Albert Taylor Bledsoe
| Albert Taylor Bledsoe | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
November 9, 1809 Frankfort, Kentucky |
| Died | December 8, 1877 (aged 68) Alexandria, Virginia (another source says Baltimore, Maryland) |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
United States Military Academy Kenyon College, Ohio |
| Occupation | educator, attorney, author, and clergyman |
| Political party | Whig Party (United States) |
| Spouse(s) | Harriet Coxe (married in 1836) |
| Parent(s) | Moses Owsley Bledsoe and Sophia Childress Taylor |
Albert Taylor Bledsoe (November 9, 1809 – December 8, 1877) was an Episcopal priest, attorney, professor of mathematics, and officer in the Confederate army and was best known as an architect of the Lost Cause and defender of the Old South and of slavery.
Bledsoe was born on November 9, 1809 in Frankfort, Kentucky, the oldest of five children of Moses Owsley Bledsoe and Sophia Childress Taylor (who was a relative of President Zachary Taylor). He was a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point from 1825 to 1830, where he was a fellow cadet of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. After serving two years in the United States Army, he studied law and theology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and received his M.A. and LL.M. In 1836. he married Harriet Coxe of Burlington NJ, and they had seven children, four of whom survived childhood.
His daughter was the author Sophia Bledsoe Herrick.
Bledsoe in his lectures at the University of Virginia would frequently "interlard his demonstration of some difficult problem in differential or integral calculus--for example, the lemniscata of Bernouilli [sic] --with some vigorous remarks in the doctrine of States' rights". His book The Philosophy of Mathematics was one of the earliest American works on mathematics and includes chapters on Descartes, Leibnitz, and Newton. Bledsoe is perhaps best remembered for his treatise An Essay on Liberty and Slavery, which presented an extended proslavery argument. Bledsoe argued that the natural state of humans was in society, not in nature, and that humans in society needed to have restraints on their actions. That is, he argued that liberty was greatest when humans were allowed to exercise only the amount of freedom they were naturally suited to. Some had to be restrained; others were entitled to freedom.
In 1835, Bledsoe became an Episcopal minister and became an assistant to Bishop Smith of Kentucky. He abandoned his clerical career in 1838 because of his opposition to infant baptism. Later in life, he was ordained a Methodist minister in 1871, but he never took charge of a church. He was a strenuous advocate of the doctrine of free will and his views are set forth in his book Examination of Edwards on the Will (1845).
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