— Ch. 1 · From West Point To The Altar —
Leonidas Polk.
~8 min read · Ch. 1 of 7
Leonidas Polk was born on the 10th of April 1806 in Raleigh, North Carolina. His father William served as a Revolutionary War veteran and later became a prosperous planter with Scottish and Anglo-Huguenot ancestry. Polk briefly attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point. During his senior year he left the Scottish Calvinist church to join the Episcopal Church. He was baptized in the Academy Chapel by Chaplain Charles P. McIlvaine who would later become the Episcopal Bishop of Ohio. Polk had an impressive academic record excelling in rhetoric and moral philosophy. He graduated eighth of 38 cadets on the 1st of July 1827 and was appointed a brevet second lieutenant in the artillery. Polk resigned his commission on the 1st of December 1827 to enter the Virginia Theological Seminary. He became an assistant to Bishop Richard Channing Moore at Monumental Church in Richmond Virginia. Moore agreed to ordain Polk as a deacon in April 1830 but it was discovered that he had never been confirmed as an Episcopalian. Before his ordination he was hastily confirmed at St. John's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville NC. He was then ordained a deacon as planned and a priest the following year. On the 6th of May 1830 Polk married Frances Ann Devereux daughter of John Devereux and Frances Pollock.
The Bishop Of The South
In 1832 Polk moved his family to the vast Polk Rattle and Snap tract in Maury County Tennessee. There he constructed a massive Greek Revival home called Ashwood Hall. Polk was the largest slaveowner in the county in 1840 owning 111 slaves. By 1850 census records showed he owned 400 slaves though other estimates reach as high as 1000. He built a family chapel with his four brothers in Maury County named 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 September 1838 and elected first Bishop of Louisiana in October 1841. In 1848 he performed the marriage of his niece Mary Bayard Devereux to Major William John Clarke. Polk was the leading founder of the University of the South in Sewanee Tennessee. He envisioned it as a national university for the Southern United States and a New World equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge both in England. In his August 1856 letter to Bishop Elliott he expounded on the secessionist motives for his university. Polk laid and consecrated the cornerstone for the first building on the 9th of October 1860. His foundational legacy at Sewanee is remembered through his portrait Sword Over the Gown painted by Eliphalet F. Andrews in 1900.