Albert Taylor Bledsoe, controversialist, was born at Frankfort,
Kentucky, November 9, 1809, the son of a journalist. He was appointed
from Kentucky to West Point and was graduated in 1830, after which he
served in the army in Indian territory until the last day of August,
1832, when he resigned to enter upon the study of law. A year later
Bledsoe abandoned law to become a tutor in Kenyon College, Ohio, where
he later studied theology and was ordained a clergyman in the
Protestant Episcopal church. He was connected with various Ohio
churches from 1835 to 1838, but in the latter year he quit the
ministry to resume his legal studies and he removed to Springfield,
Illinois, where he formed a partnership with the afterwards celebrated
statesman and soldier, Colonel Edward D. Baker. Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen A. Douglas were practicing law in Springfield at this time,
and Bledsoe knew both of them intimately; but because of his
subsequent connection with the Southern Confederacy none of the
biographies of these men mention him. For the following ten years
Bledsoe practiced his profession at Springfield and Washington, D. C.
His first book, _An Examination of Edwards's Inquiry into the Freedom
of the Will_ (Philadelphia, 1845), showed that his interest in
theological subjects had not waned. In 1848 Bledsoe was elected
professor of mathematics in the University of Mississippi, which
position he held for the ensuing six years. His next volume, _A
Theodicy, or Vindication of the Divine Glory_ (New York, 1853), gave
him a place among theologians. In 1854 Dr. Bledsoe was elected to the
chair of mathematics in the University of Virginia, and this he
occupied until 1861. While at the University he published _An Essay on
Liberty and Slavery_ (Philadelphia, 1856), which anticipated his
subsequent action of entering the Confederate army, which he did in
1861, and he was commissioned as a colonel. Dr. Bledsoe was speedily
made assistant secretary of war, but this work proved most
uncongenial, and he gladly accepted the joint invitation of Davis and
Lee to run the blockade, in 1863, and go to England to gather
materials for a constitutional argument on the right of secession. He
spent three years in London and upon his return to the United States,
in February, 1866, he brought his vast researches together in his best
known work, _Is Davis a Traitor? or was Secession a Constitutional
Right Previous to the War of 1861?_ (Baltimore, 1866). Dr. Bledsoe now
took up his residence at Baltimore, and some months later he became
editor of a quarterly periodical, _The Southern Review_, which he
conducted for the final years of his life. In 1868 he added the
principalship of a Baltimore school to his burdens; and in the same
year his last volume appeared, _The Philosophy of Mathematics_
(Philadelphia, 1868). In 1871 Dr. Bledsoe was ordained a minister in
the Methodist church, and his _Review_ became the recognized organ of
his church. He died at Alexandria, Virginia, December 8, 1877. Dr.
Bledsoe was always a student and scholar, but he was essentially a
controversialist, often bitter in his statements, but time has
mellowed much of this, and he now stands forth as a very remarkable
man. Consider him from a dozen angles, and one will not find his like
in the whole range of American history.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Appletons' _Cyclopaedia of American Biography_ (New
York, 1887, v. i); _Library of Southern Literature_, sketch by his
daughter, Mrs. Sophie Herrick (Atlanta, 1909, v. i).