Louis Trezevant Wigfall (21 April 1816-18 February 1874) was a US Senator from Texas (D) from 5 December 1859 to 23 March 1861, succeeding Matthias Ward and preceding James Flanagan. Wigfall was a Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, raising the Texas Brigade for the Army of Northern Virginia.
Biography[]
Louis Trezevant Wigfall was born in Edgefield, South Carolina in 1816, and he graduated from South Carolina College in 1837 despite an erratic record and his joining of the US Army during the war with the Seminole in Florida. Wigfall took over his brother's legal practice in 1839 after his brother was killed in a duel, and he accumulated debt due to his drinking, gambling, and his squandering of his inheritance. He became involved in state Democratic Party politics during the 1840s, and he was wounded in the thighs during a duel with future congressman Preston Brooks, who was also seriously wounded. His youthful political ambbitions were destroyed by his duel with Brooks and by his violent temper, and he decided to move to Texas in 1848. Wigfall became a lawyer in Nacogdoches, and he served in the State House of Representatives from 1849 to 1850 and in the State Senate from 1857 to 1860. Wigfall was a rival of Constitutional Union Party member Sam Houston, accusing him of having the support of northern abolitionists, and he was elected to the US Senate in 1859 as a Democrat. He withdrew from the senate on 23 March 1861 and was expelled on 11 July 1861 for supporting the secession of the Confederate States of America at the start of the American Civil War. Wigfall recruited soldiers for the Confederacy and was elected to the Confederate Congress; he also held the rank of Brigadier-General in the Confederate States Army and raised the Texas Brigade for the Army of Northern Virginia. In February 1862, he resigned his commission to sit in the Confederate Congress, and John Bell Hood took over the brigade. He was an early proponent of making Robert E. Lee commander of all Confederate armies, and he befriended Joseph E. Johnston. He died of apoplexy in Galveston, Texas in 1874 at the age of 57.