Polk Family Papers Box 1 Document 26-1

A CROSS AND A SWORD

The Remarkable Career of Leonidas Polk by Arthur Ben Chitty

On June 23, 1861, there was issued by Jefferson Davis the commission of major-general, C. S. A., to Leonidas Polk. How this happened and what ensued makes it one of the most dramatic stories of the Civil War and of the Episcopal church history. Never before in North America had a bishop accepted military service although the practice was not uncommon in the Middle Ages. One other Confederate General, Ellison Capers, lived to become Bishop of South Carolina.

Many factors blended to produce the Polk phenomenon. He had been a fellow cadet at West Point with Jefferson Davids, William B. McGruder, and the son of President Van Buren. Polk had a military heritage, he thought as a soldier. His remarkable success in the ministry reflected the rare combination of orderliness, enthusiasm and imagination. Polk's commission was to command the water and land defenses of the Mississippi above the Red River. He was superbly equipped for this, having travelled since 1838 by steamer, horseback, and stage to nearly every part of Tennessee, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama in the conduct of his priestly functions. Polk had been a planter, a slaveowner, and a believer in the integrity of state government. In short, he had the confidence of a vital segment of the southern leadership. His selection was one of the most promising made by Jefferson Davis.

The cheers which greeted the appointment in the South were countered by jeers in the North. Some few friends -- Bishop Horatio Potter of New York and John Henry Hopkins of Vermont -- wrote understanding letters but the general press and the church press were indignant. A priest of God leading fellow rebels in slaughter? How could he do it?

Polk's decision had been difficult indeed. His mental agonies were reflected in letters collected by his wife and published by his son. From the practical portion of his many-faceted mind he reasoned that the political division of the formerly United States was already a fact and he drew the parallel between the position of the Anglican church in the colonies during the Revolution and the Southern church after the congress at Montgomery whic established the CSA. He was the first southern bishop to take the public stand which all later took, that a church in one country, the C. S. A., could not possibly maintain a primarily loyalty to another country, the U.S.A., particularly if the two countries were at war. He pointed out that the leadership of the Episcopal church had done much to preserve unity. Indeed, such outspoken unionists as Bishop James H. Otey of Tennessee had braved censure, if not scorn, at the hands of the fire-breathers. The drum-beating which had come from other protestant pulpits in the late 1850's was not characteristic of Episcopal clergy and there was hardly a true secessionist among the Southern bishops until after the South Carolina break.

The reasoning by which Polk followed the injunction "Render unto Caesar" was accompanied by emotions too. The South was to Polk a dear and native land. Its principles were his own. The slaves he tended with such sacrifice were a yoke and a burden but still they must be cared for. He was not in favor of slavery as an institution. He predicted its gradual collapse by economic unfeasibility. Meantime the only attitude for the church and church people in the South was Christian concern for slaves' physical and spiritual well-being. Approximately half of the Episcopal church membership in his diocese of Louisiana was Negro.

The strongest emotion Polk felt about entering the military service was the least pardonable. It was resentment. True, selfdefense is excusable in Christian ethic. There was a fire at Sewanee at the same time Fort Sumter was falling. The homes of the two bishops, Stephen Elliott of Georgia and Polk, were simultaneously set ablaze by unknown persons. Mrs. Polk and the children barely escaped with their lives. The Elliotts had left for Savannah two days earlier. Polk was outraged and his taking up arms for the "defense of fireside and family" had a personal validity. It was not mere abstract justification of political theory.

Since a revised 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 and short, cigar-smoking, whisky-drinking {sic} ex-salesman with oddly prophetic initials -- U.S. Grant. At Perryville, had Polk, Harde, or Kirby-

Smith had their way, Bragg's raid into Kentucky would 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 efforts to resign were just as sincere as was the determination of the Confederate hierarchy to keep him in uniform. His early record made his continuance in military service necessary to the morale of the new nation. The early desire to go back to eccliesiastical life lessened progressively as General Benjamin F. "Beast" Butler tightened his grip on New Orleans. Polk as Bishop could only have chosen between heading a rump diocese and being a virtual prisoner.

If Polk could have foreseen the decline of his personal fortunes in the military, if he could have faced sooner the pathetic inadequacy of the man who was his commanding officer for the greater part of the war, he might have insisted on the resignation. General Braxton Bragg was a a great organizer and trainer of men. His Army of Tennessee was always ready to fight but invariably let pass the best opportunity for attack. His frustrated lieutenants, including Forrest, Wheeler, Hardee, Polk, Cheatham, Kirby-Smith, and other excellent officers, contended with varying degrees of feeling that favoritism shown Bragg by Davis was a tragic mistake. Generals Polk and Bragg, after disagreeing in Kentucky, had an open argument at Chickamauga. Bragg preferred charges and Polk, supported by fellow generals, was

vindicated. Bragg, resigned after the unexpected and disastrous defeat at Missionary Ridge, where he had thought he was immovable. Thus ended a strange persecution of Polk by Bragg in which some future psychiatrist may find a notable case history.

Polk commanded the Army of Mississippi in its various junctions with the Army of Tennessee, taking part in the actions at Stone's River, Tullahoma, Chickamauga, Meridian, and finally Atlanta, where on a summer morning in 1864, observing the federal lines near Kennesaw, he was struck down.

Meck Polk's biography of his father was such a stupendous piece of documentation that succeeding treatments have simply selected form its ample resources. No one has commented that the basic purpose of the two-volume treatise is revealed in the emphasis: one volume for fifty-five years of Polk's life and one volume for the remaining three. Young Polk carried a grudge. The VMI cadet who served on general staffs for nearly four years knew his father and had been grievously misused in the war and he wanted to make a case for General Polk's military genius. He succeeded! No one can read his careful evidence without concluding that Leonidas Polk as head of the Army of Tennessee would have done what Lee did in Northern Virginia.

The massive argument however leaves one still asking the question, "So what?" Polk's military career can only be called a blunder in an otherwise near-perfect life. He might well have won battles, or even a war, but Leonidas Polk deserves a better fate than to be the patron saint of schism. Caught in a skein of unfolding history, he behaved in the only way he could. In the war he was a superior officer! But he was also wrong. In the Church he was magnificent -and right.