Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/159

 William Lowndes Yancey. 151

[From the Montgomery, Ala., Daily Advertiser, April 15, 1893.]

WILLIAM LOWNDES YANCEY, The Sincere and Unfaltering Advocate of Southern Rights.

His Eventful Career as Sketched by Hon. Anthony W. Dillard.

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS, April 12, 1893. Editor Advertiser:

No man in the South contributed so much as did William L. Yancey towards working up the people of the South to the deter- mination to secede from the Union, in order to 'withdraw slavery from the possible unfriendly action of the United States. Mr. Yancey, during this time, enjoyed none of the prestige of official position he was the editor of a newspaper, and, therefore, able to scatter his opinions on the wings of the wind; he was a private citizen, a lawyer engaged in practicing his profession, and was in quite moderate cir- cumstances in regard to fortune. Nor was his location in Mont- gomery of a character to draw to him the leading men of the South, nor to afford peculiar facilities for the propagation of his opinions. Montgomery was not at all a political centre, to which politicians flocked for consultation and comparison of opinions. Nor was it a Pharos, whence political light was flashed out over the South, with electric speed.

Mr. Yancey had held few public offices, having served two sessions in the State Legislature and one term in Congress, in the forties, and he had never afterwards seemed solicitous to hold public offices certainly, he took no open and active steps to obtain a nomination for any position, nor gave his friends encouragement to press his name. But it must not be inferred from what has been stated, that he was, in the smallest degree, a disappointed and soured office- seeker.

Nor was Mr. Yancey politically strong and popular in Alabama. The nullification battle in 1832 had divided the Alabama Democracy into Jackson Democrats and Calhoun Democrats. The former being