4

convention was able to meet and ratify the constitution.

After the death of the Confederate Presiding Bishop, William Meade,
of Virginia, in 1862, and of James Hervey Otey of Tennesse in 1863, Polk was
the senior bishop in the Condederacy, but the title went to Stephen Elliott
of Georgia, whose diocese had fulfilled the canonical requirements of
association with the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States
of America.

Other Southern bishops became Confederate chaplains or frequently
visited the camps, but Polk exercised his ministry only a few times. He
performed the marriage ceremony for the raider General John Hunt Morgan and
baptized Generals John Bell Hood, Joseph E. Johnston, and William J. Hardee
in their tents near Atlanta.

Since an evaluation of Polk as a military man is about to appear
as a full-length biography by Dr. Joseph H. Parks, head of the history
department at the University of Georgia, no detail is necessary here. Polk
exerted full command of a fighting force only once, at Belmont in Missouri.
There he decisively defeated a short, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking ex-
salesman with oddly prophetic initials--U. S. Grant. At Perryville, had
Polk, Hardee, or Kirby Smith had their way, Braxton Bragg's raid into
Kentucky could have become a spectacularly successful campaign.

These two victories cost him a boon he seems ardently to have wished,
the right to return to his churches, his clergy, and his people. His early
record made his continuance in military service necessary to the morale of
the new nation. His desire to go back to ecclesiastical life lessened
progressively as General "Beast" Butler tightened his grip on Louisiana.
Polk as wartime bishop could only have chosen between headinh a rump diocese
and being a virtual prisoner.