author
Albert Taylor Bledsoe
1809–1877
A restless 19th-century thinker, he moved through life as a soldier, math professor, lawyer, minister, and polemicist. He is remembered both for his wide-ranging career and for fiercely defending slavery and helping shape the Lost Cause narrative after the Civil War.
2 Audiobooks
An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will
by Albert Taylor Bledsoe
A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory
by Albert Taylor Bledsoe
About the author
Born in Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1809, Albert Taylor Bledsoe graduated from West Point and briefly served in the U.S. Army before turning to academic and professional life. Over the years he taught mathematics, practiced law, and served as an Episcopal clergyman, building a reputation as a learned and argumentative public writer.
Before the Civil War, he wrote extensively in defense of slavery, including Liberty and Slavery (1856). During and after the war, he became closely associated with the Confederate cause and later edited the Southern Review, where he argued for pro-Confederate interpretations of the conflict.
Bledsoe died in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1877. His life shows how one person could move across many professions while also playing a major role in the intellectual defense of the antebellum South and, later, the Lost Cause tradition.