Yancey, William Lowndes

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William Lowndes Yancey

born , Aug. 10, 1814, Warren county, Ga., U.S.

died July 27, 1863, Montgomery, Ala.

U.S. politician.

He was admitted to the bar and served as editor of the Greenville Mountaineer. During the nullification crisis, he took a firm Unionist stand. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1844–46), and in response to the Wilmot Proviso he drafted the Alabama Platform (1848), which asserted slaveholders' rights to take their chattel with them to the new territories. He later added secession to the platform. He helped create the League of United Southerners (1858) and supported the Southern Democrats in their nomination of John C. Breckinridge for president (1860). He drafted Alabama's secession ordinance and served in the Confederate government (1861–63).

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Yancey, William Lowndes - American southern political leader and "fire-eater" who, in his later years, consistently urged the South to secede in response to Northern antislavery agitation.

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