At the outbreak of the war, Dr. Stevenson was practicing his profession in Anderson County, Kentucky. In hearty sympathy with the Southern cause from the first, he left a lucrative practice when the Kentucky troops were organizing in 1861 and offered his services as surgeon. Pending action on a recommendation to the Richmond authorities that he be put in commission, he belonged nominally to the Sixth Kentucky Infantry, and when (December 8th, 1861), he was commissioned assistant surgeon he was assigned to that regiment. Serving it faithfully with this rank for a year, he was promoted to surgeon, (December, 1862). He continued to do field duty till January, 1864, when he was assigned to duty in the Andersonville prison.

The following sketch of his career there and subsequently is from the pen of Dr. James B. Read, a prominent physician of Sherman, Texas: "Dr. Richard Randolph Stevenson was my warm personal friend and for five years my preceptor in medicine. I first knew him early in 1864, when he was surgeon of the Sixth Kentucky Infantry. He was sent shortly afterward to Andersonville, Ga., for duty in the prison hospitals, where he did a great deal toward ameliorating the sufferings of the Federals confined there. He also kept a record of all deaths, and had the graves of prisoners marked with a number corresponding to the number of each one s name on the hospital register in which it was enrolled, his company, regiment, etc., so that the United States Government was enabled to identify the grave of every prisoner (about13,000), that died at Andersonville.

" For this service the only recognition he ever received from the Federal Government was an indictment for murdering prisoners, in connection with Jefferson Davis, John C.Breckinridge, Henry Wirz, and others. He left Newburn, N. C. , as soon as the fact that he had been indicted was announced, and in disguise passed through Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and Portland, and thence by steamer to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was hospitably received by the medical men. A grand dinner was given in his honor at the Halifax hotel. He left his family at High Point, N. C., till he secured a home for them in Upper Stewiacke, Colchester County, Nova Scotia. He remained in Nova Scotia about ten years and continued the practice of his profession, establishing a reputation as a skillful physician and surgeon throughout the province. In 1875 he rnoved to Worsham, Virginia, and thence to Farmville and probably to some other location in the same section. It was while in Virginia that his second wife died, and soon afterward he returned to Nova Scotia, where he married his third wife, and where a few years later he died.

" It was my good fortune to know intimately Dr. Stevenson. He married my cousin, Miss Frances Ilsley, in 1864, to whom was born five children all of whom except the oldest (Frank) are still living. He was a gentleman of the old school brave, generous, hospitable,true to his friends and magnanimous to his foes. But what should be remembered by every ex-Confederate and every Southern man, woman and child, is the fact that he used his pen in vindication of the South in reference to the treatment and exchange of prisoners. He was the author of a book entitled The Southern Side, or Andersonville Prison, published in 1876. In this book he gives a full account of the Wirz trial and a great deal of valuable in formation in regard to the mortality in Northern and Southern prisons, exchange of prisoners, etc. I have been told that the Federal authorities bought up or destroyed all that could be procured."