Albert Taylor Bledsoe a Pro-Slavery Advocate

Albert Taylor Bledsoe was a well-known pro-slavery advocate among the southerners in the early to late 1800s. He was born in Frankfort, Kentucky, and was the oldest of 5 children. Like many young men of promise in this period, he joined West Point, a US military academy as a cadet from 1825 to 1830. He later expanded his ideas and values into multiple career paths, which included being a clergyman (minister) in 1835 with Bishop Smith as his assistant in Kentucky. In 1838 Albert became a lawyer in the same courts as Abraham Lincon and Stephen Douglas. He was also a college professor of mathematics and advanced calculus at numerous colleges from 1833-1861. Adding on he was an acting assistant secretary of war in the Confederate army in 1861. Bledsoe was a go-getter with pursuing knew carriers however he was most known for being a southern apologist debating why slavery should always exist in society.

Albert Bledsoe’s most well-known books included the Essay on Liberty and Slavery (1856) and the Southern Review (1868). In both books that he published, he was recognized as the “epitome of an unreconstructed southerner” trying to prove his point on slavery and succession. Albert Bledsoe had a fighting wit about slavery. 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 muted along with others who were entitled to freedom.

Most literature called forth by slavery controversy is topical and superficial, but Bledsoe was profound enough to see the real crux which was in the issues from the French Revolution. For over 20 years Bledsoe continually attacked the romantic postulates underlying this movement. A believer in the necessity of divine sanctions for government, Albert denied the existence of natural rights. The natural rights of a man on if he is naturally good he is regarded as a grand heresy of the modern world and the source of all social disorder (slavery).

Another key position of Albert Bledsoe was that libertarianism rests upon a false metaphysic, for it is wrong to suppose that liberty and order are opposed principles. This misconception, seemingly one of the confusions of political thought, assumes liberty and order limit one another and that to boost one while we must somehow diminish the other. Bledsoe sought to show that they are mutually sustaining and that the boost in one promotes a boost in another.

Bledsoe agreed that the slaves were not burdened to having to make many decisions taking care of themselves. Additionally, a great deal of the slave owners treated their slaves very well and took care of them like ordinary employees. Slaves were protected from crime by their owners. Bledsoe was annoyed when slavery was abolished because he believed many slaves did not want to leave. Keep in mind that if the slaves left their plantation they would have to find another job or owner to work for otherwise they would not make any money. Those are few ideas for Albert Bledsoe, but Bledsoe had many more ideas to try and turn the South into pro-slavery, yet it failed and historians say it caused his downfall.

“If liberty were an equal blessing to all, then all would have an equal right to liberty. But if one accepts the fact of this difference (slavery) between races, corollary follows that complete equality would result in terrific inequality.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Taylor_Bledsoe 

https://archive.org/details/essayonlibertysl01bled/page/6/mode/2up 

https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2581&context=etd 

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/moa/ABT7109.0001.001/35?rgn=full+text;view=image