Louis Trezevant Wigfall was born on April 21, 1816, in Edgefield, South Carolina, to Levi Wigfall and Eliza Thomson. His father, a prominent merchant, died in 1818, and his mother died around 1829. He attended the University of Virginia and South Carolina College and returned to Edgefield around 1839 in order to practice law. He married Charlotte Maria Cross in 1841, and they had at least three children: Francis, Louise, and Mary Frances.

Wigfall moved to Texas in 1848 and was elected to the state legislature the following year. He became a United States Senator in 1859, but he resigned from the Senate in 1861 after Texas seceded from the Union. He briefly served as a brigadier general in the Confederate army before securing a seat in the Confederate Senate. Wigfall moved to England after the war and did not return to the United States until 1870. He died of apoplexy in Galveston, Texas, on February 18, 1874.