William Cecil Price

Background

He was born probably on April 1, 1818 in Russell County, Virginia, United States, the son of Crabtree and Linny (Cecil) Price.

Education

He was educated at Knoxville. In his youth his parents removed to Greene County, Missouri. He began the study of law at the age of twenty.

Career

He was admitted to the bar at Springfield, Missouri. He served as county judge from 1842 to 1845, when he was appointed deputy federal surveyor of lands. He served as state senator from 1854 to 1857 and resigned in March to accept appointment to a vacancy on the circuit bench. Defeated in the August election for this position, he returned to his law practice.

In 1859 Governor Stewart appointed him to represent the state in the general land office at Washington, where he helped to prevent land frauds in the states of Missouri, Illinois, and Iowa. In February 1860 he was appointed treasurer of the United States by President Buchanan. He held a conspicuous and influential place in the counsels of the Democratic party in Missouri between 1845 and 1860, and he was in close and constant communication with John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis.

During the next six years he visited every part of the state to organize the groups against his ex-friend Benton and in favor of slavery. He claimed that he selected Henry S. Geyer as the man to defeat Benton for election to the United States Senate in 1851. Later he claimed he selected the governor elected in 1860, Claiborne F. Jackson.

He died in Chicago, at the home of his son-in-law, William S. Newberry.

Achievements

• William Cecil Price was one of the leading proslavery Democrats throughout the South, the treasurer of the United States. He was famous for his ideas in the righteousness of slavery, was fanatically devoted to the Southern cause. He always maintained that the idea of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, effected by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, originated with him.

Religion

He was a man of intensely religious nature, exceedingly familiar with the Scriptures and a member of the Methodist Church, though he later stopped attending its services.

Views

For twenty years before the Civil War he preached the doctrine that Missouri, in order to remain a slave state with free states on her northern and eastern borders, must accomplish the repeal of the compromise restriction upon slavery. With the zeal of an evangelist tempered by sound political discretion, he agitated for the repeal in all parts of the state. In 1844 he went so far as to suggest the repeal to Thomas H. Benton, who previously was his friend; they never spoke afterward.

Personality

Intellectually, Price was a man of more than average ability along some lines; in others his vision of events was narrow. He had a great command of language and was a plausible, though not logical, speaker.

He was tall and slender, of commanding presence and imperious manner. His face was classic in outline and features with clear eyes "as dark as steel and penetrating as daggers. " He was a man of great courage, moral and physical, and a dead shot with the rifle. When challenged to duels, he invariably selected this weapon, a fact that always led to an accommodation without a tragedy.

Connections

In June 1842 he was married to Sarah J. Kimbrough of Kentucky, who died in 1859 leaving seven children. In August of 1860 he was married to Lydia C. Dow of Hardwick, who bore him three children.

Father:

Crabtree Price

Mother:

Linny (Cecil) Price

Spouse:

Lydia C. Dow

Spouse:

Sarah J. Kimbrough

son-in-law:

William S. Newberry