ColorizedPast
Corporal
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2016
- Location
- Hangzhou, China (Wisconsin, USA)
Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk (CSA)
Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina on 10 April 1806. He attended the University of North Carolina before entering the United States Military Academy. During his senior year, he joined the Episcopal Church. He excelled in rhetoric and moral philosophy and graduated eighth of 38 cadets in 1827. He was a brevet second lieutenant in the artillery.
However, Polk resigned his commission on 1 December 1827 to enter Virginia Theological Seminary. He became an ordained priest in 1831. On 6 May 1830, he married Frances Ann Devereux, the great-granddaughter of Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards. The Polks had eight children who survived to adulthood.
In 1832, Polk moved his family to Maury County, Tennessee. Polk was the largest slaveowner in the county in 1840 with 111 slaves. By 1850, he had between 215 and 400. He was appointed Missionary Bishop of the Southwest in September 1838 and elected Bishop of Louisiana in October 1841. He helped found the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, Polk pulled the Louisiana Convention out of the Episcopal Church of the United States. He offered his services to his friend and former West Point classmate Jefferson Davis and was commissioned a major general on 25 June 1861. He was ordered to command Department No. 2 (roughly, the area between the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River).
He committed one of the great blunders of the war by dispatching troops to occupy Columbus, Kentucky, in September 1861, violating Kentucky's neutrality and prompting the Kentucky legislature to request Federal aid to resist his advance. Kentucky was now under Union control.
Polk's command saw its first combat on 7 November 1861, in the minor, inconclusive Battle of Belmont between his subordinate Brig. Gen. Gideon J. Pillow and Union Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Not present on the battlefield himself, Polk was wounded on 11 November when the largest cannon in his army, nicknamed "Lady Polk" in honor his wife, exploded during demonstration firing. During his convalescence, he argued strategy with Pillow and his superior, General Albert Sidney Johnston. Resentful that his former West Point roommate was giving him orders, he submitted a letter of resignation to President Jefferson Davis on 6 November, but Davis rejected it.
In April 1862, Polk commanded the First Corps of Johnston's Army of Mississippi at the Battle of Shiloh and continued in that role under Johnston's replacements P.G.T. Beauregard and Braxton Bragg. In the fall, during the invasion of Kentucky by Bragg and Maj. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, Polk temporarily commanded the Army of Mississippi while Bragg visited Frankfort to preside over the inauguration of a Confederate governor for the state. He disregarded an order from Bragg to attack the flank of the pursuing Union Army near Frankfort.
At the Battle of Perryville, Polk's right wing constituted the main attacking force against Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio, but Polk was reluctant to attack the small portion of Buell's army that faced him until Bragg arrived at the battlefield.
After Perryville, Polk began a year-long campaign to get Bragg relieved of command. Polk was promoted to lieutenant general on 11 October 1862, second in seniority to James Longstreet. In November, the army was renamed the Army of Tennessee and Polk commanded its First Corps until September 1863.
Following the Battle of Stones River in late 1862, Bragg's subordinates again politicked to remove him from command. The Army of the Cumberland under William S. Rosecrans maneuvered Bragg out of Chattanooga and the Army of Tennessee withdrew into the mountains of northwestern Georgia. Bragg planned to destroy at least one of Rosecrans' corps, advancing separately over mountainous roads. However, one of Polk's divisions under Maj. Gen. Thomas C. Hindman failed to attack an isolated Union corps at Davis's Cross Roads as ordered on 11 September 1863. Two days later, Polk again disregarded orders to attack an isolated corps.
At the Battle of Chattanooga, Polk was given command of the Right Wing and responsibility for initiating the attack on the second day of battle (19 September). He failed to inform his subordinates of the plan and his wing was late in attacking, allowing Union defenders to complete their field fortifications. Bragg wrote after the war that if it were not for the loss of these hours, "our independence might have been won."
Bragg laid siege to the defeated Union army in Chattanooga. He demanded an explanation for Polk's failure to attack on time and Polk blamed Maj. Gen. D. H. Hill. Bragg relieved Polk of command and ordered him to Atlanta to await further orders. Despite Polk's protests and protests by other subordinates, Bragg was retained in command.
Polk transferred to command the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana from 23 December 1863 to 28 January 1864 and then the Department of Alabama and East Mississippi from 28 January to 4 May 1864. Polk unsuccessfully opposed Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's raid against Meridian, Mississippi, in February 1864. In May, he was ordered to join his forces with Gen. Joseph Johnston in resisting Sherman's advance in the Atlanta Campaign. He assumed command of the Third Corps of the Army of Tennessee on 4 May, but his command remained commonly known as the "Army of Mississippi".
Polk brought more than 20,000 men with him to Georgia and became Johnston's second-in-command. Sherman continued to force Johnston back towards Atlanta with a series of flanking moves. On 14 June 1864, Polk was scouting enemy positions near Marietta, Georgia, with his staff when he was killed in action by a Federal 3-inch shell at Pine Mountain. The fire was initiated when Sherman spotted a cluster of Confederate generals – Polk, William J. Hardee, and Johnston, with their staffs – in an exposed area. He pointed them out to Maj. Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, command of the IV Corps, and order him to fire upon them.
Battery I of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery, commanded by Capt. Hubert Dilger, obeyed the order within minutes. The first round was close, the second closer, causing the generals to disperse. The third shell struck Polk's left arm, went through his chest, and exited hitting his right arm, then exploded against a tree; it nearly cut Polk in two.
Despite his poor command record, Polk was immensely popular with his troops, and his death was deeply mourned in the Army of Tennessee. His funeral service at Saint Paul's Church in Augusta, Georgia, was one of the most elaborate during the war.
Polk's nephew, Lucius E. Polk, was also a Confederate general. His son, William, was a physician and a Confederate captain and later served as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Reserve Medical Corps during World War I. William's son, Frank, served as a counselor to the U.S. Department of State through World War I and became the first Under Secretary of State. President James K. Polk was Bishop Polk's first cousin twice removed.
Forum Host
Bringing the