Thomson) Wigfall and educated at South Carolina College and the University of Virginia. Wigfall believed in a society led by the planter class and based on slavery and the chivalric code. As a young man he neglected his law practice for contentious politics that led him to wound a man in a duel (and be wounded himself) and to kill another during a quarrel. In 1846 Wigfall arrived in Galveston, then moved with his wife, Charlotte, and three children to Nacogdoches, where he was a law partner of Thomas J. Jennings and William B. Ochiltree. Soon Wigfall opened his own law office in Marshall. He was active in Texas politics from the month he arrived, "alerting" Texans to the dangers of abolition and growing influence of non-slave states in the United States Congress. At the Galveston County Democratic convention in 1848 he condemned congressional efforts to prohibit the expansion of slavery into the territories and expressed sorrow that Texas would not take the lead in opposing such unconstitutional actions.

Named in 1850 to the Texas House of Representatives, Wigfall attacked United States Senator Sam Houston as a coward and a traitor to Texas and the South. Wigfall played a major role in organizing Texas Democrats and fighting the American (Know-Nothing) party and Sam Houston in 1855–56. Wigfall was one of the few men in Houston's opposition who rivaled him as a stump speaker, and he was widely credited with Houston's defeat for the governorship in 1857. That year Wigfall was elected to the Texas Senate, and in 1858 he had a strong voice in the state Democratic convention that adopted a states' rights platform. With the breakup of the Know-Nothings, many moderates moved back into the Democratic party, and it appeared that Wigfall`s radicalism was repudiated and that Houston and moderates were ascendant. But Wigfall capitalized on the fear that John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry caused in the slave states and was elected to the United States Senate in 1859. In the Senate Wigfall earned a reputation for eloquence, acerbic debate, and readiness for encounter. In the forefront of southern "fire-eaters," Wigfall continued his fight for slavery and states' rights and against expanding the power of national government. Nevertheless he tried, unsuccessfully, to get federal funds to defend the Texas frontier against Indian attacks and to build the Southern Pacific Railroad into Texas.

After Abraham Lincoln was elected president, Wigfall coauthored the "Southern Manifesto," declaring that any hope for relief in the Union was gone and that the honor and independence of the South required the organization of a Southern Confederacy. Wigfall helped foil efforts for compromise to save the Union and urged all slave states to secede. He stayed in the Senate after Texas seceded, spying on the Union, chiding northern senators, and raising and training troops in Maryland to send to South Carolina. With the assistance of Benjamin McCulloch, he bought revolvers and rifles for Texas Confederates. Wigfall made his presence felt when the Civil War began at Fort Sumter, rowing under fire to the fort and dictating unauthorized surrender terms to the federal commander. Between April and July 1861, when he was finally expelled from the Senate, Wigfall was a member of the Provisional Congress of the Confederacy, an aide to President Jefferson Davis, and a United States Senator. He was commissioned colonel of the First Texas Infantry on August 28, 1861, and on November 21 Davis nominated him brigadier general in the Provisional Army, a move later confirmed by the Confederate Congress. Wigfall commanded the Texas Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia (Hood's Texas Brigade) until February 1862, when he resigned to take a seat in the Confederate Congress.

At the beginning of the war Wigfall was a friend and supporter of President Davis. But soon after Wigfall's election to the Confederate Senate they quarreled over military and other matters. During the last two years of the Confederacy Wigfall carried on public and conspiratorial campaigns to strip Davis of all influence. Despite his public advocacy of states' rights, Wigfall did little for Texas. In the Confederacy he worked for military strength at the expense of state and individual rights. But he opposed the arming of slaves and was willing to lose the war rather than admit that blacks were worthy of being soldiers. After the fall of the Confederacy, Wigfall fled to Texas for almost a year and then, in the spring of 1866, to England, where he tried to foment war between Britain and the United States, hoping to give the South an opportunity to rise again. He returned to the United States in 1872, lived in Baltimore, moved back to Texas in 1874, and died in Galveston on February 18, 1874. He was buried there in the Episcopal Cemetery.

Description: National Park Service - Fort Sumner - Louis T. Wigfall Louis Trezevant Wigfall, a Texas politician and briefly an officer in the Confederate States Army, advocated for slavery and secession. His rhetoric earned him a place with other leading Fire-Eaters: William Lowndes Yancey, William Porcher Miles, and Roger Atkinson Pryor. He witnessed the Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter from Morris Island while serving as an aide to General P.G.T. Beauregard. Wigfall also played a role in securing the Union’s evacuation of Fort Sumter. Wigfall was born on a plantation near Edgefield, South Carolina. Wigfall bounced between different universities for his degree and at one time abandoned academics entirely to fight in the Third Seminole War in Florida. After his graduation from the South Carolina College (now University of South Carolina), Wigfall pursued a career in law. His interest in politics later overshadowed his law career. In 1848, Wigfall left South Carolina for Texas, leaving behind political battles that had escalated into fighting in duels. In Texas, Wigfall became a staunch opponent of Governor Sam Houston for his Unionist views and became an important Democratic leader in the state. Wigfall was elected to the US Senate by the Texas legislature in 1859 and served until March 1861. Wigfall, addressing the Senate in December 1860, outlined his views on the relationship of the states with the Union and criticized the Northern freedom of press. “You shall not publish newspapers and pamphlets to excite the non-slaveholders against the slaveholders, or the slaveholders against the non-slaveholders. We will have peace; and if you do not offer it to us, we will quietly, and as we have the right under the constitutional compact to do, withdraw from the Union and establish a government for ourselves; and if you then persist in your aggressions, we will leave it to the ultimo ratio regum (a resort to arms), and the sovereign States will settle that question. And when you laugh at these impotent threats, as you regard them, I tell you that cotton is king.” Wigfall traveled to Charleston, South Carolina as the Confederacy verged upon open warfare with Major Anderson’s Union garrison at Fort Sumter. He secured a position as an aide to General Beauregard. On the second day of the battle, the flag above Fort Sumter fell, and Confederates wondered if Anderson wished to surrender. Wigfall, on his own initiative and without orders, commandeered a rowboat on Morris Island and had Private Gourdin Young of the Palmetto Guard and two slaves take him out to Fort Sumter. Upon arrival, he sought an audience with Major Anderson and climbed into the fort through an open embrasure. “Your flag is down, you are on fire,” Wigfall told the Federals, “and you are not firing your guns. General Beauregard wants to stop this.”,/p. Wigfall followed this bizarre role in the opening acts of the war as an ineffective and often drunk brigadier general until February 1862 when he resigned his commission to take a seat in the Confederate Senate. Similar to his time in the U.S. Senate, he advocated for states’ rights and loudly disagreed with President Jefferson Davis’ strong national government approach. At the end of the war, Wigfall returned to Texas and then sailed to Great Britain in exile where he attempted to create conflict between Great Britain and the United States. He returned to his native country in 1870 and finally died in Galveston, Date of birth: 04/21/1816 Date of death: 02/18/1874 Area of notoriety: Politics Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: In a cemetery - Dawn to Dusk please Fee required?: No Web site: Not listed

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