Oates, William C. (b. 1835)

William C. Oates, of Abbeville, was born in Pike (now Bullock) County, Alabama, November 30, 1835; was self-educated; studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1858, and became a successful lawyer and business man; entered the Confederate Army as Captain of Company G, Fifteenth Alabama Infantry, in July, 1861; was appointed Colonel in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States, May 1, 1863, and was assigned to the command of his old regiment; the Forty-eighth Alabama Regiment was also subsequently placed under his command; was wounded four times slightly and twice severely, losing his right arm in front of Richmond August 16, 1864, in the twenty-seventh battle he was enagaged in; was a Delegate to the National Democratic Convention held in New York in 1868 which nominated Seymour for the Presidency; was a member of the Alabama House of Representatives, and Chairman of the Committee oh Ways and Means at the sessions of i870-'7i and 1871-72; was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1872; was, later in the same year, nominated for Congress in the Montgomery district and defeated by the Republican candidate; was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1875 and Chairman of its Judiciary Committee; was elected to the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth Congresses, and was re-elected to the Forty-ninth Congress as a Democrat, receiving 10,965 votes against 4,349 votes for Mabson, Republican.

1. U. S. Congressional Directory, Washington, D. C., 1886, page 6.

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