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 ‘You damned Yankee sons of bitches have killed our old Gen. Polk.’

Leonidas Polk and Jefferson Davis were friends at West Point.  Shortly after graduation in 1827, Polk resigned his commission to enter the priesthood.  By 1860 he was the Episcopal Bishop of New Orleans.

At the beginning of the ACW, Davis appointed Polk a general...Davis needed as many friends as he could get in his countries military.  However, Polk did not live up to expectations.  It was his entry into Missouri which caused that neutral state to side with the Union.  His tardiness and lack of drive resulted in the failure of a number of Confederate efforts in the western theater.

However, like Braxton Bragg, his friendship with Davis kept him in a position of importance long after he had demonstrated his incompetence.

On June 14, 1864, Polk became perhaps the only general to be killed directly by the orders of an opposing general.

During the Atlanta Campaign, Generals Joseph Johnston, William Hardee and Polk were standing on Pine Mountain, Georgia observing the Yankees in the distance.  Although warned they were within musket and artillery range of the enemy, they did not immediately move.

Union General William Sherman himself  spotted the group of Rebel officers. "How saucy they are!" he said and ordered nearby batteries to open fire. The three-inch rifles of the Fifth Indiana Battery fired a salvo, as did Battery E, Pennsylvania Light Artillery. The Northern shot rained near the Confederate generals. Hardee and Johnston quickly moved away.

Polk was a large man, and had a dignified mien.  Running hardly suited him as he casually walked toward shelter.  Then came another artillery round - a solid shot or a shell - which struck Polk, entering his left side and passing through his body. The general fell dead, instantly killed.

Union signal officers had broken the Rebels' wigwag code and picked up a message from Pine Mountain around noon: "Send an ambulance for General Polk's body."

 Since I last visited the site of his death a fence has been added around the monument:





 

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