Background
CHILTON, William Parish was born on August 10, 1810 in Adair County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of Thomas John and Margaret (Bledsoe) Chilton.
CHILTON, William Parish was born on August 10, 1810 in Adair County, Kentucky, United States, United States. Son of Thomas John and Margaret (Bledsoe) Chilton.
Orphaned at the age of seventeen, he taught school in Kentucky and moved to Nashville, Tennessee, in 1828. He studied law there until 1831 when he moved to Talladega County, Alabama, and opened a law office. Chilton's father had been a Baptist minister in Virginia, and Chilton himself was a deacon in the Baptist church.
In 1829, he married Mary C. Morgan, by whom he had five children. After his first wife’s death, he married her sister, Elivia France Morgan, by whom he had seven children. Chilton, an old-line Whig who became a Democrat during the Civil War, represented Talladega County in the Alabama legislature from 1839 until 1843.
He was named a judge to the state Supreme Court in 1847 and served as chief justice from 1852 to 1856, when he retired to resume his law practice in Macon County. In 1859, he was elected to the state Senate from Macon County. He resigned in 1860 and moved to Montgomery, Alabama.
Although Chilton opposed secession, he accepted election to the provisional Confederate Congress in 1861, where he served on the Printing and Postal Affairs Committees. He was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives and served throughout the war. An able member of the Flag and Seal, Impressments, Judiciary, Patents, and Post Office Committees, he voted with the Davis administration.
In 1865, he proposed a congressional committee to oversee the conduct of the war. At the end of the war he was a poor man, but he retrieved his losses and practiced law until his death on January 21, 1871, in Montgomery.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.
Spouse Mary C.
