I’ve been studying up on the Civil War lately, and I just learned of an interesting character from the Confederacy (there were plenty of interesting rebels, but this fellow happened to raise my eyebrow). He was a general in the Confederate Army and his name was Leonidas Polk.

General Polk had a colorful nickname: “The Fighting Bishop”. Aside from being related to former US President James Polk, General Polk was actually a bishop in the Episcopal Church. Early in his life he went to West Point and then served the US Army for a while as a lieutenant, not seeing any hostile action. Interestingly, while at West Point he had studied moral philosophy along with the usual military stuff. He also formally converted to the Episcopal religion while there. Well, all that moral philosophy and religious sentiment caught up with him and he soon quit the Army and went to theology school in Virginia, as to become a priest in the Anglican Church. He worked his way up and by the time of the secession, he was the Bishop of Louisiana.

Bishop Polk, however, still had some military blood flowing in his veins, along with a love for the South and its way of life (including slavery, which the Church hadn’t been too keen on). So he threw down the crosier and took up the sword, using his connections to gain a commission as a major general. And as it turned out, they didn’t keep General Polk locked up in some regional office pushing papers and filing plans. The good bishop wanted to get out there and kill the enemy, and so they let him. He was present at some of the famous battles, including Shiloh, Stones River and Chickamauga.

The consensus on the web sites seems to be that Polk didn’t make such a good general, although his troops did seem to like him (perhaps they felt they’d have an inside track at the pearly gates should a Union mini-ball or cannon shell find them, given that they’d served a man of the cloth). Around 1863, Jefferson Davis sent him to the sidelines in interior Mississippi where the Union wasn’t doing much (following his dismissal by General Bragg). But in 1864, with Sherman blasting his way south into Georgia, they decided to bring the fighting bishop back into the fight.

One thing that I’ve noticed is that Confederate generals had a relatively high mortality rate. Two of the big dogs, Albert Sidney Johnston and Stonewall Jackson, died early in the war, followed by A.P. Hill, J.E.B. Stuart, and a number of lesser rebel generals. By contrast, the top Union generals seemed to have better luck (other than McPherson near Atlanta, and Kearny not long after Second Bull Run). It probably wasn’t luck, however; the Confederate generals were more aggressive and more “hands on”, and thus won many battles and inflicted disproportionate casualties amongst the yankees. The Union guys seemed more content not to get too involved with their men once the shooting started. But there was a price for such involvement, and General Polk eventually had to pay that price. He was killed at Pine Mountain near Atlanta while participating in the defense against Sherman’s march.

Polk decided to live by the sword, and was appropriately taken down by the sword. Well, actually by artillery fire, in a very un-gentlemanly act by William Tecumseh Sherman. Early in the war, the Union generals were mostly Democrats and had some residual sympathy for the South. But Sherman was the archetype of the new and aggressive breed of military men brought in by Lincoln and his Republicans to get the job done. When it came to war, Sherman was just the guy to do that. He wasn’t one to tarry about gentlemanly conduct.

So when he personally spotted Bishop / General Polk having an informal battle-line meeting with Joe Johnston and another Confederate general (Hardee), Sherman ordered his artillery to blast away at them. Earlier generals might have sent out a special squad out to attempt a live capture of the opposing leaders. Sherman had no time for that; just kill them, that was his philosophy. Johnston and the other general got away, but the ‘man of God’ had met his fate. It took several volleys, but the Union gunners finally nailed him. Sherman’s report to Washington simply said “We killed Bishop Polk yesterday and have made good progress today . . .”

I myself went through an Episcopalian phase of life, and spent several years as an enthusiastic convert. During that time I had read quite a bit about that Church’s history and its luminary figures. And until a few days ago, I had never heard of Bishop / General Polk. It’s understandable that a religious institution seeking to foster its “progressive” image would not talk much about a man who had drank from its spiritual waters and yet took to the cruel battlefields in defense of slavery.

But I wish that it did. I might have stayed longer in that institution (or left it with a more favorable impression) had it been a little more “down to earth” about its own faults and limitations. I would have liked to have seen the hyper-progressives (like the famous, perhaps infamous Bishop John Shelby Spong, whom I had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions, and who himself could be called a “fighting bishop”) admit that they share a tent and a heritage with those like Bishop Polk, and that they too could be wrong in their notion of “a better world” and what should be done to attain it. Just for sake of humility. Perhaps their ongoing and somewhat self-righteous demands for “change” would then have been easier to swallow. (And the Episcopalian Church’s continuing decline might have been halted).