Background
DABNEY, Robert Lewis Son of Charles Dabney, Jr.
DABNEY, Robert Lewis Son of Charles Dabney, Jr.
Private school, southern university, university graduate.
His wife Elizabeth R. (Price) on March 5, 1820, in Louisa County, Virginia. He attended Hampden-Sidney College from 1836 to 1837 and received his M. A. from the University of Virginia in 1842. After teaching school, he entered Union Theological Seminary at Richmond and graduated first in his class in 1846.
He was licensed to preach in the Presbyterian church the same year and became a missionary in Louisa County. On March 28, 1848, he married Lavinia Morrison. They had children. From 1847 to 1853, Dabney held a pastorate in Augusta County, Virginia.
In 1853, he became a professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary, a position which he kept for thirty years. He was the editor and founder of the Presbyterian Critic and the co-editor of the Southern Presbyterian Review. Dabney opposed the Civil War, but in 1861, he became a chaplain for the 18th Virginia Regiment.
He also served as chief of staff, adjutant general, and confidant of his friend, General Thomas J. Jackson, whose biography he published in 1864. When the war ended, he returned to teach at Union Theological Seminary. In 1868, Dabney published Defense of Virginia and the South.
He became one of the great spokesmen for a return to the romantic Old South. From 1883 to 1894, he held a chair of moral philosophy at the University of Texas. He was also a founder of Austin Theological Seminary in Texas in the late 1880s.
"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.
Spouse Lavinia Morrison.
