William Barksdale

Biography

William Barksdale, born in 1821, was a gifted lawyer and statesman from Mississippi who spent years representing his constituents in the halls of Congress before war stirred his sense of duty toward the South. When conflict arrived, he brought the same tenacity that marked his political career to the battlefield, raising and leading his own regiment.

He fell in 1863 while pressing forward at Gettysburg, his courage cemented in the annals of the Army of Northern Virginia, and his remains were interred at Greenwood Cemetery, where visitors remember the passionate defender of his homeland.