[4][5] After serving two years in the United States Army, he studied law and theology at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and received his M.A.

[6] Bledsoe in his lectures at the University of Virginia would frequently "interlard his demonstration of some difficult problem in differential or integral calculus—for example, the lemniscata of Bernouilli [sic]—with some vigorous remarks in the doctrine of States' rights".

Bledsoe is perhaps best remembered for his treatise An Essay on Liberty and Slavery,[7] which presented an extended proslavery argument.

[8] In 1861, Bledsoe received a commission as a colonel in the Confederate army, and later became Acting Assistant Secretary of War.

[8] In 1863 he was sent to London for the purpose of researching various historical problems relating to the north–south conflict, as well as guiding British public opinion in favor of the Confederate cause.