Robert Ludwell Yates Peyton (February 8, 1822 – September 3, 1863) was a Missouri attorney, politician and Confederate States Army officer who served as a Confederate States Senator from February 18, 1862, until his death in Alabama of malaria contracted while defending Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1863.

The family owned slaves in Virginia,[2] but reportedly freed them before 1840 when Townsend Dade moved his family to Oxford in Butler County, Ohio, where they lived first with a free Black woman and her two children, then retired with his wife and a 12 year old free mulatto servant.

[3][4] Meanwhile, Robert Ludwell Yates Peyton studied both at Miami College in Ohio, and the University of Virginia.

On July 16, 1861, days after the victory of the Missouri State Guard commanded by Governor Claiborne F. Jackson over federal forces at the Battle of Carthage, Peyton organized a cavalry troop that became known as the 3rd Missouri cavalry, with Peyton as its colonel, but would resign that commission on December 13, 1861.

[9] He joined the Confederate States Army and died in Bladon Springs, Alabama on September 3, 1863, after catching malaria while defending Vicksburg, Mississippi.