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Business, personal, legal and military correspondence, newspaper clippings, broadsides, articles and miscellaneous papers of William T. Walthall (1820–1899) of Vicksburg, Confederate soldier, journalist, diplomat, close friend of Jefferson Davis, and reputed "ghost writer" of the The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.
The collection contains many Jefferson Davis letters; correspondence with the publishing firms of Turnbull Brothers and D. Appleton and Company, concerning The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government; correspondence concerning the capture of Jefferson Davis; and correspondence concerning the yellow fever epidemics of 1878 and 1882 in Memphis and Pensacola.
Major Walthall was born in Virginia, July 2, 1820; educated for the bar, but never practiced law; was leading editorial writer of the Mobile Tribune, 1860; entered Confederate States army in 1861; rose to rank of Major and served throughout the war; after the war, was editorial writer for the Mobile Register; in 1876, removed to the Mississippi Gulf Coast, to assist Jefferson Davis in the preparation of The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government; served as United States consul in Demerara, British Guiana, 1888–1889; returned to Vicksburg, where he lived until his death, May 15, 1899.
The collection contains correspondence with Confederate government officials, general field and staff officers in the Confederate States Army, and bishops and other clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church.
The correspondence is arranged chronologically. Among the correspondents whose letters are in the collection are the following, together with the number of their letters: