Yancey, yan'si, William Lowndes (1814-1863), an American statesman. He was born in Hancock County, Georgia, and died at Montgomery, Alabama. He was descended from Virginian and New England families of standing. He was prepared for the law. He came into national notice as a congressman from Alabama in 1844. Yancey was one of the most determined, talented, and uncompromising, but not farseeing, advocates that American slavery has ever had. At the close of the Mexican War he demanded that the treaty should provide for slaveholding in the territory acquired by the war. As early as 1850 he urged Alabama to secede from the Union. Yancey was a man of fiery eloquence. In the Baltimore convention of 1860 he was the acknowledged leader of the Southern Democracy. Under his influence Alabama took the lead in secession. Yancey was the leader of secession. Yancey, not Jefferson Davis, was the logical candidate for the presidency of the Confederacy. Yancey desired to gain European recognition and moral support by entering into commercial treaties with France, Great Britain, and Germany, whereby the Confederacy would agree for twenty years to ship cotton and receive manufactured goods free from duties. He urged also the immediate purchase of guns and ammunition before the Federal government could blockade the Southern ports effectually. He was a member of the Confederate Senate. He considered Jefferson Davis an inefficient man. Yancey lived long enough to see that the course which he had urged his neighbors to take had led to the destruction of slavery and the temporary ruin of Southern homes and prosperity.