Lucius Eugene Polk

From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia

Lucius Eugene Polk (10 July 1833 – 1 December 1892) was born at Salisbury, North Carolina on July 10, 1833. His family moved to a plantation near Columbia, Tennessee when he was two years old. Polk graduated from the University of Virginia in 1852 and was living in Helena, Arkansas at the opening of the civil war, when he enlisted as a private in the Yell Rifles in 1861, but was soon made first lieutenant in Company B, Fifteenth Arkansas, Cleburne's regiment. Serving in the west under Hardee, his regiment was, with other troops of that command, transferred to the east side of the Mississippi early in 1862. At Shiloh, Polk conducted himself with great gallantry and received a wound. On the 11th of April he was commissioned colonel of his regiment. At Richmond, Ky., he was severely wounded early in the fight, but was back with the army in time for the Murfreesboro campaign. He was commissioned brigadier-general on the i3th of December, 1862, and participated with conspicuous gallantry in the battle of Murfreesboro, in command of Cleburne's old brigade. For his part in this fierce conflict he was mentioned in terms of high praiseby Cleburne, Hardee and Bragg. At Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge, Polk's brigade maintained its reputation for valor and efficiency. At Ringgold gap, when Cleburne saved by his splendid fight the artillery and trains of Bragg's retreating army, Brigadier-General Polk was included with Lowrey, Govan and Granbury in a very high testimonial of merit. Cleburne said of them: "Four better officers are not in the service of the Confederacy." One might well be proud of such commendation from the "Stonewall of the West." In the spring of 1862 came the fierce and protracted grapple of the armies of the West, which, beginning at Dalton, had but little cessation until Hood retired from the trenches of Atlanta on September 1st. Polk's command bore an honorable part in the marching, entrenching and fighting of this wearisome campaign. At Kennesaw Mountain, not far from where his illustrious kinsman, Leonidas Polk, lost his life, Gen. L. E. Polk was severely wounded in the thigh by a cannon ball and was too badly crippled for further service in the field. He retired from the army with the admiration and regret of officers and men, who so well knew his worth, and made his home on the family plantation near Columbia in Maury county, Tennessee. In 1884 he was elected a delegate to the national Democratic convention at Chicago. On January I, 1887, he was elected to the State senate of Tennessee. Two of his sons served in the Spanish-American War, and one of them was subsequently a member of Congress. General Polk lived quietly until his death at his home in Columbia on December 1, 1892. He is buried in St. John's Churchyard at Ashwood, near Columbia, Tennessee.