William Lowndes Yancey
William Lowndes Yancey (August 10, 1814 –
July 27, 1863) was an American leader of the Southern secession movement as a journalist,
politician, orator, and diplomat. Part of the group characterized as the Fire-Eaters, Yancey
was seen by many as one of the most effective agitators for secession and rhetorical defenders of slavery. Throughout the critical 1850s Yancey, sometimes referred to as the "Orator of Secession", demonstrated
the ability to hold large audiences under his spell for hours at a time.[1]
Youth
Yancey’s mother was Caroline Bird. Caroline lived on the family home (nicknamed "the Aviary") located near the falls of the
Ogeechee River in Warren County, Georgia.
On December 8, 1808 she married Benjamin Cudworth Yancey, a lawyer in South Carolina who
had served on the U.S.S. Constellation during the Quasi-War with France. Yancey was born at the
"the Aviary", and his father died three years later on October 26, 1817 of yellow
fever.[2]
Yancey’s mother married the Reverend Nathan Sydney Smith Beman on April 23, 1821. Beman had temporarily relocated to South
Carolina to operate Mt. Zion Academy where William was a student. In the spring of 1823 the entire family moved when Reverend
Beman took a position at the First Presbyterian Church in Troy, New York. Beman worked
with Reverend Charles G. Finney in the New School movement and in the 1830s
became involved with abolitionism through contacts with Theodore Dwight Ward and
Lyman Beecher. [3]
Beman’s marriage was marred by domestic unrest and spousal abuse, leading to serious considerations of divorce and finally a
permanent separation in 1835. This atmosphere affected the children and led to William rejecting many of his step-father’s
teachings. Yancey’s biographer, historian Eric H. Walther, speculates that much of Yancey’s later career was a result of low self
esteem and a search for public adulation and approval that went back to his childhood experiences with Reverend Beman. [4]
In the fall of 1830 Yancey was enrolled at Williams College in northwestern
Massachusetts. The sixteen year old Yancey was admitted as a sophomore based on the
required entrance examinations. At Williams he participated in the debating society and for a short time was the editor of a
student newspaper. In the autumn of 1832 Yancey took his first steps as a politician by working on the campaign for Whig Ebenezer
Emmons. Overall, Yancey had a successful stay at Williams academically that was marred only by frequent disciplinary problems.
Despite being selected as the Senior Orator by his class, Yancey left the school in the spring of 1833 six weeks before
graduation. [5]
Early career
William Lowndes Yancey
Yancey returned to the South and ended up relocating in Greenville, South
Carolina. He originally lived on his uncle’s plantation where he served as a bookkeeper. The uncle, Robert Cunningham, was
a strong unionist as were most of Yancey’s family, including his birth father. On July 4, 1834 at a Fourth of July celebration
Yancey made a stirring nationalistic address in which he openly attacked the radicals of the state who were still talking
secession in the repercussions of the Nullification Crisis:
| “ |
Listen, not then, my countrymen, to the voice which whispers (for as yet, it does not
raise itself above a whisper) that Americans, who have been knit together by so many cords of affection, can no longer be mutual
worshippers at the Shrine of Freedom – no longer can exist together, citizens of the same Republic … . [6] |
” |
As a result of Yancey’s political expressions, in November 1834 he was appointed editor of the Greenville (South Carolina)
Mountaineer. As editor he attacked both nullification and the chief architect of nullification, John C. Calhoun. Yancey compared Calhoun to Aaron Burr and referred
to them as "two fallen arch angels – who have made efforts to tear down the battlements and safeguards of our country, that they
might rule, the Demons of the Storm." [7]
Yancey resigned from the newspaper on May 14, 1835 and on August 13, 1835 married Sarah Caroline
Earl. As his dowry Yancey received 35 slaves and a quick entry into the planter class. In the winter of 1836-1837 Yancey removed
to her plantation in Alabama, near Cahaba
(Dallas County). It was an inopportune time to relocate. As part of the Panic of
1837 Yancey was effected by declining cotton prices which fell from fifteen cents a pound in 1835 to as low as five cents a pound
in 1837. [8]
In early 1838 Yancey took over the Cahaba Southern Democrat, and his first editorial was a strong defense of slavery. From his
current economic perspective, Yancey began to negatively identify the anti-slavery movement with issues like the national bank,
internal improvements, and expanding federal power. As the former nationalist moved to a states’ rights position Yancey also
changed his attitude toward Calhoun – applauding Calhoun’s role in the Gag Rule Debates. Yancey
also began to attack Henry Clay and the American Colonization Society which Yancey identified
as part of the attack on Southern slavery. [9]
Yancey, like most members of the planter class, was a strong believer in a personal code of honor.[10] In September 1838 Yancey returned for a brief return visit to Greenville. A
political slur by Yancey in a private conversation was overheard by a teenage relative of the aggrieved party. One thing led to
another, and Yancey was confronted by another relative (and his wife’s uncle), Dr. Robinson Earle. Conversation turned to
violence, and the always armed Yancey ended up killing the doctor in a street brawl. Yancey was tried and sentenced to a year in
jail for manslaughter. An unrepentant Yancey was pardoned after only a few months, but while incarcerated Yancey wrote for his
newspaper, "Reared with the spirit of a man in my bosom – and taught to preserve inviolate my honor – my character, and my
person, I have acted as such a spirit dictated. [11]
Yancey returned to his paper in March 1839 but sold it a couple months later when he moved to Wetumpka in Coosa County, Alabama. While his intent was
to resume his life as a planter, Yancey suffered a huge financial reverse when his slaves were poisoned as a result of a feud
between Yancey’s overseer and a neighboring overseer. Two slaves were killed, and most of the others were incapacitated for
months. Unable to afford replacements and burdened with other debts from his newspaper, Yancey was forced to sell most of the
slaves as they recovered. Yancey did open in Wetumpka the Argus and Commercial Advertiser. [12]
Public office
Yancey was increasingly interested in politics as his personal politics moved towards the most radical wing of the Democratic
Party. Influenced most by Dixon Hall Lewis, Yancey fell into a social and political
circle which included such political leaders of the state as Thomas Mays, J. L. M. Curry, John A. Campbell, and John Gill
Shorter. In April 1840 Yancey started a weekly campaign newsletter that supported Van
Buren (D) over Harrison (W) in the presidential election
while emphasizing that slavery should now be the number one concern of the South. While still not a secessionist, Yancey was also
no longer an unconditional unionist. [13]
He was elected in 1841 to the Alabama House
of Representatives, in which he served for one year. In March of 1842 Yancey sold the newspaper because of his increasing
debt (throughout his career as an editor he faced the problem of many fellow editors – obtaining and collecting on
subscriptions), and he opened a law practice. In 1843 he ran for the Alabama Senate and
was elected by a vote of 1,115 to 1,025. His special concern in this election was the effort being made by Whigs to determine apportionment in the state legislature based on the "federal ratio" of
each slave counting as three-fifths of a person. Currently only whites were counted and the
change would benefit the Whigs who generally were the largest slaveholders. [14] This division between large slaveholders and yeomen Alabamans would continue through the Alabama
secession convention in 1861.
In 1844 Yancey was elected to the United States House of
Representatives to fill a vacancy (winning by 2,197 to 2,137) and re-elected in 1845 (receiving over 4,000 votes as the
Whigs did not even field a candidate). In Congress his ability and his unusual oratorical gifts at once gained recognition.
Yancey’s first speech came on January 6, 1845 when he was selected by the Democrats to respond to a speech by Thomas Clingman, a Whig from North Carolina, who had
opposed Texas annexation. Clingman was offended by the tone of Yancey’s speech and afterwards Yancey refused to clarify that he
had not intended to impugn Clingman’s honor. Clingman challenged Yancey to a duel, and he naturally accepted. The exchange of
pistol fire occurred in nearby Beltsville, Maryland and neither combatant was
injured. [15]
In Congress, Yancey was an effective spokesman in opposing internal improvements and tariffs
and supporting states’ rights and the start of the Mexican-American War. More and more he subscribed to conspiracy theories regarding Northern
intentions while helping to provide ammunition for those Northerners who were starting to believe in a slaveholders’ conspiracy.
In 1846, however, he resigned his seat, partly for financial reasons, and partly because of his disgust with the Northern
Democrats, whom he accused of sacrificing their principles to their economic interests. [16]
Alabama Platform and Address to the People of Alabama
Within a few months of his resignation Yancey moved to Montgomery where he
purchased a 20 acre dairy and farm while establishing a law partnership with John A. Elmore. No longer a planter, Yancey still
remained a slaveholder, having 11 in 1850, 14, by 1852, and 24 from 1858-1860. While he had suggested with his resignation that
his active role in politics might be over, "perhaps forever", Yancey found this to be impossible. [17]
Yancey recognized the significance of the Wilmot Proviso to the South and in 1847, as
the first talk of slaveholder Zachary Taylor as a presidential candidate surfaced, Yancey
saw him as a possibility for bringing together a Southern political movement that would cross party lines. Yancey made it clear
that his support for Taylor was conditional upon Taylor denouncing the Wilmot Proviso. However Taylor announced that he would
seek the Whig nomination, and in December 1852 Lewis Cass of Michigan, the leading Democratic candidate, endorsed the policy of Popular Sovereignty. [18]
With no available candidate sufficiently opposed to the Proviso, in 1848 Yancey secured the
adoption by the state Democratic convention of the so-called "Alabama Platform," which was
endorsed by the legislatures of Alabama and Georgia and by Democratic state conventions in Florida and
Virginia. The platform declared:
1. The Federal government could not restrict slavery in the territories.
2. Territories could not prohibit slavery until the point where they were meeting in convention to draft a state constitution
in order to petition Congress for statehood.
3. Alabama delegates to the Democratic convention were to oppose any candidate supporting either the Proviso or Popular
Sovereignty (which allowed territories to exclude slavery at any point)
4. The federal government must specifically overrule Mexican anti-slavery laws in the Mexican Cession and actively protect slavery.
When the national convention was held in Baltimore, Cass was nominated on the
fourth ballot. Yancey’s proposal that the convention adopt the main points of the Alabama Platform was rejected by a 216-36 vote.
Yancey and one other Alabama delegate left the convention in protest, and Yancey’s efforts to stir up a third party movement in
the state failed. [19]
The opening salvo in a new level of sectional conflict occurred on December 13, 1848 when John G. Palfrey (W) of Massachusetts introduced a bill to abolish slavery in the District of
Columbia. Throughout 1849 in the South "the rhetoric of resistance to the North escalated and spread". John Calhoun (D) delivered his famous
"Southern Address", but only 48 out of 121 Congressmen signed off on it. Yancey persuaded a June 1849 state Democratic Party
meeting to endorse Calhoun’s address and was instrumental in calling for the Nashville
Convention scheduled for June of 1850. [20]
Yancey was opposed to both the Compromise of 1850 and the disappointing results of
the Nashville Convention. The latter, rather than making a strong stand for secession as Yancey had hoped, simply advocated
extending the Missouri Compromise Line to the Pacific Coast. Yancey helped create Southern Rights Associations (a concept that
originated in South Carolina) in Alabama to pursue a secessionist agenda. A convention held in February 1851 of these Alabama
associations produced Yancey’s radical "Address to the People of Alabama". The address began:
| “ |
The legacy of the old party organization had been to lead their members to avoid any
decisive action on the great slavery question, and to wink and acquiesce in aggressions on the South rather than endanger party
success by opposition to them[21] |
” |
The address hit all of the main points that would ultimately resurface in the secession winter of 1860-1861, especially the
treatment of Southerners:
| “ |
…as inferiors in the Union – as degraded by your contact with slaves, and as unworthy
of an association with the Northern man in the great work of extending the institution of slavery over the vast plains of the
West. [22] |
” |
Despite the efforts of Yancey, the popularity of the Compromise of 1850, the failure of the Nashville Convention, and the
acceptance of the more moderate Georgia Platform by much of the South, led to unionist
victories in Alabama and most of the South. Yancey’s third party support for George M.
Troup of Georgia on a Southern Rights platform drew only 2,000 votes. [23]
The Road to Secession
Yancey continued to support the most radical Southern positions. He is generally included as one of a group of southerners
referred to as "fire-eaters." Historian Emory Thomas notes that Yancey along with
Edmund Ruffin and Robert Barnwell Rhett "remained in
the secessionist forefront longest and loudest." Thomas characterized the whole fire-eater cause as reactionary in purpose (the
preservation of the South as it then existed) but revolutionary in their means (the rejection of the existing political
order).[24]
When Bleeding Kansas erupted in 1855-1856, Yancey spoke publicly in support of
Jefferson Buford’s efforts to raise 300 men to go to Kansas and
fight for Southern interests. In 1856 Yancey was head of the platform committee for the state Democratic and
Anti-Know Nothing Convention, and he succeeded in the convention’s readopting the Alabama
platform. In June of 1856 he participated in a rally condemning Charles Sumner while
praising his assailant Preston Brooks. In June 1857 Yancey spoke at a rally opposing
Robert J. Walker’s actions as territorial governor of Kansas, and in January 1858 he participated in a rally supporting
William Walker of Nicaragua filibustering
fame, calling the "Central American enterprise as the cause of the South." [25]
Throughout the mid-1850s he also lectured on behalf of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association of the Union, an organization that
eventually purchased and restored Mount Vernon from John A. Washington in 1858. Yancey helped to raise $75,000 for this project.
[26]
Editor and fellow fire-eater James De Bow was a leader in establishing
the Southern Commercial Conventions in the 1850s. At the 1857 meeting in Knoxville De Bow had called for a reopening of the
international slave trade. At the May 1858 convention in Montgomery, responding to a speech by Virginian Roger A. Pryor opposing the slave trade, Yancey, in an address that spanned several days made the
following points:
| “ |
If slavery is right per se, if it is right to raise slaves for sale, does it not
appear that it is right to import them?
Let us then wipe from our statute book this mark of Cain which our enemies have placed there.
We want negroes [sic] cheap, and we want a sufficiency of them, so as to supply the cotton demand of the whole world. [27]
|
” |
Yancey supported a plan originated by Edmund Ruffin for the creation of a League of
United Southerners as an alternative to the national political parties. In a June 16, 1858 letter to his friend James S.
Slaughter that was publicly circulated (Horace Greeley referred to it as "The Scarlet
Letter"), Yancey wrote:
| “ |
No National Party can save us; no Sectional Party can do it. But if we could do as our
fathers did, organize Committees of Safety all over the cotton states (and it is only in them that we can hope of any effective
movement) we shall fire the Southern heart – instruct the Southern mind – give courage to each other, and at the proper moment,
by one organized, concerted action, we can precipitate the cotton states into a revolution. [28] |
” |
Yancey was ill for much of the remainder of 1858 and early 1859. For the 1859 Southern Commercial Convention in Vicksburg,
which passed the resolution to repeal all state and federal regulations banning the slave trade, Yancey could only contribute
editorials although by July 1859 he was able to speak publicly in Columbia, South Carolina in favor of repealing the
restrictions. When the Alabama Democratic Party organized in the winter of 1859-1860 for the upcoming national convention, they
chose Yancey to lead them on the basis of the Alabama Platform. Both Stephen A.
Douglas and Popular Sovereignty were the immediate target, but by then Yancey also recognized that secession would be
necessary if a "Black Republican" were to gain the White House. [29]
1860
After twelve years' absence from the national conventions of the Democratic Party, Yancey attended the Charleston convention
in April 1860. The Douglas faction refused to accept a platform, modeled after Yancey’s Alabama Platform of 1848, committed to
protecting slavery in the territories. When the platform committee presented such a proposal to the convention, it was voted down
on the floor by a 165-138 vote. Yancey and the Alabama delegation left the hall and they were followed by the delegates of
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, and two of the three delegates from Delaware. On the next day
the Georgia delegation and a majority of the Arkansas delegation withdrew. As Eric Walther states, "Through his years of
preparation and despite some brief wavering, William L. Yancey had finally destroyed the Democratic Party." [30]
Failing to nominate a candidate, the convention adjourned and reconvened in Baltimore on June 18, 1860. In a last gasp effort
to obtain party unity, Douglas supporter George N. Sanders made an unauthorized offer to Yancey to run as vice-president. Yancey
turned this down, and the entire Yancey delegation from Alabama was refused credentials in favor of a pro-Douglas slate headed by
John Forsyth. With the South Carolina delegation also being denied credentials, the Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, and
Tennessee delegations left the convention. The Southern representatives reconvened in Baltimore on June 18, 1860 and adopted the
Yancey platform from the Charleston convention and nominated John C. Breckinridge for president. In a speech before the
convention Yancey characterized the Douglas supporters as "ostrich like – their head was in the sand of squatter sovereignty, and
they did not know their great, ugly, ragged abolition body was exposed". Yancey, who had already made thirty public addresses in
1860, delivered twenty more during the campaign. If he had not been before, he was certainly now a national figure – a figure
making it clear that secession would follow anything other than a Breckinridge election.[31]
Yancey’s speaking tour in favor of Breckinridge was not confined to the South. In Wilmington, Delaware Yancey stated, "We
stand upon the dark platform of southern slavery, and all we ask is to be allowed to keep it to ourselves. Let us do that, and we
will not let the negro [sic] insult you by coming here and marrying your daughters." [32]
On October 10, 1860 at Cooper Institute Hall in New York Yancey advised Northerners interested in preserving the Union to
"Enlarge your jails and penitentiaries, re-enforce and strengthen your police force, and keep the irrepressible conflict fellows
from stealing our negroes…" .Yancey cited southern fears that with abolitionists in power, "Emissaries will percolate between
master [and] slave as water between the crevices of rocks underground. They will be found everywhere, with strychnine to put in
our wells." He further warned the crowd that Republican agitation would make Southern whites "the enemies of that race until we
drench our fields with the blood of the unfortunate people." [33]
At Faneuil Hall in Boston Yancey defended the practices of slavery:
| “ |
You are allowed to whip your children; we are allowed to whip our negroes [sic]. There
is no cruelty in the practice. … Our negroes [sic] are but children. … The negro [sic] that will not work is made to work.
Society tolerates no drones. [34] |
” |
From Boston Yancey’s tour included stops in Albany, Syracuse, Florence (Kentucky), Louisville, Nashville, and New Orleans,
finally returning to Montgomery on November 5. When news of Lincoln’s election reached the city, Yancey rhetorically asked a
public assemblage protesting the results, "Shall we remain [in the Union] and all be slaves? Shall we wait to bear our share of
the common dishonor? God forbid!" [35]
Secession
On February 24, 1860 the Alabama legislature had passed a joint resolution requiring the governor to call for the election of
delegates to a state convention if a Republican was elected president. After first waiting for the official electoral votes to be
counted, Governor Andrew Moore called for the election of delegates to take place on December 24 with the convention to meet on
January 7, 1861. When the convention convened, Yancey was the guiding spirit. The delegates were split between those insisting on
immediate secession versus those who would secede only in cooperation with other Southern states. A frustrated Yancey lashed out
at those cooperationists:
| “ |
The misguided, deluded, wicked men in our midst, if any such there be, who shall
oppose it [secession], will be in alignment with the abolition power of the Federal government, and as our safety demands, must
be looked upon and dealt with as public enemies. [36] |
” |
Eventually, the ordinance of secession was passed over cooperationists objections by a vote of 61-39.
When the newly established Confederate states of America met later that month in Montgomery to establish their formal union,
Yancey was not a delegate, but he delivered the address of welcome to Jefferson Davis,
selected as provisional President, on his arrival at Montgomery. While many of the
fire-eaters were opposed to the selection of a relative moderate like Davis, Yancey accepted him as a good choice. In his speech,
Yancey indicated that in the selection of Davis, "The man and the hour have met. We now hope that prosperity, honor, and victory
await his administration."[37] Many historians agree with
Emory Thomas who wrote, "When Yancey and Davis met in Montgomery the helm of the revolution changed hands. Yancey and the
radicals had stirred the waters; Davis and the moderates would sail the ship."[38]
The Southern Nation at War
Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Yancey met on February 18, 1861 as Davis was starting to put together the executive
branch of the government. Yancey turned down a cabinet position but indicated he would be interested in a diplomatic post. On
March 16 Yancey was formally appointed as the head of a diplomatic mission to England and France. Ambrose Dudley Mann and Pierre
Rost were also part of the mission. Confederate Secretary of State Toombs’ official instructions to Yancey were to convince
Europe of the righteousness and legality of southern secession, the viability of the militarily strong Confederacy, the value of
cotton and virtually duty free trade, and the South’s willingness to observe all treaty agreements in effect between Britain and
the United States except for the portion of the Webster Ashburton Treaty requiring aid in combating the African slave trade.
Above all, Yancey was to strive for diplomatic recognition.[39]
While the choice of a firebrand like Yancey for a diplomatic post has been second guessed, Yancey was as effective in dealing
with British diplomats and industrialists as could have been expected.[40] Arriving in Britain just a few days ahead of the news about the attack on Fort Sumter, Yancey and
his delegation met informally with British foreign secretary Lord John Russell on May 3 and May 9. Yancey emphasized the points
from his instructions and denied, upon being questioned by Russell, that there was any intent to reopen the slave trade. Russell
was non-committal, and on May 12 Queen Victoria announced British neutrality combined with recognition that a state of
belligerency existed. While Yancey was generally optimistic about the ultimate success of his mission, his observations in
conversations and in the British papers forced him to conclude that the slavery issue was the primary obstacle to formal
diplomatic recognition. [41]
After news arrived concerning the Confederate victory at Bull Run, Yancey
attempted to arrange another meeting with Russell, but he was forced to present his arguments in writing. In an August 24
response directed to the representatives "of the so-styled Confederate States of America", Russell merely reiterated the previous
determination to remain neutral. Critics maintain that the Yancey mission failed to adequately exploit openings presented by
Union Secretary of State William Seward’s antagonist attitude towards Great Britain or to
address British concerns concerning the effect of the war on Great Britain. In late August, with little else to do, Yancey
submitted his resignation but, due to the events of the Trent Affair, Yancey did not leave
until his replacements, James M. Mason and John
Slidell(selected by President Davis in July before he was aware of Yancey’s intent), arrived in January 1862. Yancey did
make one further attempt to meet with Russell in the wake of the Trent affair, but Russell replied to the delegation that "we
must decline to enter into any official communication with them." [42]
While still in England Yancey was elected to the Confederate Senate. His return home, because of the Union blockade, found him
landing at the Sabine Pass near the Texas and Louisiana border. On his way to Richmond he stopped in New Orleans where he made a
public speech lamenting the fact that Europe looked down on the Confederacy over the issue of slavery, stating, "We cannot look
for any sympathy or help from abroad. We must rely on ourselves alone." [43].
From March 28, 1862 until May 1, 1863 Yancey served in three sessions of the Confederate Congress. While there he reluctantly
supported the Confederate Conscription Act of April 16, 1862 but was instrumental in allowing many state exemptions to the draft
as well as the unpopular exemption for one overseer for every twenty slaves, an exemption that applied to about 30,000 men. He
unsuccessfully argued against the excessive use of secret, unrecorded sessions of Congress and generally pursued a states’ rights
position in regard to the exercise of national war powers in general and impressment of supplies and slaves by the federal
Confederate government in particular. On military matters, Yancey wanted details provided to Congress on reports of execution
without trials of Confederate soldiers by General Braxton Bragg, questioned the reasons Virginia had twenty nine brigadier
generals while Alabama only had four, authored a resolution condemning drunkenness within the army, and joined in demands that
Davis account for complaints on the military administration of the Trans-Mississippi District. [44]
Yancey gradually ran afoul of President Davis on matters of policy, although he was not one of Davis’ most extreme critics.
Their differences accelerated in a series of letters exchanged after May of 1863, and no final resolution was reached. In
Congress Yancey and Benjamin Hill of Georgia, who had previously clashed in 1856, had their differences over a bill intended to
create the Confederate Supreme Court erupt into physical violence. Hill actually hit Yancey in the head with a glass inkstand on
the floor of the Senate, but in the ensuing investigation it was Yancey, not Hill, who was censured. [45]
Yancey returned to Alabama in May of 1863, before Congress had adjourned. By the end of June Yancey was extremely ill, but he
still continued his correspondence with President Davis and others. Finally on July 27, 1862, two weeks before his forty ninth
birthday, Yancey died of kidney disease. Yancey’s funeral on July 29, 1863 brought the city of Montgomery to a standstill, and he
was buried at Oakwood cemetery on Goat Hill near the original Confederate Capitol. [46]
Notes
- ^ Craven pg. 276. Potter pg. 409. Potter refers to Yancey as "the most
silver-tongued of a race of uninhibited orators, and the most fervent exponent of southern rights."
- ^ Walther p. 4-7.
- ^ Walther p. 9-15
- ^ Walther p. 3
- ^ Walther p. 18-24
- ^ Walther p. 29
- ^ Walther p. 31
- ^ Walther p. 32-40
- ^ Walther p. 41-43
- ^ see "Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South" by Bertram
Wyatt-Brown. In this influential work Wyatt-Brown links the Southern code of honor to the South’s reaction to the antislavery
movement as part of the build-up to secession and civil war.
- ^ Walther p. 46-52
- ^ Walther p. 52-53
- ^ Walther p. 59-61
- ^ Walther p. 61-68
- ^ Walther p. 74-83
- ^ Walther p. 86-91
- ^ Walther p. 91-95, p. 154
- ^ Walther p. 98-101
- ^ Walther p. 102-117
- ^ Walther p. 118-122
- ^ Walther p. 132
- ^ Walther p. 134
- ^ Walther p. 140-143
- ^ Thomas pg. 24-25
- ^ Walther p. 183-209
- ^ Walther p. 212
- ^ Walther p. 214-217. Periodically Yancey would make the distinction
between the practical matter of actually acquiring slaves from Africa as opposed to simply eliminating legal restrictions that
applied to only one type of property.
- ^ Walther p. 222. Walther adds that Yancey, in response to criticism within
the South would clarify that "I am a secessionist and not a revolutionist" p. 225. Rable pg. 7. Rable notes that while Yancey
here appealed to "antiparty rhetoric" and "Southern unity", neither here nor elsewhere did he present a picture of "what a
Southern nation might look like".
- ^ Walther p. 230-237
- ^ Walther p. 239-244
- ^ Walther p. 249-252
- ^ Walther p. 260
- ^ Walther p. 262
- ^ Walther p. 265
- ^ Walther p. 272
- ^ Walther p. 274-282 Rable pg. 36.
- ^ Walther p. 295
- ^ Thomas pg. 40.
- ^ Walther pg. 296-304. Davis pg. 199-200.
- ^ Hubbard pg. 30-31. Hubbard argues to the contrary that President Davis
could not have selected "three less qualified Southern leaders". In contrast to Walther’s characterizations of Yancey’s conduct,
Hubbard claimed that Yancey’s conduct in England was "consistently impulsive, arrogant, [and] unreasonably demanding".
- ^ Walther pg. 296-304. Hubbard pg. 34-35
- ^ Walther pg. 304-332. Hubbard pg. 38-56
- ^ Walther pg. 334-335
- ^ Walther pg. 335-363
- ^ Walther pg. 358-366
- ^ Walther pg. 366-371
References
- Craven, Avery. The Coming of the Civil War. (1947) ISBN 0-226-11894-0.
- Davis, William C. A Government of our Own: The Making of the Confederacy. (1994) ISBN 0-8071-2177-0.
- Du Bose, J.W., Life and Times of W. L. Yancey (Birmingham, Ala., 1892).
- Hubbard, Charles M. The Burden of Confederate Diplomacy. (1998) ISBN 1-57233-092-9.
- Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis 1848-1861. (1976) ISBN 0-06-131929-5.
- Rable, George C. The Confederate Republic: A Revolution Against Politics. (1994) ISBN 0-8078-2144-6.
- Thomas, Emory M. The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience. (1971) ISBN 0-87249-780-1.
- Walther, Eric H. William Lowndes Yancey: The Coming of the Civil War. (2006) ISBN-13:978-0-7394-8030-4.
- Wyatt-Brown, Bertram. Southern Honor: Ethics & Behavior in the Old South. (1982) ISBN 0-19-503310-8.
External links
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