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- For the agrarian leader and North Carolina's first Commissioner of Agriculture, see Leonidas Lafayette Polk.
Early life
Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1806, Polk attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill briefly before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point. During his senior year, he joined the Episcopal Church and resigned his commission. He was ordained as a deacon in 1830. That year, he married Frances Ann Deveraux and became assistant to Bishop Richard Channing Moore in Richmond, Virginia.
In 1832, Polk moved his family to the vast Polk "Rattle and Snap" tract in Maury County, Tennessee, and constructed a massive Greek Revival home he called "Ashwood Hall." With his four brothers in Maury County, he built a family chapel, St. John's Church, at Ashwood. He also served as priest of St. Peter's Church in Columbia, Tennessee. He was appointed Missionary Bishop of the Southwest in 1838 and was elected Bishop of Louisiana in 1841.
Bishop Polk was the leading founder of The University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, which he envisioned as a national university for the South and a New World equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge.
Civil War
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Polk pulled the Louisiana Convention out of the Episcopal Church of the United States. His friend and former roommate at West Point, Jefferson Davis, prevailed upon Polk to accept a commission in the Confederate States Army. Polk agreed and was commissioned Major General commanding Department No. 2 (roughly, the area between the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River) in 1861. He committed one of the great blunders of the Civil War by dispatching troops to occupy Columbus, Kentucky, in September 1861; the state of Kentucky had declared its neutrality, but Polk's action ended that neutrality and the state quickly fell under Union control.
He organized the Army of Mississippi and a part of the Army of Tennessee, in which he later served as lieutenant general. Polk designed his own battle flag for his brigades; a blue field with a red St. George's cross, emblazoned with eleven stars, representing each of the Confederate states*. Polk led a corps during the Battle of Shiloh.
Following disagreements with the army's commander, Braxton Bragg, Polk was transferred to Mississippi and later took charge of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. Ordered by Bragg's successor, Joseph E. Johnston, to join his forces with the Army of Tennessee in the Atlanta campaign, Polk was killed by an artillery shell at Pine Mountain near Marietta, Georgia, on June 14, 1864. Although his record as a field commander was poor, Polk was immensely popular with rank and file soldiers, and his death was deeply mourned in the Army of Tennessee. He was buried in Augusta, Georgia, and in 1945, his remains and those of his wife were reinterred at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans.
In memoriam
Fort Polk in Louisiana is named in his memory.
Polk's effects
Polk's sword, which was made in New Orleans and presented to Polk by Bishop Stephen Elliott, was auctioned in Fairfield, Maine, on October 4, 2005, along with personal letters and other items. The sword sold for $77,000 and the entire collection $1.6 million.Puget Sound Civil War Round Table article on the auction. It is believed that this is the first identified Confederate general's sword to ever be offered at auction.
References
- Eicher, John H., & Eicher, David J., Civil War High Commands, Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3641-3.
Notes
External links
- Confederate General Leonidas Polk and the collapse of the Confederate command structure in the Western Theater — Paper by Bryan S. Bush, NU XI Student Historical Journal, Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, University of Louisville chapter, Fall 2004.
- The Leonidas Polk Registry Research Project
1806 births | 1864 deaths | Bishops of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America | Confederate Army generals | Non-graduate alumni of West Point
"Leonidas Polk"