The Bishop of the Old South: The Ministry and Civil War Legacy of Leonidas Polk (review)

The cannon ball that ripped through the body of Confederate major general Leonidas Polk and ended his life in the Atlanta campaign of 1864 also served to loft his memory high into the pantheon of heroes of the Lost Cause. Confederate apologists emphasized Polk’s antebellum career as a bishop of the Episcopalian Church in order to confirm the righteousness of the southern fight for independence. Polk’s decision to leave the pulpit and draw the sword has led historians to concentrate primarily on his military career. In this new study, Glenn Robins argues that the legacy of the Lost Cause has obscured Bishop Polk’s important contributions to the religious development of the antebellum South and particularly the growth of the Episcopal Church in that region.

Robins does not intend to present a full biography in the sense of investigating deeply Polk’s family life or his environment as he matures. Rather, he keeps a tight focus on those episodes in Polk’s life that indicate his lifelong devotion to southern paternalistic traditions, his drive to spread an evangelical Episcopalian message in the South, and his devotion to Confederate nationalism. The result is the story of a man who was remarkably consistent in his willingness to defend his personal honor and in his readiness to buck his superiors and peers, whether they were West Point superintendents, fellow planters, other bishops in the church, or most famously, Gen. Braxton Bragg.

Leonidas Polk’s religious development begins with an emotional conversion while he was a cadet at West Point. Robins credits Polk’s baptism, the first at the academy’s chapel, as a legitimization of the open embrace of religious faith in the U.S. military. Following his ordination into the Episcopalian ministry, Polk was filled with self-doubt over his preaching abilities and was largely ineffective until appointed the head of missionary activity for the southwestern district. Polk adapted low-church evangelicalism to the conservatism of the Episcopalian church and successfully increased the number of congregants in Louisiana in spite of the better funded and more active Methodists and Baptists. Appointed bishop of Louisiana, Polk was instrumental in the foundation of the University of the South, an institution he hoped would become a forge of Protestant southern nationalism.

Polk shocked some other bishops and his followers when he accepted a military commission in the Confederate army. The account of Polk’s generalship is limited to three themes: the general’s actions in the border states of Kentucky and Missouri, his role in the dispute over Bragg’s command in the wake of Chattanooga, and his support for revivalism in the army. The picture of Polk that Robins presents is that of a commander who was indecisive rather than aggressive, who confronted his superiors as often as he engaged the enemy, but who retained the loyalty of his men even in retreat.

Robins’s treatment of Polk’s early life and prewar career draws upon an impressive array of family letters, sermons, and West Point records. Robins is convincing as he reveals in Polk a consistent pattern of calling for reform within the paternal order and absolute loyalty to the plantation system. Robins is fair in his evaluation of Polk’s character, and this work cannot be considered a sympathetic treatment. Robins’s discussion of Polk’s military career will disappoint some readers, because it does not intend to examine that career in its entirety. Robins asserts that Polk maintained a high morale among his troops as the war lengthened but includes no comparison of desertion records or courts-martial evidence to show that his command was actually different from those of other generals. Robins’s complicated discussion of the controversy between Polk and Bragg at Perryville should be illuminated by a map delineating the movements of Polk’s forces during that conflict. Taken as a whole, Robins...