Background
BAGBY, George William was born on August 13, 1828 in Buckingham County, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of George and Virginia Young (Evans) Bagby.
editor journalist physician writer
BAGBY, George William was born on August 13, 1828 in Buckingham County, Virginia, United States, United States. Son of George and Virginia Young (Evans) Bagby.
Private school, medical school.
The son of a Lynchburg merchant, he attended Dr. Page’s boarding school, Edgehill School in Princeton, and Delaware College. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School in 1849 and briefly practiced medicine before beginning a long journalistic career. Bagby and his wife Lucy Parke Chamber- layne, whom he married on February 16, 1863, had ten children.
In the 1850s he helped to edit the Lynchburg Virginian, edited the Lynchburg Express, and was Washington correspondent for several Southern newspapers until 1859. He wrote for the Southern Literary Messenger, which he edited from 1860 to 1864. During his wartime career on the Messenger, he created the character of Mozis Adduma, a crackerbarrel philosopher and wit.
He also joined the army at the outbreak of the war, but ill health kept him from the front lines. Bagby was at the battle of First Manassas, where he served as a clerk to P.G.T. Beauregard’s chief of staff. He was discharged in 1864 and spent the remainder of the war as associate editor of the Richmond Whig and as Richmond correspondent for other newspapers.
A strong Confederate patriot, he was nevertheless very critical of Davis. At the end of the war in 1865, Bagby moved to New York, but failing eyesight brought him back to Virginia where he lectured, edited the Native Virginian in 1868, and served as librarian of the state library at Richmond from 1870 to 1878. A prolific writer, he authored Daniel’s Latch Key (1868), the popular What I Did with My Millions (1874), and Meekins’s Twinses (1877).
He also was the author of the Writings of Dr. Bagby, which was published posthumously in three volumes in 1884-1886. Active in politics throughout the postwar period, he became a vigorous foe of the Virginia reformers known as Readjusters.
"Peculiar institution" of slavery was not only expedient but also ordained by God and upheld in Holy Scripture.
Stands for preserving slavery, states' rights, and political liberty for whites. Every individual state is sovereign, even to the point of secession.