Yancey, William Lowndes, 1814-1863

American lawyer and politician.

Lawyer, Ala. legislator, and secessionist.

Attorney, editor, and politician, William L. Yancey was for many years a resident of Greenville, South Carolina. As a result of a duel with the uncle of his wife, Yancey moved to Cahaba, Alabama, where he planted and edited the Cahaba Democrat and Gazette. Yancey was later a C.S.A. Senator from Alabama.

William Lowndes Yancey was born in 1814 in Ogeechee Falls, Ga. He received his early education in Ga. and N.Y. and attended Williams College in Mass.

Yancey was a planter in Ala. and S.C., and the editor of the Greenville Mountaineer, the Cahaba Democrat, and the Argus. In 1839 he was admitted to the bar and entered a law partnership.

Yancey began his political career in 1841 with his election to the state house, followed in 1843 with his election to the state senate. In 1844 he was elected to Congress but resigned two years later to form a legal partnership.

Between 1848 and 1861 Yancey was a delegate to many state and national Democratic conventions. He withdrew from several of the conventions when his pro-slavery Ala. platform was not adopted.

Yancey chaired the 1861 Constitutional Convention Committee that favored secession. His states rights and secessionist ideology made Yancey a very powerful and influential orator.

During the war President Davis appointed Yancey commissioner to France and England to acquire their recognition of the Confederacy. He returned unsuccessful in 1862 and accepted the seat in the C.S.A. Senate to which he had been elected while abroad. He remained in this office until his death in 1863.