Louis Trezevant Wigfall

Wigfall's politics were a defense of slavery. Handbook author Alvy King puts him in the forefront of the fire-eaters, a man who wounded another in a duel and killed a second in a quarrel. In Texas he attacked Sam Houston and is credited with Houston's defeat for governor in 1857. After Lincoln's election he urged every slave state to secede. As a Confederate he opposed arming enslaved men and would sooner lose the war than call Black men soldiers. In 1866 he fled to England, hoping to provoke a war with the United States.

What the plaque says

Louis Trezevant Wigfall (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

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Moody Mansion — 1.0 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 1.2 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.
• Galveston Seawall and the 1900 Storm — 1.4 mi
  The concrete wall along the Gulf that Galveston built after the hurricane of September 8, 1900, which killed between 6,000 and 8,000 people in a city of 38,000.
• The Strand — 1.4 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.

More markers nearby

• Lent Munson Hitchcock — steps away
• Lt. Commander Edward Lea — steps away
• Captain William S. Fisher — steps away
• Major John M. Allen — steps away