Bledsoe, Albert Taylor, 1809-1877

Albert Taylor Bledsoe (1809-1877), a Confederate official, editor, and author, was the first-born son of Moses Ousley and Sophia Childress Taylor. A fellow student of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee at West Point Military Academy in 1830, Bledsoe performed military duty at western Indian forts. After graduating from Kenyon College in Ohio, he taught mathematics and French at Kenyon and later Miami University. He praticed law for ten years in Springfield, Illinois from 1838-48 but returned to teaching mathematics from 1848-54 at the University of Mississippi and from 1854-61 at the University of Virginia. Commissioned a colonel in the Confederate Army in 1861, he later became assistant secretary of war. President Jefferson Davis sent Bledsoe to London to investigate historical problems involved in the issues between the North and the South and hoped he could influence English public opinion. In 1867 he founded and edited the Southern Review in Baltimore, Maryland, until his death.