YAN'CEY, WI 1.1.I A NI LOW N DES ( 81-1-113), An American orator, lawyer, and political leader, born at Ogeechee Shoals, Ga. De studied law at Greenville. S. C.. was mlniitted to the bar in 1834, and besides practicing his profes sion edited a Unionist paper and spoke against nullification. In 1830 he removed to a planta tion at Oakland, near Cala wha„\ la. Ili; slaves having been accidentally poisoned, lie re6ntered law and journalism. was prominent as an anti Whig orator in the Presidential campaign of 1840, and from 1811 to 1844 was a member of the State Legislature. From IS-14 to 1846 he was a member of Congress. and sAion after taking his seat attracted national attention by his par ticipation in a bloodless duel with Representative Clingman of North Carolina. 1;esigning from Congress, he became a hitter opponent of com promise between the North and the South, was the author of the famous "Alabama Platform" of 1847, fought vigorously against the com promise measures of 1850, anticipated the coming conflict between the sections, and became the recognized leader of the more radical 'lenient in the South. In the period immediately preceding the Civil War his remarkable oratory contributed perhaps more than anything else to 'fire the South ern heart,' and he was prerninently the 'orator of secession.' lie was a member of the national
Democratic Nominating Convention at Charles ton in ISO; led from that convention the seced ers, who afterwards not at Baltimore; and then made a canvass of the North, speaking to great audiences in the SBridle, New England, and Western States. "It was he more than any says Woodrow Wilson, "who taught the South what Douglas really meant. he more than any other who split the ranks of the Democratic Party at Charleston. made the election of Doug las impossible, and brought Mr. Lincoln in." Slightly before the outbreak of the Civil War. Yancey was sent by the Confederate f4overnment as the head of a commission, consisting besides himself of P. A. Rost and Dudley Mann, to se cure the recognition of the Confederacy by the various European governments; but after vain attempts in London and Paris to accomplish his purpose, he returned in the early spring of 1862, and thereafter until his death was a member of the Confederate Senate. Consult: Du Bose, Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey (Birmingham. 1892) ; and a chapter in W. G. Brown's The Lower South in American History (New York, 1902).