Wigfall Raises As Much Hell In Richmond As Washington

Upon hearing of Texas’ official secession, Louis T. Wigfall roared from the floor of the United States Senate on Mar. 7, 1861, “We have dissolved the Union!  Mend it if you can!  Cement it with blood!”

    Upon hearing of Texas’ official secession, Louis T. Wigfall roared from the floor of the United States Senate on Mar. 7, 1861, “We have dissolved the Union!  Mend it if you can!  Cement it with blood!”

    Three days after John Brown was hanged for treason in December 1859, Lone Star lawmakers picked a new senator.  In the angry aftermath of the Harper’s Ferry Raid, the nearly unanimous choice was an arch-secessionist from South Carolina.

    Convinced northern rabble-rousers were bent on inciting a slave revolt, Texans wanted someone who would talk turkey not compromise.  Their choice certainly filled the bill, rattling the roof of the august chamber with his thunderous defense of the southern cause.

    Wigfall’s college days in his native South Carolina spawned a fanatical belief in state supremacy.  His alma mater was a hotbed of secessionist sentiment, where as early as 1827 the university president called for the Palmetto State to sever all ties with the United States.

    Even though several friends and his own brother perished in the popular pastime of dueling, Wigfall could not wait to take his turn as a gentleman gladiator.  When the chance finally came, he went on a bloody rampage.

    During five violent months, he engaged in a fistfight, three near-duels, two real things and a gunbattle on the steps of the local courthouse.  One youth was killed in the wild spree and two more were seriously wounded, including Wigfall.

    Besides ruining his reputation and law practice, the mayhem also burdened his conscience, which tormented him for years with eerie visions of the man he had slain.  Snubbed by polite society, hounded by creditors and overcome with guilt, he migrated to Texas in 1846.

    Getting in on the ground floor of the recently formed Democratic Party, Wigfall rocked the 1848 state convention with an inflammatory appeal to southern patriotism.  When the meeting adjourned, the 32 year old demagogue was firmly entrenched as the most rabid states’ rights advocate in Texas.

    Wigfall’s ball really began rolling the next year with an appointment to a vacancy in the Austin assembly.  Sensing a favorable shift in the political wind, he exploited the unpopularity of Sen. Sam Houston’s pro-Union pronouncements by attacking his “laxity in defending Texas’ interests.”  From that day forward, the two were mortal enemies.

    Slaveholders applauded the Dred Scott decision, which upheld their right to do as they pleased with their human property, but not the dogmatic Texan.  To accept the Supreme Court decree, Wigfall lectured, was to acknowledge the power of the national judiciary over state sovereignty, a concession he was not about to make.

    As U.S. Senator, Wigfall delighted in taunting his Yankee peers and tongue-lashed them black and blue.  Session was a simple matter, he reasoned.  “If this government does not suit us, we will leave it.”  The South would not be cowed by northern threats.  “If we do not get into Boston before you get into Texas,” he boasted, “you may shoot me.”

    The November 1860 election of a minority president, the choice of only two out of every five voters, started a southern stampede.  Meanwhile, Wigfall’s name cropped up in rumors of a bizarre plot to kidnap the lame duck in the White House.

    With James Buchanan out of the way, Kentuckian John Breckenridge would advance to the presidency which he then would refuse to relinquish to Abraham Lincoln.  But Breckenridge lost his nerve, and the conspiracy fizzled.

    Wigfall hung around the enemy capital for weeks gathering intelligence for the Rebs.  He was on hand in April 1861 for the bombardment of Fort Sumter, where he personally recommended surrender to the outgunned federal commander.

    Later in the year, Texas legislators elected Wigfall to the Confederate senate.  No one dreamed the fire-eater would raise as much hell in Richmond as he had in Washington.

    Wigfall was at first a staunch supporter of President Jefferson Davis.  But his wife hated Mrs. Davis, and her spiteful subversion on the home front poisoned the important relationship.

    The bad situation took a turn for the worse, when Wigfall gave his convincing imitation of Yankee general Ulysses S. Grant.  Wartime alcoholism impaired his judgment and ignited explosive rages.  He blamed every southern setback on Davis and expressed a twisted desire to see him hang.

    After the final curtain came down at Appomattox, Wigfall hid for months in the backstreets of Galveston before slipping aboard a British ship and sailing into sanctuary.  The exile returned eight years later but was so sick from years of chronic drinking that he had to be carried to a boardinghouse.

    Louis T. Wigfall never got out of bed alive.  The climax came not in heroic combat but in a lonely rented room.  Even death was a disappointment for the red-hot Reb.

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