Leonidas Polk

• 1. Introduction

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  Leonidas Polk died with three small books in his pocket, each titled Balm for the Weary and Wounded. Each had been inscribed to a different general, Johnston, Hardee and Hood in turn, “with the compliments of Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk, the 12th of June 1864.” The man who signed those inscriptions was both a bishop of the Episcopal Church and a Confederate commander. Admirers called him “Sewanee's Fighting Bishop.” Even his name is often misreported. People write Leonidas K. Polk, yet he had no middle name and never signed a document that way. His life raises hard questions. How does a clergyman come to command soldiers in the Mississippi Valley? Why did he spend a year trying to remove his own army's commander? And was he a blunderer, a misjudged strategist, or something harder to label?

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• 2. Bishop and Planter

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  Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the 10th of April 1806, to Colonel William Polk and Sarah Hawkins Polk. William was a Revolutionary War veteran and a prosperous planter of Scottish and Anglo-Huguenot ancestry. As chief surveyor of the central district of Tennessee, he put his position to use and acquired about 100,000 acres of land.

  At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Polk stayed only briefly before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point. In his senior year he left the Scottish Calvinist church. Chaplain Charles P. McIlvaine baptized him into the Episcopal Church in the Academy Chapel. McIlvaine later became Episcopal Bishop of Ohio. Polk excelled in rhetoric and moral philosophy. He graduated eighth of 38 cadets on the 1st of July 1827 and was appointed a brevet second lieutenant of artillery.

  On the 1st of December 1827, Polk resigned his commission and entered the Virginia Theological Seminary. He became an assistant to Bishop Richard Channing Moore at Monumental Church in Richmond, Virginia. Moore agreed to ordain him a deacon in April 1830. In March, during a visit to Raleigh, it was discovered that Polk had never been confirmed as an Episcopalian. He was hastily confirmed at St. John's Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and then ordained as planned. He became a priest the following year.

  On the 6th of May 1830, Polk married Frances Ann Devereux, daughter of John Devereux and Frances Pollock. Her mother was a granddaughter of the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards. Eight of the couple's children survived to adulthood. In September 1838, Polk was appointed Missionary Bishop of the Southwest. In October 1841 he was elected the first Bishop of Louisiana.

  In 1832, Polk, a second cousin of President James K. Polk, moved his family to the vast Polk Rattle and Snap tract in Maury County, Tennessee. There he built Ashwood Hall, a massive Greek Revival home. By 1840 he was the largest slaveowner in the county, holding 111 people in slavery. The 1850 census recorded 400 enslaved people on his property, and other estimates run as high as 1,000.

  With his four brothers, Polk built a family chapel at Ashwood called St. John's Church. He also served as priest of St. Peter's Church in Columbia, Tennessee. His larger ambition lay elsewhere, in a university he hoped to build at Sewanee, Tennessee.

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• 3. Sword Over the Gown

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  Asked in Richmond whether he was putting off the gown of an Episcopal bishop to take up the sword of a Confederate general, Polk answered, “No, Sir, I am buckling the sword over the gown.” He saw it as his duty as a bishop to take up arms. A portrait titled Sword Over the Gown, painted by Eliphalet F. Andrews in 1900, takes its name from that reply. Vandals damaged the original in 1998, and a copy by Connie Erickson was unveiled on the 1st of June 2003. A separate official portrait at the University of the South shows Polk as a bishop, with his army uniform hanging nearby.

  In his August 1856 letter to Bishop Elliott, Polk explained the secessionist motives behind that university. He envisioned a national university for the Southern United States, a New World equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge in England. On the 9th of October 1860, he laid and consecrated the cornerstone of its first building.

  When the Civil War broke out, Polk pulled the Louisiana Convention out of the Episcopal Church of the United States. It became the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America. He hoped secession would bring a peaceful separation of the slave states from the United States, and he suggested he was reluctant to fight himself. Even so, he wrote to his friend and former West Point classmate, President Jefferson Davis, with opinions on defending the Mississippi Valley.

  Polk judged the Southern preparations seriously deficient. He recommended Albert Sidney Johnston for the regional command, declaring that “a better man could not be found for that post.” Davis agreed, but Johnston was still in California. So Davis invited Polk to Richmond. There Polk dined with Davis on two occasions and talked with General Robert E. Lee and several cabinet members.

  Surprisingly, Davis offered Polk the role of interim commander of Department No. 2. That was roughly the area between the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River, and it was also known as the Western Department. Davis was recognizing Polk's familiarity with the Mississippi Valley, and he made the offer despite Polk's lack of combat experience. Polk wrote to a close friend, “I have therefore told Davis that while I should be glad to be excused from the responsibility, still if he can find no one... better, I will not shrink from it, notwithstanding an unfeigned diffidence of my capacity to do it as it should be done.”

  On the 25th of June 1861, Polk was commissioned a major general in the Confederate States Army.

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• 4. The Kentucky Gamble

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  Polk arrived in Memphis on the 13th of July 1861 and set up his headquarters. His General Order No. 1 defended the Confederate cause in biblical language: “We have protested, and do protest, that all we desire is to be let alone, to repose in quietness under our own vine and our own fig tree.” His first task was folding the forces of the Provisional Army of Tennessee into the regular Confederate army.

  Major General Gideon Johnson Pillow, who commanded the Tennessee troops, lost out in that process. He was demoted to brigadier general and made second-in-command. Pillow was furious at being replaced by a bishop, and he proved a petulant and difficult subordinate.

  In late July, Polk sent Pillow and 6,000 troops up the Mississippi River on transports to capture New Madrid, Missouri. The town sat on a sharp bend where artillery batteries could obstruct passing ships. Polk then ordered Pillow to fortify Island Number Ten, Tennessee, another strong defensive position. Pillow disobeyed and diverted the soldiers to eastern Missouri, where he wanted to use them in a proposed invasion of that state.

  One observer wrote that “Polk and Pillow are at loggerheads,” with Polk giving a command and Pillow countermanding it by the same messenger. Polk sharply rebuked his subordinate and threatened to report him to Richmond. Pillow eventually fell into line.

  Kentucky, a critical border state and a slave state, had declared its neutrality when the war began. On the 28th of August 1861, Union Major General John C. Frémont ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant to take command at Cape Girardeau. The orders also spoke of occupying Columbus, Kentucky, “as soon as possible.” The next day Colonel Waagner and his regiment entered Belmont, across the Mississippi from Columbus, and began building fortifications.

  Alarmed that the Union now threatened Columbus directly, Polk ordered Pillow into Kentucky to seize Hickman and Columbus. On the evening of the 3rd of September 1861, Pillow's soldiers landed at Hickman. The next day they entered Columbus, where residents welcomed them by waving Confederate flags.

  Some historians count the occupation among the great blunders of the war. The Kentucky legislature responded by asking for U.S. aid to “expel the invaders,” and the Union kept control of Kentucky for the rest of the war. Thomas L. Connelly wrote that it was “probably one of the greatest mistakes of the war.” Steven E. Woodworth called it “one of the most decisive catastrophes the Confederacy ever suffered.” Nathaniel C. Hughes called it “a political blunder of the first order.”

  Robert I. Girardi offered a defense. A Federal seizure of Columbus was already planned for the 5th of September, he noted, and Kentucky was “all but locked up for the Union” by the time of Polk's move. Other historians point to the pro-Union legislature and the public's unwillingness to join the war as reasons the damage was smaller than claimed.

  In September 1861, Albert Sidney Johnston replaced Polk as commander of the Western Department. Johnston judged that Kentucky's neutrality could not be restored, so he widened the invasion by seizing Bowling Green and Cumberland Gap. Polk heavily fortified Columbus with 140 pieces of artillery. The fortress blocked Federal navigation of the Mississippi River until it was abandoned in February 1862. Union General Henry W. Halleck studied the defenses and wrote on the 20th of January 1862 that “Columbus cannot be taken without an immense siege-train and a terrible loss of life.”

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• 5. Belmont and Retreat

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  On the 7th of November 1861, Grant launched a surprise attack on the Confederate camp at Belmont, hoping to disrupt the movement of Confederate troops into Missouri. Pillow's small force was overwhelmed. Grant's men stormed the skirmish line, threw the defenders into disarray, and captured the camp.

  From his fortified position at Columbus, across the river, Polk watched the fight unfold and quickly sent reinforcements over the Mississippi. Their arrival turned the tide. The Confederates counterattacked as Grant's troops withdrew toward their naval transports. Polk crossed the river himself and took command from Pillow.

  The batteries at Columbus joined in, including the Lady Polk, the largest cannon in the army, named in honor of Polk's wife. Under heavy fire the Union troops lost cohesion and fled. Southerners counted Belmont as a victory because Grant had attacked and been driven off. Albert Sidney Johnston wrote that “The 7th of November will fill a bright gap in our military annals, and be remembered with gratitude by the sons and daughters of the South.”

  On the 11th of November, the Lady Polk exploded during a demonstration firing. The blast killed two officers and several soldiers. Polk was wounded nearby and stunned, and he needed several weeks to recover.

  The fall of Fort Henry in February 1862 meant that Union forces on the Tennessee River could now outflank Columbus. General Pierre G.T. Beauregard ordered Polk to evacuate the fortress on the 20th of February 1862. Polk was proud of the result. “Never was anything done with greater celerity, or so completely,” he wrote afterward. In five days his men moved the accumulation of six months. They took all the powder and every heavy gun in the forts, along with supplies he reckoned sufficient for his whole command for eight months. He regretted only that the works themselves had to be left to the enemy.

  The garrison was split. Some brigades went to defend Island Number Ten. Others, including Polk himself, joined the concentration of Confederate forces at Corinth, Mississippi.

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• 6. Shiloh and Perryville

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  In April 1862, Polk commanded the First Corps of Albert Sidney Johnston's Army of Mississippi. Johnston meant to strike Grant's troops at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, before Major General Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio could reinforce them. The march from Corinth was plagued by delays. Beauregard feared the element of surprise was lost, and he blamed Polk's corps for the traffic snarls.

  Beauregard stated, “I am very much disappointed at the delay which has occurred in getting the troops into position.” Polk defended himself: “So am I, sir; but so far as I am concerned my orders are to form on another line, and that line must first be established before I can form upon it.” Colonel Thomas Jordan, the army's adjutant general, later wrote that Polk's corps moved with little delay and was not responsible for the hold-up of Braxton Bragg's troops.

  Beauregard wished to cancel the offensive. Johnston, with Polk's support, overruled his second-in-command. “I would fight them if they were a million,” Johnston remarked, and he added, “Polk is a true soldier and a friend.”

  The Battle of Shiloh began in the early hours of Sunday, the 6th of April 1862. Polk, in the center, helped Hardee drive back Sherman and McClernand and hurled repeated attacks at the Hornet's Nest. He stood in the midst of the fighting and exposed himself to the hottest fire. When the Federal position finally collapsed, he accepted the surrender and received the sword of Union division commander Brigadier General Benjamin M. Prentiss.

  That evening, Cheatham's division returned to its Saturday-night bivouac for rations and ammunition. Polk went with it but did not tell Beauregard, who had taken command after Johnston died that afternoon. Heavy Union reinforcements arrived during the night.

  On the 7th of April, a fierce Union counterattack struck the Confederate army. Beauregard reported that a gap was opening between Breckinridge's left and Bragg's right because Polk was absent with one of his divisions. Around 10:30 a.m. Polk arrived. Beauregard wrote that he came “dashing forward with drawn sword” and made “one of the most brilliant charges of infantry made on either day of the battle.” That, Beauregard added, made up for “the tardiness of his appearance on the field.” After another day of fighting, Beauregard withdrew the army to Corinth.

  Beauregard later took an unauthorized leave to recover his health. President Davis used the chance to replace him with Braxton Bragg. That fall, Bragg and Major General Edmund Kirby Smith invaded Kentucky, and Polk received command of the Right Wing, made up of the divisions of Cheatham and Jones Withers. By the end of September 1862, Bragg put Polk in temporary command of the army around Bardstown, Kentucky. Bragg himself went to Frankfort to preside over the inauguration of a Confederate governor.

  On the 1st of October 1862, Buell launched a four-pronged advance from Louisville. Joshua Sill led fewer than 20,000 men toward Frankfort, while some 55,000 moved toward Polk at Bardstown. Bragg mistook Sill's column for Buell's main force. He ordered Polk to put his whole available force in motion by Bloomfield and strike Buell in flank and rear.

  Polk refused. He had only 16,000 troops and feared the Federal army in front of him. Moving as ordered would have brought him up against McCook's 13,000-man I Corps near Bloomfield.

  On the morning of the 8th of October 1862, Bragg galloped to Perryville, furious that Polk had not attacked immediately. He refused to believe that Buell's whole army was present. He took overall command and, overruling objections from Polk and Hardee, ordered an immediate offensive.

  One enduring legend says that Cheatham, advancing his division, shouted, “Give 'em hell, boys!” Polk seconded the cheer in the gentler words of a clergyman: “Give it to 'em, boys; give 'em what General Cheatham says!” Buell, several miles behind the action, did not realize that a major battle was under way and sent no reserves until late afternoon. The Confederate attack finally sputtered to a halt. Short of men and supplies, Bragg withdrew that night and retreated through Cumberland Gap into East Tennessee.

  At twilight, Polk rode through the soldiers of General Liddell to the next battle line and asked, “What troops are these?” The answer was, “The 22nd Indiana, Lt. Col. Squire Keith commanding.” Polk, the second highest-ranking Confederate on the field, had ridden into Union troops. He ordered Keith to cease firing or be court-martialed, and Keith told his men to lower their weapons. Polk rode along the line feeling, as he later described it, “a thousand centipedes... traveling up and down my backbone.” Back with Liddell's men, he cried, “General, every mother's son of them are Yankees! Open fire!”

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• 7. Quarrel With Bragg

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  After Perryville, Kirby Smith refused to serve under Bragg again. Polk and Hardee began a year-long campaign to get Bragg relieved. Polk meant to use his close relationship with President Davis, whereas Hardee worked more covertly. Soon after the Kentucky campaign, Polk traveled to Richmond to press the matter.

  Historians Thomas L. Connelly and Archer Jones argued that, despite his spotty field record and his reputation for trouble-making, Polk was a far deeper strategic thinker than he is usually credited with being. In Richmond he also urged a unified western command. Bragg stayed in place, and the enmity between the two men did not fade.

  Davis promoted Polk to lieutenant general on the 11th of October 1862, with a date of rank of the 10th. Only James Longstreet was more senior among Confederate officers of that grade. In November, the Army of Mississippi was renamed the Army of Tennessee, and Polk commanded its First Corps until September 1863.

  Low on supplies, Bragg pulled out of Kentucky and eventually stopped at Murfreesboro, Tennessee. His army took a defensive position northwest of the city along the West Fork of the Stones River. President Abraham Lincoln, tired of Buell's passivity, replaced him with Major General William S. Rosecrans, who began his march on the 26th of December 1862.

  On the night of the 30th of December, Bragg held a council of war. His own plan for an attack up the Nashville Pike would likely have failed. Polk countered with a plan to “turn the enemy's right where we outflanked him,” and Bragg agreed. The next day, the corps of Hardee, followed by Polk's, overran the Federal wing commanded by McCook. A stout defense by Philip Sheridan's division prevented total collapse. Repeated Confederate attacks then broke against the Union line, most notably in the cedar Round Forest salient.

  On the 2nd of January 1863, Bragg ordered Breckinridge to assault a lightly defended hill east of the river. His men chased the retreating Union forces into a deadly trap. Massed artillery repulsed them with heavy losses. Fearing Union reinforcements, Bragg withdrew to Tullahoma on the 3rd of January. Once again his subordinates schemed to remove their commander after an unsuccessful battle.

  Polk's own performance at Stones River drew criticism. Just before his corps went in, he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to split command. Cheatham would lead the two left brigades, front and rear, and Withers the corresponding brigades on the right. That placed half his command under unfamiliar leadership with no time to adjust. His piecemeal assaults then diluted the attack and added to the slaughter of his own men.

  During the Tullahoma Campaign, Rosecrans maneuvered so expertly that Chattanooga came under threat. Bragg had already withdrawn about 30 miles south, along the Duck River and behind the Highland Rim. Polk counseled retreat rather than a stand in the Tullahoma fortifications.

  Rosecrans eventually maneuvered Bragg out of Chattanooga. On the morning of the 12th of September 1863, Bragg learned from cavalry scouts that Palmer's division, part of Thomas L. Crittenden's force, was isolated on the Pea Vine Road. It lay two miles north of Polk's headquarters. Bragg ordered Polk to attack at daylight on the 13th.

  On the night of the 19th of September 1863, after the first full day of fighting at Chickamauga, Longstreet arrived at 11:00. Bragg reorganized his high command. Polk would oversee the right wing, with D.H. Hill as his second-in-command, and Longstreet would take the left. The attack was to open at daylight on the right and move left, with Longstreet waiting for the sound of Polk's guns.

  Bragg gave Polk only oral orders. Couriers wandering the dark, foggy woods never found Hill, who in turn got lost looking for Polk's headquarters. At 5 a.m. on the 20th of September, Polk woke to find that Hill was not preparing to attack. His new written orders reached Hill about 6 a.m. Hill replied with reasons for delay, including realigning his units, scouting the enemy line and issuing breakfast rations. The attack on the right slipped by about four hours.

  The delay gave the Union defenders time to finish their field fortifications and repel the Confederate offensive on the right. Bragg blamed Polk. After the war he wrote that without the lost hours, “our independence might have been won.”

  Late that morning, Rosecrans was misinformed that his line had a gap. While shifting units to fill it, he accidentally opened a real one directly in the path of Longstreet's eight-brigade assault. The rout drove one-third of the Army of the Cumberland, Rosecrans included, from the field. Bragg did not pursue. He laid siege to the Union army in Chattanooga, concentrating on the enemies inside his own army rather than those to the north.

  Bragg demanded an explanation from Polk, who placed much of the blame on Hill. Bragg then wrote to Davis, “Gen'l Polk by education and habit is unfit for executing the plans of others. He will convince himself his own are better and follow them without reflecting on the consequences.” Bragg relieved Polk of command and sent him to Atlanta to await orders. Polk protested what he called an “arbitrary and unlawful order” and demanded a court of inquiry, but he was never restored. Davis kept Bragg in command of the army, despite the protests of several subordinate generals.

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• 8. Last Campaigns and Legacy

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  From the 23rd of December 1863 to the 28th of January 1864, Polk commanded the Department of Mississippi and East Louisiana, an appointment from his friend President Davis. He then led the Department of Alabama and East Mississippi until the 4th of May 1864. Joseph E. Johnston had left to replace Bragg in command of the Army of Tennessee, which gave Polk effective command of the state of Mississippi.

  On the 3rd of February 1864, William T. Sherman set out from Vicksburg with 20,000 men on the Meridian Campaign. His target was the railroad hub of Meridian, Mississippi, where he meant to destroy infrastructure and disrupt Confederate supply lines. Brigadier General William Sooy Smith was to ride south from Memphis with 7,000 cavalry along the Mobile and Ohio Railroad and meet him there.

  Polk had only about 9,000 troops. He chose not to fight Sherman's infantry. Instead he sent his cavalry under Stephen D. Lee north to join Nathan B. Forrest against Sooy Smith. His infantry commanders received discretionary orders to fall back whenever expedient, and the infantry and trains left Meridian on the 14th of February. Almost all the stores, shop tools and rolling stock were saved, all but eight or ten cars. Sherman moved into Meridian the day Polk moved out.

  Sherman ordered his troops “to wipe the appointed meeting place off the map.” He is reported to have said that Meridian “no longer exists.” Polk urged Forrest and Lee to defeat Sooy Smith, convinced that an army deprived of its cavalry's foraging would starve. Sooy Smith ran into Forrest, retreated, and was defeated at Okolona on the 22nd of February 1864. Hearing nothing from him, Sherman withdrew to Vicksburg.

  Polk reported to Davis with evident pride that a drove of his own hogs had traveled east safely, passing within an average of six miles of Sherman's line of march. About 50 miles of track had been destroyed along four roads radiating from Meridian. Polk's work crews finished repairing the railroad by the 24th of March 1864. The Memphis Daily Appeal wrote that the repair of the Mobile and Ohio road “will compare with Yankee Enterprise.” Historian Jeffrey N. Lash called Polk “easily the Confederacy's ablest railroad general.”

  In May 1864, Polk brought more than 14,000 men from Mississippi to reinforce Johnston in Georgia against Sherman's advance on Atlanta. At Dalton, Johnston shook his hand and said, “How can I thank you? I asked for a division, but you have come yourself and brought me your army.” On the 12th of May, Polk took command of the Third Corps. It was still commonly known as the Army of Mississippi, and his rank made him second in command.

  On the evening Polk arrived, Lieutenant General John B. Hood rode with him to Johnston's headquarters. Anticipating a great battle, Hood said he wished to be baptized. Polk wrote to his wife about the scene, a one-legged veteran leaning on his crutches among the officers. “His heart was fully in it,” Polk wrote.

  After heavy fighting near Resaca, Polk received a letter from Johnston's wife. She asked him to baptize her husband, who had never been baptized, and to “lead my soldier nearer to God.” On the 18th of May, Polk baptized Johnston in the presence of Hood and Hardee.

  On the 14th of June 1864, Polk was scouting enemy positions near Marietta, Georgia, with his staff when he was killed at Pine Mountain. Sherman had spotted a cluster of Confederate generals in an exposed area, Polk, Hardee and Johnston with their staffs. He pointed them out to Major General Oliver Otis Howard, commander of the U.S. IV Corps, and ordered him to fire. Captain Hubert Dilger's Battery I of the 1st Ohio Light Artillery obeyed within minutes. The first round came close and the second came closer, and the men dispersed. The third shell struck Polk's left arm, passed through his chest, hit his right arm, and exploded against a tree.

  Polk's mixed record in the field did not dent his popularity with his troops. The Army of Tennessee deeply mourned him. His funeral at Saint Paul's Church in Augusta, Georgia, was one of the most elaborate of the war. His friend Bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia presided and delivered a stirring oration. Polk was buried in a location under the present-day altar, where the church keeps a monument and the original grave site can still be visited. In 1945, his remains and his wife's were reinterred at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans, in the front floor sanctuary to the right of the pulpit.

  His nephew Lucius E. Polk also became a Confederate general, and Lucius's son Rufus King Polk served in Congress. Leonidas's son William Mecklenburg Polk was a physician and Confederate captain who later served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army during World War I. William wrote the most flattering biography of his father. William's son Frank Polk served as a counselor to the State Department through World War I and later became the first Under Secretary of State. Fort Polk in Louisiana carried the general's name until 2023, when it was renamed Fort Johnson.

  Historian Steven E. Woodworth described the shell that killed Polk as “one of the worst shots fired for the Union cause during the entire course of the war.” In his view, Polk's incompetence and willful disobedience had hamstrung Confederate operations west of the Appalachians, while his special relationship with Davis made him untouchable. Joseph H. Parks reached a gentler verdict. He called Polk a competent corps commander and noted that every high-ranking officer in the Army of Tennessee, distrusting Bragg's competence, supported Polk's apparent disregard of orders. Parks left one question unanswered: whether a superior's orders should be executed regardless of conditions or circumstances.

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