Louis Trezevant Wigfall was not an obscure man, nor was he without ability. He possessed intelligence, ambition, political talent, and an undeniable gift for fiery public speech. Yet, those qualities do not, by themselves, justify historical commemoration. Throughout his career, Wigfall’s reputation was severely compromised by contemporary accounts of heavy drinking, erratic conduct, and reckless public behavior.
A commemorative namesake should reflect the highest ideals of courage, sacrifice, and unyielding honor. It should elevate the regular men who stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the front lines, braving the storm of battle with quiet dignity. Louis Wigfall was not one of those men.
Ten parts and an Afterword · Fifteen appendices · Twenty photographic and document plates · About 185 sources · About 230 pages
Edgefield, the road to Texas, the U.S. Senate
Wigfall was born into Southern aristocracy near Edgefield, South Carolina — orphaned by thirteen and raised inside a culture of dueling and violence. His brother Arthur became a clergyman who preached against that violence; Louis carried it west to Texas, and from there to a U.S. Senate seat and an oath he would break in 1861.
The crisis, the press, the diary, the lost command
Mary Chesnut found Wigfall the only person in Charleston who seemed ‘thoroughly happy’ as war approached. Wartime newspapers, racing to feed the telegraph, spread his version of Fort Sumter. Chesnut’s diary tells a different one — and shows how he came to lose his command.
Company C, Collierville at war, the other Collierville companies
While Wigfall played politics in Richmond, the men who carried his name fought from Shiloh to the end. The remarks on their roll read like the war itself: “killed at Shiloh,” “killed at Perryville, Kentucky,” “killed at Missionary Ridge,” “wounded and died in prison.” Back home, Grant stopped at a farmhouse on the Collierville road in June 1862, three-quarters of an hour ahead of the Confederate cavalry looking for him, and Sherman stood at the Collierville depot under fire in October 1863. That summer, more than one hundred Black men enlisted at Collierville in Companies G and I of what became the 61st U.S. Colored Infantry.
Edgefield and Collierville after the war
The men came home to a town in ashes. Collierville rebuilt around a new public square; Edgefield turned to Tillman and the Constitution of 1895. Merritt Brown married, went to work at the depot, and raised three small daughters, until the yellow fever of 1878 reached Collierville. The court records that followed tell what became of his family.
Markers and memory, the closing argument
Every town keeps two histories, one in its records and one on its markers. Wigfall is measured against fellow Fire-Eaters Edmund Ruffin and Roger A. Pryor, and against the combat record of the author’s own great-grandfather, First Sergeant T.F. Meece, before the book makes its case for a name that reflects the men who actually served.
Twenty-eight historical markers and memorials stand in and around Collierville. None mentions the more than one hundred Black men who enlisted here in the summer of 1863. The Afterword proposes one.
Plus fifteen appendices, including the photographic and document plates, the Trezevant family lineage, the Roll of Honor, the roll of the Wigfall Grays, the names of the men who enlisted at Collierville in 1863, and the full bibliography.
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