Biography

When Robert Lewis Dabney was born in 1820, no one could have guessed the role he would play in America’s Civil War. Well educated by three colleges and earning three degrees, Dabney embarked on career of mission work and congregational ministry. He was also a professor of ecclesiastical history and systematic theology at various times. However, he would become part of the Confederate army as a chaplain and eventually Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff. In fact it is Dabney’s biography of Jackson that is still in print today. Dabney and his wife had six sons; three of which died of diphtheria. Dabney wrote several published works including Women’s Rights Women (1871), Ecclesiastical Relation of Negroes (1868), and A Defense of Virginia, and through Her, of the South in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional Party (1867). His own health issues caused him to retire earlier than expected. He succumbed to his illness on January 3, 1898.

Wailand Groenendyk
CCEL Staff Writer