Albert Taylor Bledsoe

Born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1809, Albert Taylor Bledsoe graduated from West Point in 1830 and served briefly as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army before resigning in 1832. He later taught mathematics at Kenyon College and went on to work in both ministry and higher education.

Bledsoe was associated with the Protestant Episcopal Church and later became known as a Southern Methodist thinker and writer. During and after the Civil War, he emerged as a prominent Confederate apologist, using books and essays to argue for the Southern cause and to defend Jefferson Davis.

He died in Alexandria, Virginia, on December 8, 1877. Today he is remembered less for a single literary work than for the way his career brought together religion, scholarship, and the political controversies of 19th-century America.