W. S. Oldham was a legislator, judge, and newspaperman who came to Texas from Arkansas. He was a member of the 1861 Texas Secession Convention, was chosen as a delegate to the provisional Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Alabama, and was sent to Arkansas by Jefferson Davis in 1861 to work for secession. He served as a Texas Confederate senator from 1862 to 1865 and was an influential defender of states rights who opposed centralized conscription and granting the president power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus.