The General Was a Bishop (Article 123)

Although, he was probably a better Bishop than he was a General!

Leonidas Polk was an Episcopal Bishop and priest, whose wife owned several slaves through inheritance and he benefited from their toil. He had no problem with the concept of slavery and believed it justified and biblical. As a young man he was educated at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, from which he was graduated in 1827. He was a vocal supporter of secession, and he later became a General in the Confederate Army.

He had been raised in a religious family and said that as a young man, while he understood the values of a spiritual basis, he was not devout. But, before his graduation from West Point, he met and was influenced by an Episcopal Bishop and during his senior year as a cadet, had a life-altering religious conversion. Shortly after graduating, he requested to be relieved of his new commission as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and entered the Virginia Theological Seminary (Episcopal) in Virginia.

In 1831, following his religious studies, Polk was ordained a deacon and priest in the Episcopal Church. He was considered devoted, charismatic, well organized and a natural leader by elders of the church, and he advanced rapidly through the hierarchy. By 1841 he was named Bishop of Louisiana, although his primary residence was in Tennessee where his wife’s wealthy family held large tracts of land.  He and his wife lived an aristocratic life on a large plantation with a significant number of house and field slaves. While it seems inconceivable today that a clergyman would support slavery, the Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches of the South, (and a few others) had developed a theology over the prior generations, which justified slavery as a benevolent, proper, and Biblical institution. Polk, unlike some other Southerners, was known to treat the slaves owned by his family as “God’s creatures”, although clearly a subservient race. He believed, similar to that expressed by Robert E. Lee, that God would determine a time (in the future) when slaves would be gradually freed. (But just not right then!) One reason he stated for his interest in founding a new Episcopal University was that it would, over time, educate Southern aristocratic families to become more responsible for improving the welfare of the slaves. In 1860, before the Civil War started, he acquired the land for the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee for just that purpose. He said that he hoped it could become a symbol of enlightenment similar to Oxford and Cambridge in England.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Polk pulled his Louisiana diocese out of the Episcopal Church of the United States to form the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America.

Although he hoped that secession would result in a peaceful separation of the North and South, and suggested that he was reluctant to take up arms personally, he did not hesitate to write to his friend and former classmate at West Point, Jefferson Davis, President of the new Confederate States of America, offering his services in the Confederate States Army. Polk was commissioned a major general on June 25, 1861

When asked by a contemporary in Richmond if he was putting off the gown of an Episcopal bishop to take up the sword of a Confederate general, he replied, “No, Sir, I am buckling the sword over the gown.”

Soon after receiving his commission, however, Polk embarrassed Davis and harmed the diplomatic balance in the neutral state of Kentucky, when, without specific orders, he took a small contingent of troops to occupy nearby Columbus, Kentucky in September 1861. Polk’s action caused the Kentucky Governor to request Union assistance to "expel the invaders". Polk had unwittingly handed Kentucky to the Union and one contemporary said, “Polk lost Kentucky without a battle or a shot.” In fact, his troops would not see battle against Union Forces until November 1861. But, Jefferson Davis continued to support Polk, and that was all he needed.

Polk constantly argued about tactics and strategy with his subordinate Generals and even with superior officers. Once, resentful that a former West Point classmate, the highly regarded General Albert Sidney Johnston, was giving him orders, he wrote a letter of  resignation to President Davis , who promptly turned it down.

One of the officers on the staff of General Braxton Bragg (Polk’s Superior) later said, “Besides being a basically incompetent general, Polk had the added fault of hating to take orders.”

Bragg despised Polk and once said "He is an old woman, utterly worthless", and thought he often failed to appropriately discipline his men. Unfortunately for Bragg, and possibly for the Confederate Army, Polk remained a favorite of Jefferson Davis. So, despite ridicule from Bragg, Polk kept getting important commands.

Perhaps because of his status as a Bishop and priest, unlike many officers, Polk never used profanity. Once he listened as one of his Generals yelled to troops, "Give 'em hell, boys!", and Polk wanting to share the enthusiasm, yelled, "Give it to 'em, boys; give 'em what General Cheatham says!"

Once, Polk disregarded orders from Bragg to attack a small group of Union troops and Bragg noted Polk’s failure in a battle report. Then, at a subsequent battle (Chickamauga), Polk was ordered to initiate an attack to prevent the Union Army from fortifying their positions, but he was late forming his troops. His delay allowed the Union defenders time to strengthen their defenses and then repel subsequent Confederate attacks.  

Bragg’s exasperation with Polk is clear in his reports. He wrote to President 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." And, Bragg wrote after the war that if Polk had attacked on time at Chickamauga, "Our independence might have been won." While the speculative statement was probably not accurate, it was still a very damning comment by one General about another!

But President Davis simply transferred his friend Polk away from General Bragg.  

On June 14, 1864, Polk was scouting enemy positions near Marietta, Georgia, with his staff when he and his company were spotted by a Union artillery group, which then promptly opened fire. While the first two shells came close to General Polk, causing he and the others to scamper, the third round directly struck Polk, killing him instantly.

One historian wrote that the shell that killed General Polk was, "One of the worst shots fired for the Union cause during the entire course of the war, as Polk's incompetence made him far more valuable (to the Union) alive than dead.”

Bishop/General Polk died four years before classes opened at his planned University of the South.

POST SCRIPT: Even before this post, I had received numerous questions from readers about the fact that many Confederate leaders (including Polk, Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis) were devout Christians, but they supported slavery a seemingly incongruous position to us today. After further research in the coming months, I will attempt to explain their theology which  justified slavery, as they practiced it. However, as an amateur historian, I may prove to be an even weaker theologian, but I will try.