Leonidas Polk was supported by President Jefferson Davis, is colleague from West Point.
Leonidas Polk, a general of the Confederate army in the American Civil War and also a bishop of the Episcopal Church, was born on this date in 1806. Polk was of Scottish-Irish descent and was born in Raleigh, North Carolina. He was a member of a wealthy landowning family, and the U.S. president James K. Polk was his second cousin.
Polk graduated at the famous West Point with good grades and began a career as a military officer. However, he soon abandoned the military in order to study theology. He was ordained as a priest in 1831, and married around the same time. Polk owned large plantations with hundreds of slaves. In 1841 he became the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana.
After the American Civil War broke out, Leonidas Polk became a general in the Confederate army. He was strongly supported by President Jefferson Davis, his colleague from West Point. General Polk participated in several battles and even received a promotion.
In the last year of the war Polk was killed by an artillery shell in Georgia. He was 58 at the time, and the eighth-ranked general in the Confederacy.
