John A. Winston was born on September 4, 1812, in Madison County, in what is now Alabama, the son of William Winston and Mary Bacon Cooper. His grandfather was said to be Anthony Winston who was born in Hanover County, Virginia, served as an officer in the Revolutionary Army, and removed to Madison County in 1810.
The boy received such education as private schools afforded and spent some time in Cumberland College, now the University of Nashville, at Nashville, Tennessee.
In 1834 or 1835, he bought a large plantation in Sumter County, Alabama, and became a planter. He followed this occupation successfully for ten years and then opened a cotton commission house in Mobile. He remained in this business until his death, although he never surrendered his interest in planting and owned large plantations in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.
Winston entered politics in 1840, serving in the Alabama House of Representatives. He was reelected in 1842, and he was elected to the Alabama Senate in 1843. He remained in the senate until 1853, serving as president from 1845 to 1849. Winston also represented Alabama at the 1848 Democratic Convention in Baltimore and in the 1850 convention in Nashville. Winston became Alabama's 15th governor on August 1, 1853, and he was sworn into office on December 20, 1853. During his term, he encouraged public education, and he signed a bill in 1854 creating Alabama's public school system. Also during his tenure, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad was charted, the Alabama Educational Association was organized, and the Republican Party was organized. The U. S. Congress also passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which repealed the limitations on the expansion of slavery. Winston was reelected to a second term on August 6, 1855. Winston remained active in politics, serving as a delegate to the 1860 Democratic Convention held in South Carolina, and he was on the ticket as a presidential elector for Stephen A. Douglas that year. He also was an Alabama commissioner to Louisiana in 1861 and a member of the 1865 Alabama Constitutional Convention. Winston was elected to U. S. Senate in 1867, but was disenfranchised when he refused to take the oath of allegiance. He died on December 12, 1871, in Mobile, Alabama.
John A. Winston had a ready tongue and a keen sarcastic wit.
In 1832, John A. Winston married Mary Agnes Walker by whom he had only one child, a daughter.
After his first wife's death in 1842, he married a second wife, Mary W. Logwood, from whom he was divorced by act of the legislature in 1850.
William Henry Winston was married to Mary Bacon Cooper, by whom he had two children. William H. Winston was married to Judith McCraw Jones, by whom he had several children.
William Lowndes Yancey was an American journalist, politician, orator, diplomat and a leader of the Southern secession movement.
