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Leonidas Polk ( April 10 1806 – June 14 , 1864 ) was a Confederate general who was once a planter in Maury County, Tennessee , and a Third Cousin of President James K. Polk . He also served as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese Of Louisiana and was for that reason sometimes known as ''The Fighting Bishop''. EARLY LIFE Born in Raleigh, North Carolina in 1806, Polk attended the University Of North Carolina At Chapel Hill briefly before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point . During his senior year, he joined the Episcopal Church and resigned his commission. He was ordained as a Deacon in 1830. That year, he married Frances Ann Deveraux and became assistant to Bishop Richard Channing Moore in Richmond, Virginia . In 1832, Polk moved his family to the vast Polk "Rattle and Snap" tract in Maury County, Tennessee, and constructed a massive Greek Revival home he called "Ashwood Hall." With his four brothers in Maury County, he built a family chapel, St. John's Church, at Ashwood. He also served as Priest of St. Peter's Chuch in Columbia, Tennessee. He was appointed Missionary Bishop of the Southwest in 1838 and was elected Bishop of Louisiana in 1841. Bishop Polk was the leading founder of the University Of The South in Sewanee, Tennessee , which he envisioned as a national University for the South and a New World equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge . CIVIL WAR At the outbreak of the Civil War, Polk pulled the Louisiana Convention out of the Episcopal Church of the United States. His friend and former roommate at West Point, Jefferson Davis , prevailed upon Polk to accept a commission in the Confederate States Army . Polk agreed and was commissioned Major General commanding Department No. 2 (roughly, the area between the Mississippi River and the Tennessee River ) in 1861. He committed one of the great blunders of the Civil War by dispatching troops to occupy Columbus, Kentucky , in September 1861; the state of Kentucky had declared its neutrality, but Polk's action ended that neutrality and the state quickly fell under Union control. He organized the Army Of Mississippi and a part of the Army Of Tennessee , in which he later served as Lieutenant General . Following disagreements with the army's commander, Braxton Bragg , Polk was transferred to Mississippi and later took charge of the Department of Alabama, Mississippi, and East Louisiana. Ordered by Bragg's successor, Joseph E. Johnston , to join his forces with the Army of Tennessee in the Atlanta Campaign , Polk was killed by an artillery shell at Pine Mountain near Marietta, Georgia , on June 14 , 1864 . He was buried in Augusta, Georgia , and in 1945, his remains and those of his wife were reinterred at Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans . REFERENCES
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