William Stewart Simkins (August 25, 1842 – February 27, 1929) was a Confederate soldier and professor of law at the University of Texas at Austin.

[3] At daybreak on January 9, 1861, Simkins saw the signal from a guard boat, and sounded the alarm in the sand battery, alerting his fellow Citadel cadets to the arrival of the Union ship the Star of the West, which was attempting to ferry supplies to Fort Sumter.

[4] The Daily Courier at first said he had fired the first shot, although the official account later blamed a local youth named G. E.

[4] On the morning of April 12, 1861, Simkins, on duty near Charleston Harbor, participated in the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the first battle of the war.

[3] In 1894 he was, alongside Texas Attorney General Charles Allen Culberson, an appellant in two cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Reagan v. Mercantile Trust Co. and Reagan v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.[11] Simkins joined the law faculty of the University of Texas in 1899.

Not understanding the context to Roman citizenship or a type of praetor, Savage made the first doodle of the four-legged duck-billed creature.

[3] Simkins gave a yearly speech each Thanksgiving in which he decried Northern carpetbaggers who, he suggested, helped promote a culture of poverty among freed slaves, and proclaimed his belief that the South had overcome its racist past and had arisen once again as an economic powerhouse.