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VITAL STATISTICS
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BORN: 1806 in Raleigh, NC.
DIED: 1864 in Pine Mountain, GA
CAMPAIGNS: Belmont, Shiloh, Perryville, Stone's River,
Chickamauga, Vicksburg to Meridian (Sherman's March).
HIGHEST RANK ACHIEVED: Lieutenant General
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BIOGRAPHY
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| Leonidas Polk was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, on April 10, 1806. He attended the University of North Carolina, then was appointed to the US Military Academy at West Point, where he was deeply influenced by the chaplain. Graduating in 1827, he resigned his commission soon after graduation and entered Virginia Theological Seminary. Ordained a deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1830, he was appointed missionary bishop to the Southwest in 1836. Named bishop of Louisiana in 1841, he began a long, but successful campaign to establish an Episcopal university in the South, which became the University of the South (Sewanee). Adopting secession as a sacred cause, Polk returned to the military, and Confederate President Davis was appointed a major general in the Provisional Confederate Army. Placed in command of Department No. 2, he later fought at the Belmont, Shiloh and Perryville, after which he was promoted to lieutenant general (took rank from October 10, 1862). Polk took part in the fighting at Stone's River, but Gen. Braxton Bragg ordered that he face a court-martial after failing to attack as planned at Chickamauga. Confederate President Davis, in an attempt to ease tensions between Bragg and Polk, placed Polk in command of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi and East Louisiana. Unable to counter Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman's march from Vicksburg to Meridian, Polk's troops were reinforced by the Army of Tennessee, under the command of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston. On June 14, 1864, while spying on the Union positions from the top of Pine Mountain, Polk was killed by an artillery shell. |
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