William Lowndes Yancey and the Coming of the Civil War
Video Overview
Professor Walther will detail the many profound and troubling incidents in the early years of Yancey’s life in order to explain how this man transformed from a die-hard Unionist into Alabama’s premier secessionist. Family turbulence and violence combined with the hypocrisy and duplicity of his Northern step-father, resulting in Yancey’s early rejection and distrust of Northern society and his belief in the innate superiority of the slaveholding regime of the antebellum South. As disunion grew close in the 1850s, in a speech to students at the University of Alabama, Yancey all but pronounced himself the embodiment of the South and its leading defender.
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