Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) was an American preacher, Southern Presbyterian theologian, and Confederate chaplain whose ministry and writings left a profound mark on 19th-century evangelicalism, though his legacy is complicated by his staunch defense of slavery and white supremacy. Born on March 5, 1820, in Louisa County, Virginia, he was the sixth child of Charles William Dabney, a planter and church elder, and Elizabeth Randolph Price Dabney. After his father’s death in 1833, Dabney managed the family plantation before pursuing education at Hampden-Sydney College (B.A., 1837) and the University of Virginia (M.A., 1842). Converted during a revival at Hampden-Sydney, he entered Union Theological Seminary in 1844, graduating in 1846. In 1848, he married Margaret Lavinia Morrison, with whom he had six sons, three dying in childhood from diphtheria. Dabney’s preaching career began as a missionary in Louisa County (1846–1847), followed by a pastorate at Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church in Virginia (1847–1853), where he also designed a Greek Revival-style church building. Ordained in the Presbyterian Church, he joined the faculty of Union Theological Seminary in 1853, teaching ecclesiastical history and later systematic theology until 1883, becoming a full professor in 1869. During the Civil War, he served as chaplain to the 18th Virginia Infantry in 1861 and as chief of staff to General Stonewall Jackson in 1862, earning Jackson’s praise as “the most efficient officer he knew.” Post-war, he wrote Jackson’s biography, Life and Campaigns of Lieut.-Gen. Thomas J. Jackson (1866), and defended Southern values in works like A Defense of Virginia and Through Her, of the South (1867). A prolific author, his Systematic Theology (1871) and Evangelical Eloquence (1870) remain valued by some Reformed circles, though his racist views, articulated in speeches like “Ecclesiastical Relation of Negroes” (1868), have drawn criticism. He died on January 3, 1898, in Victoria, Texas, buried at Union Theological Seminary Cemetery, leaving a legacy as a gifted preacher shadowed by his controversial social stances.