Bledsoe, Albert Taylor

BLEDSOE, ALBERT TAYLOR: American Southern Methodist; b. at Frankfort, Ky., Nov. 9, 1809; d. at Alexandria, Va., Dec. 8, 1877. He was graduated at West Point, 1830, became lieutenant of infantry, and resigned 1832; he became assistant professor of mathematics at Kenyan College, Gambier, O., 1834; entered the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was rector at Hamilton, O., and professor of mathematics at Miami University, Oxford, O., 1835–36; practised law in Springfield, Ill., and in the United States Supreme Court at Washington, 1840–48; was professor of mathematics in the University of Mississippi, 1848–54, and in the University of Virginia, 1854–1861; he entered the Confederate service as a colonel, but was soon made assistant secretary of war; lived in England 1863–68; after 1867 published The Southern Review at Baltimore, which under his management became one of the leading periodicals of the Methodist Church, South. He was ordained a Methodist minister in 1871, but never took charge of a church. He was a strenuous advocate of the doctrine of free will and a stern opponent of atheism and skepticism; the doctrine of predestination he considered a reflection upon the divine glory, and a cause of unbelief; his views are set forth in his Examination of Edwards on the Will (Philadelphia, 1845) and his Theodicy, or Vindication of the Divine Glory (New York, 1853). He also published Liberty and Slavery (Philadelphia, 1857); The Philosophy of Mathematics (1868); Is Davis a Traitor? or was secession a constitutional right previous to the war of 1861? (Baltimore, 1866).