Leonidas Polk, the famous “Bishop-General” of the Confederacy, was killed by a Union cannon ball at Pine Mountain, Georgia, on June 14, 1864. He was 58 years old.

Polk, a cousin of U.S. President James K. Polk, graduated from West Point in the class of 1827. He was a cadet at the same time as Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston and Joseph E. Johnston. Soon after graduation Polk became an Episcopal priest. He devoted the rest of his life to his vocation and became Missionary Bishop of the Southwest, principally Louisiana. In 1861 he volunteered his services to the Confederate army; he was quickly accepted.

In the army, Polk proved to be a better clergyman than he was a soldier. Serving in the western theater, he saw action in Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky and Georgia. His tactical dispositions and his decisions in combat were often inept, but based on his friendship with President Jefferson Davis he rose to the rank of lieutenant general. Braxton Bragg blamed Polk in part for the indecisive Southern victory at Chickamauga in 1863 and for a time the bishop left the army. However, in the North Georgia campaign in the spring of 1864, Polk commanded one of the three corps of the Army of Tennessee under Joseph E. Johnston. Thus he came to be on Pine Mountain.

Polk kept up his church connections while in the army. For example, he baptized General John Bell Hood during the Georgia campaign, and he performed many other devotional duties for soldiers.

Because so much of the South was behind Union lines by June 1864, military authorities decided to move Polk’s remains to Augusta until the family could decide where they wanted the interment to take place. Following a funeral service in Atlanta, the body was so transported. Upon its arrival in Augusta, Bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia directed a burial at St. Paul’s historic church until such time as Louisiana should be safe for access. Although the Civil War ended in 1865, the remains of Bishop Polk and his wife, who had been buried beside him on her death, were not removed to New Orleans until 1945.

The death of Bishop Polk was widely reported, as was the elaborate ceremony at his burial service at St. Paul’s on June 29, 1864. A good description of the funeral is in Catherine Smith’s well-researched article, “Death and Funerals of Bishop General Leonidas Polk,” in Richmond County History, Vol. 15, No. 1 (Winter 1983), the journal of the Augusta Richmond County Historical Society, available in Special Collections at Reese Library, Augusta State University.

William M. Polk, the bishop’s son, who had been on his military staff, wrote his biography. Confederate Brigadier General Lucius E. Polk of Arkansas was the bishop’s nephew.