William Watson (born 1826) was an author and soldier in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He is most noted for an autobiographical book Life in The Confederate Army that he wrote after the war chronicling his army life. William Watson was born in 1826 in the Scottish village of Skelmorlie, some twenty-five miles west of Glasgow on the Firth of Clyde. His father, a landscape gardener named Henry Watson, had been born in England. He had come to Skelmorlie in 1820 to lay out the grounds of Ashcraig, the estate of Andrew D. Campbell.