Polk, Leonidas (1806–1864)

US clergyman and soldier. He graduated from West Point (1827), but having been converted in his senior year, he resigned his commission shortly after graduating and studied for the Episcopalian ministry. By 1841 he was the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana, where he also owned a sugar plantation with 400 slaves. He helped establish the University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee. His West Point classmate, the politician Jefferson Davis, urged him to accept an appointment as a general, and he soon found himself in the thick of action, defeating Grant at Belmont, commanding large forces at Shiloh, Perryville, Stone's River (all 1862), and Chickamauga (1863). General Braxton Bragg ordered him to be court-martialed for not following orders at Chickamauga, but President Davis reinstated him. Polk was killed in action near Pine Mountain, Georgia, in June 1864, and although Davis lavished the highest praise on him as a military leader, most of his peers felt his real talents lay in his ministry. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina.