Background
Edward Cary Walthall was born on April 4, 1831 in Richmond, Va. His parents, Barrett White and Sally (Wilkinson) Walthall, moved to Holly Springs, Miss. , when he was ten years of age.
Edward Cary Walthall was born on April 4, 1831 in Richmond, Va. His parents, Barrett White and Sally (Wilkinson) Walthall, moved to Holly Springs, Miss. , when he was ten years of age.
He was educated in St. Thomas Hall, at that time a well-known classical school.
After reading law for a year with a brother-in-law at Pontotoc, he returned to Holly Springs and continued this study while serving as deputy clerk of the circuit court. In 1852 he was admitted to the bar and began to practise at Coffeeville. In 1856 he was elected attorney for the tenth judicial district of Mississippi and was reëlected three years later. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War a volunteer company known as the Yalobusha Rifles was organized in Coffeeville and Walthall was elected first lieutenant. In the summer of 1861 he was elected lieutenant-colonel of the 15th Mississippi Infantry, to which his company had been attached. When the Confederates were disastrously defeated at Mill Springs, or Fishing Creek, Ky. , in January 1862, Walthall was commanding his regiment and displayed unusual bravery and steadiness. Thereafter he was usually placed where these qualities were especially needed and he became noted for his dependability and resourcefulness when outnumbered or when his army was being forced to retreat. On April 11, 1862, he was made colonel of the 29th Mississippi Infantry, which he commanded at Corinth. He served through the campaign in Tennessee and Kentucky preparatory to the fighting about Chattanooga, and he was commissioned brigadier-general on April 23, 1863, to take rank from December 13, 1862. At Chickamauga nearly one-third of his men were killed or wounded in a severe engagement with a force under George H. Thomas, against whom Walthall was several times matched. In mid-November 1863, with his brigade reduced to 1, 500 men, he was on the defensive in the famous fight on Lookout Mountain which has sometimes been called the "battle above the clouds. " The following day the 600 men left in his brigade participated in the battle of Missionary Ridge, and to them fell the task of covering the retreat of the Confederate army. Though Walthall was painfully wounded in the foot, he would not leave his saddle until his men were withdrawn from the field. After participating in the fighting about Atlanta, he was sent with Hood into Tennessee and at Franklin had two horses shot under him. On the retreat from Nashville he was chosen to command the infantry of the rear-guard, cooperating with Forrest's cavalry. On June 10, 1864, he was commissioned major-general, and won a reputation as one of the ablest of the Confederate division commanders. On his way home at the end of the war he met Lucius Q. C. Lamar; this was the beginning of a lifelong and intimate friendship and of a brief law partnership at Coffeeville. In 1871 Walthall moved to Grenada. When Lamar was made secretary of the interior, Walthall was appointed to succeed him in the Senate, and by election and reëlection he remained in that body from March 1885 until his death except for a period from January 1894 to March 1895 when ill health caused him to resign. Before he resigned he had already been elected for the term beginning in March 1895, and he then reëntered the Senate. He served as chairman of the committee on military affairs and was a member of the committees on public lands and on the improvement of the Mississippi River. Though his death occurred in Washington, D. C. , he was buried at Holly Springs, Miss.
He was one of the leaders in the overthrow of the Carpet-bag government in the state, and a delegate to all except one of the National Democratic Conventions from 1868 to 1884. Walthall covered the retreat of General Hood's army after the defeat at Nashville. Walthall County, Mississippi is named after him.
Declining physical strength limited his activities during most of the time he was in the Senate and he seldom participated in debate. Yet he was respected by the members of both parties and wielded a great deal of influence in his own. As a leader of the minority at a time when some sectional animosity remained he displayed the same strength and resourcefulness as when fighting against odds on the battlefield. His influence rested chiefly upon his strong character and his conciliatory manners. The olive branch that had been put forward so dramatically by Lamar in his eulogy of Charles Sumner was carried more quietly but probably with equal effectiveness by Walthall.
He was twice married, first to Sophie Bridges, who died within a year of their marriage in 1856, and then, in 1859, to Mary Lecky Jones, of Mecklenburg County, Va. , whose death followed shortly after his. He had no children, but left an adopted daughter.
