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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.

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swmdal

Bishop Polk's son, William Mecklenburg "Meck" Polk, had a distinguished career in medicine during his later life. He served in both the Civil War (on the Confederate side) and World War I. However, his biography of his father has been described by critics as largely hagiography.