Albert Taylor Bledsoe was educator and author, born in Frankfort, Kentucky. Graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1830, Bledsoe served two years in the Seventh U.S. Infantry. Moving to Illinois in 1838, he began to practice law alongside the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. In 1848, Bledsoe left the North and the practice of law, returning to education as a professor of mathematics at the University of Mississippi. In 1854 he accepted a similar position at the University of Virginia. Despite the fact that his field was mathematics, Bledsoe's writing frequently involved politics. In 1856, he published An Essay on Liberty and Slavery in defense of the South and its "peculiar institution." Using his position as a member of the faculty of the University of Virginia, he helped Edmund Ruffin stir up secessionist sentiment in the state. Bledsoe worked eagerly to bring about Virginia's secession and welcomed it when, in April 1861, it came. Meanwhile, Bledsoe had joined the Confederate army in April, commissioned a colonel. Later that year, Bledsoe was appointed as assistant secretary of war. In 1867, Bledsoe founded and became the first editor of the quarterly Southern Review in Baltimore, Maryland, and in that capacity he continued to advance his virulently pro-Southern views. He inveighed continually against democracy, industrialization, the Union, and Thomas Jefferson while championing slavery. His was the quintessential voice of the unreconstructed southerner. He died in Alexandria, Virginia.