Confederate General Leonidas Polk

Leonidas Polk is one of the most fascinating figures of the Civil War. Consecrated as a bishop of the Episcopal Church and commissioned as a general into the Confederate army, Polk's life in both spheres blended into a unique historical composite. Polk was a man with deep religious convictions but equally committed to the Confederate cause. He baptized soldiers on the eve of bloody battles, administered last rites and even presided over officers' weddings, all while leading his soldiers into battle. Historian Cheryl White examines the life of this soldier-saint and the legacy of a man who unquestionably brought the first viable and lively Protestant presence to Louisiana and yet represents the politics of one of the darkest periods in American history.

"This is the first full-length life of General Leonidas Polk, 'Bishop-militant' of the Confederacy, since the biography published by his son more than a half-century ago. It is the story of a man whose deeds of peace were no less than his feats of war. The first Episcopal bishop of Louisiana and the Southwest and founder of the University of the South ('Sewanee'), Polk climaxed his career as one of the foremost figures of the Confederacy. Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1806. He attended West Point, where he became a friend of Jefferson Davis. Turning from the military to the ministry after graduation, Polk won the praise of the Episcopal Church for his abilities in directing and organizing, and was eventually comissioned missionary bishop of the Southwest. However, so great was his belief in the cause of the South -- that each state was independent and could secede if it chose -- that with the approach of the Civil War he announced the secession his diocese, left the embryo university he was building, his Louisiana bishopric and episcopacy, and 'buckled the sword over the gown'. He accepted appointment as major general in the Provisional Army of the Confederacy in late June, 1861, and was assigned to command Department No. 2 with headquarters at Memphis. He soon led his froces into Kentucky and occupied Columbus. When Generals A.S. Johnston and P.G.T Beauregard were assigend to the West, Polk became subordinate to them. He commanded a corps at Shiloh, a wing in the Kentucky campaign, a corps at Stone's River, and a wing at Chickamauga. Disagreement with General Bragg after Chickamauga resulted in Polk's relief from command in the Army of the Tennessee and his transfer to Mississippi. When J.E. Johnston succeeded Bragg in North Georgia, Polk's force was ordered to his assistance. The Bishop-General was killed at Pine Mountain on June 14, 1864"--Jacket.

Leonidas Polk was a graduate of West Point who resigned his commission to enter the Episcopal priesthood as a young man. At first combining parish ministry with cotton farming in Tennessee, Polk subsequently was elected the first bishop of the Louisiana Diocese, whereupon he bought a sugarcane plantation and worked it with several hundred slaves owned by his wife. Then, in the 1850s he was instrumental in the founding of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee. When secession led to war he pulled his diocese out of the national church and with other Southern bishops established what they styled the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. Polk then offered his military services to his friend and former West Point classmate Jefferson Davis and became a major general in the Confederate Army. Polk was one of the more notable, yet controversial, generals of the war. Recognizing his indispensable familiarity with the Mississippi Valley, Confederate president Jefferson Davis commissioned his elevation to a high military position regardless of his lack of prior combat experience. Polk commanded troops in the Battles of Belmont, Shiloh, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, and Meridian as well as several smaller engagements in Georgia leading up to Atlanta. Polk is remembered for his bitter disagreements with his immediate superior, the likewise-controversial General Braxton Bragg of the Army of Tennessee. In 1864, while serving under the command of General Joseph E. Johnston, Polk was killed by Union cannon fire as he observed General Sherman’s emplacements on the hills outside Atlanta.

Originally published in 1915, this is a new edition of the 1893 volume 2 edition. A biography of Confederate General and Episcopalian Bishop, Leonidas Polk. Written by his son William Mecklenburg Polk, M.D.

Christian Biography. Only reprint of this original 1893 edition illustrated with four fold out maps of interest to Civil War readers.