Yancey, William Lowndes, << YAN sih, WIHL yuhm lowndz >> (1814-1863), an American statesman, was often called “The Orator of Secession.” He served in the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat from Alabama from 1844 to 1846. After leaving Congress, Yancey devoted himself to arousing the South to defend its rights.
Yancey’s “Alabama Platform” demanded that Southerners have the right to take their slaves into Western territories. He opposed the Compromise of 1850. In 1858, he tried to organize a League of United Southerners to work for Southern rights in both the Democratic and Republican parties.
Yancey opposed Stephen A. Douglas’s candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1860, and supported John C. Breckinridge. He drew up Alabama’s Secession Ordinance. After the American Civil War began in 1861, he served as a Confederate commissioner to Europe and a Confederate senator from Alabama. Yancey was born on Aug. 10, 1814, in Warren County, Georgia. He practiced law and edited a newspaper in Greenville, South Carolina, before moving to Alabama. He died on July 27, 1863.
