A Defence of Virginia. This item is unavailable.A Defence of Virginia

History revisionists have long insisted that the true cause of the War Between the States was the allegedly immoral system of Southern slavery. To the contrary, Dr. Dabney shows from Scripture that slavery, as practiced in the South, was not inherently wicked, as claimed by the Northern Abolitionists, but was recognized and regulated by God's Word, and that, while the wealth of New England was initially built almost exclusively from the "iniquitous traffick" of the African slave trade, the South, and Virginia in particular, was merely the unwilling recipients of the hapless Negroes who were landed on her shores in violation of first Colonial, then State law. This book will challenge everything you thought you knew about antebellum slavery.

Robert Lewis Dabney was born on March 5, 1820 in Louisa County, Virginia, the son of a Presbyterian elder, farmer, and local magistrate. The Dabneys were of French Huguenot descent and were said to be related to the great Reformed historian, J.H. Merle D'Aubigne. Dabney was trained at an early age in Latin and Greek, as well as algebra, geometry and surveying. He was converted to Christianity at age 16 while enrolled at Hampden-Sidney College. He later attended Union Theological Seminary and served on the school's faculty, becoming chair of theology in 1859. Dabney opposed secession, but served as chaplain to the 18th Va. Infantry Regiment and as chief of staff to Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson. Ill health forced him to return to the seminary. In 1883, he left Virginia to teach at the new University of Texas, in Austin, where he helped to found the Austin School of Theology. He died in Victoria, Texas on January 3, 1898 and was buried at the Union Theological Seminary Cemetery.