LIEUT-GEN. LEONIDAS POLK.

CHAPTER LIV.

Exchange of the Bishopric of Louisiana for a military command.-Reasons why Bishop Polk resigned his holy calling for arms.-Reflections on the ethics of war.Bishop Polk a graduate of West Point.-Adventures as a Missionary Bishop in Western wilds.-Flatboat-men and gamblers.-Gen. Polk wins the victory of Belmont.-A serious accident.-Battle of Shiloh.-The battle of Perrysville fought under Gen. Polk's direction.-His adventure with an Indiana Colonel.-Interesting incident in the battle of Murfreesboro.-Gen. Polk's conduct at Chickamauga.-Censured by Gen. Bragg.-Transferred to command in the Southwest.-He frustrates Sherman's expedition. - Returned to the Army of Tennessee.-His death at Marietta.-Anecdotes illustrative of his character.

WHEN in the commencement of the war, proclaimed by the South in the interest of liberty and independence, it was announced that Leonidas Polk, Bishop of Louisiana, had resolved to suspend his holy calling and accept a military command as Major-General in the Confederate service, an event so extraordinary made a great impression on the popular mind, while it was variously commented upon by the clerical public. While some of the latter warmly commended the act, and saw in it nothing inconsistent with the Christian profession, there were others who looked upon it as a lapse from duty, and thought the bishop's robe ill-exchanged for the uniform of the soldier. The venerable Bishop Meade, of Virginia, perhaps the most conspicuous Episcopal divine of the country, suggested the impropriety of the act, and wrote a fraternal letter to Bishop Polk, reminding him that he already had a commission in a very different army, to which he should still hold allegiance; but Polk replied, that while he accepted the major-generalship, he did not intend to resign his right to the bishopric. "When,"

said he, "I accept a commission in the Confederate army, I not only perform the duties of a good citizen, but contend for the principles which lie at the foundation of our social, political, and religious polity." In subsequent letters and conversations he pleaded his justification more strongly; he appeared to regard it as a commanding duty and a special call that he should join in fighting the battles of his country; and yet in the hard and perilous tasks of the field he never ceased to anticipate joyfully the time when, released from this duty, he might resume his religious charge, and go back to the quiet walks of his life. It was the impulse of duty, of necessity, of self-preservation, rather than the transport of enthusiasm that carried him to the field of battle. He remarked to a friend, only a short time before his death: "I feel like a man who has dropped his business when his house is on fire, to put it out; for as soon as the war is over, I shall return again to my sacred calling." The fond anticipation was never realized, and he sleeps in a soldier's grave.

The course of Bishop Polk in giving to his country the benefit of his military skill and learning was commended by a majority of the Southern clergy, and was acclaimed by the people as a sort of sanctification of their struggle with despotism and oppression. There is no doubt that it was peculiarly and abundantly sustained by the justice of the cause and the exigencies of the country. The circumstance of his early education as a soldier gave additional propriety to his assumption of martial duty; and Gen. Polk had, doubtless, reason to thank God that he had been trained to combat in the armies of men, as well as to contend in the cause of his Redeemer. He maintained the Confederate cause as a righteous one; and, at the head of a large and devoted body of men, he prepared to battle with the wicked and malignant spirits who warred upon the peace, happiness, and indisputable rights of the Southern people.

Much has been written on the ethics of war; and if we introduce some reflections on it here, it is not because the subject is new, but because we believe it to be misunderstood from the very excess of cant and sermonizing on the subject. It is to be observed that we have had in the South but little of that sickly whine that war is impious, that it is an exaggeration of murder and other crimes, and that men should pray for the world to be

governed by peace conventions. But war, civilized war, is not this horrible thing-its proper impersonation not the frightful giant,

"His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun,

With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands."

True, war may be degraded to a system of beastly ferocity, ravaging the fair earth, invading the homes of women and children with the firebrand, and carving out with its unsightly arms the rewards of the plunderer and assassin. This may be war as the North made it when it smoked the fat of the land, struck at every blade of grass in the South, destroyed twelve hundred churches, and fired tens of thousands of homes; and this may be what Gen. Sherman meant in the brutal and absurd definition: "war is cruelty."

But no! war, honourable war is beautiful! It is the noble exercise of manhood; it is the expression of human progress; it is the purification and economy of the human race, ordained of God since the world has stood.

Strike from the records of the human race war, and all that relates to war, and what a blank-what a dreary tract of commonplaces-would there be! The most splendid pages would be lost; virtues for which there would have been no occasion would be unknown; a thousand graces would never have bloomed; the most brilliant parts of literature would be extinguished; the most fruitful themes of genius and art would not exist; the Iliad would never have been written; the noblest texts of Shakspeare's dramas would have been wanting; in short, by far the better half of the glory and interest of history would be annihilated. This is a plain test, and any one may use his scissors on history to determine how little would be left of its charms and glories if there were no wars.

Let us imagine in a general way that state of things in which there was no war. Nations would degenerate into herds of cowards, eaten up with selfish lusts, timid, emasculated, without even schools of physical exercise. Honour would have no place in our vocabulary, and Courage would be the idlest of ornaments. Those who would have us immolate our manhood do not reflect that such a condition is shown to be productive only of cunning, vice,

and unnatural practice. Those who would have all wars to cease would merely give us over to the dead-rot of peace. The sickly preachers who dab their mouths with soft handkerchiefs and pray for the universal season of peace, forget that St. Paul in his inspired epistles found his favourite images in the camp and panoplies of war, recognising the virtues that make at once the good soldier in the field and the good soldier of Christ.*

* Let us be done with paying out the greased coin of cant and saying that war is murderous, and that the armed contest of man with man, is a relic of barbarism; and let us have the courage to carry a principle, once admitted, to all its consequences. As circumstances will arise in the life of nations justifying war, creating the necessity for it, making it a useful and honourable exercise, so in the community there will be occasions of individual combat. An outery has been raised against the duello, when the fact is that the duello is simply the unit of war, justifiable on the same groundswar in fact reduced to its simplest form, that form the best-matched, and therefore the most honourable. It is said that the duello is unequal, and yet after all, whatever may be the difference of skill in arms, what other form of combat is more equal than that where a code of honour gives to the antagonists the same weapon, and attempts every expedient of fairness, within the range of man's natural and moral invention. Is the combat of mere physical strength more equal, where the strong man strikes down the weak; or that of cunning, where the simple man is at the mercy of the villain; or that of words, where the pure and honourable have to compete with the foul libeller, and the ingenious liar? But it is said that the law affords redress, and that the injured party should in all things complain to it. Do we not know and feel that the law takes no account of the sensibilities; and that pecuniary damages do not satisfy the wounds of honour, the murdered peace of one's family, the libel, the seduction, the nameless outrages of cowardly villany. To those who would hiss down the duello, we would reply with calm reason that, as the unit of war, it is as justifiable as war itself; that it is the most equal form of combat yet devised; and that, in a certain class of outrages, it is the only effective mode of redress. These are solid considerations in opposition to a mere clamour. Those who exclaim against the duello, are generally those who shrink from a just responsibility for their acts, and prefer to keep their own advantages in the unequal contest of underhanded villainy and dirty words. When Master Bridgenorth pleaded conscientious scruples, and refused to accept the cartel of Sir Peveril, the old knight well replied: "In return for your uncivil advice, be pleased to accept of mine, namely: that as your religion prevents your giving a gentleman satisfaction, it ought to make you very cautious of offering him provocation."

It is to be hoped, indeed, that the duello, as a peculiar institution of combat among the people of the South, may be long preserved and cherished by them, and that, even when the aping spirit of Puritanism may invade their Legislatures and Courts, the legal authorities may, in this respect, be disarmed by public opinion. This institution of combat should be prized by the South as a noble inheritance, a relic of chivalry, an honourable peculiarity, the best element of their social system; at once a genius of civilization, a teacher of manners, and a guardian of the household. We believe that the time will yet come when the world, often governed as it is by a mere

But we return to the subject of our sketch. We have already referred to the fact of Bishop Polk's education as a military man. He also belonged to a family that had been distinguished in arms, and was connected with the early traditions of American liberty. He was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, about the year 1808. His father, the late Col. William Polk, was a highly meritorious and distinguished soldier in the Revolutionary war. He was a near relation of Thomas Polk, who was in the van of the few intrepid spirits that inaugurated the freedom of the American colonies, by issuing the famous Mecklenburg declaration of independence.

Young Polk acquired the elementary part of his education at an excellent academy in his native State. His father, however, having an earnest desire that his son should adopt the military profession, availed himself of the earliest opportunity that presented to place him at West Point. Here he remained the usual term; and upon his graduation, instead of entering the army, he resolved to engage in the peaceful calling of the ministry. Accordingly he applied for, and took orders in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1838, he received an appointment as Missionary Bishop in Arkansas and part of the Indian Territory, with a provisional charge

clamour, will take a second thought on this subject, and be anxious to restore an institution of combat that has been replaced by unmatched methods of controversy, scandalous inventions, and every vile and dirty expedient. It is the duello that truly protects the weak against the strong, silences the bully, gives the lesson to the powerful villain, compels decency of manners, purifies the language of conversation, raises the tone of society, puts under stern guard the integrity of the household, and gives protection against that, of which Charles Dickens says, referring to the newspaper press in the northern cities of America:

"It has its evil eye in every house, and its black haud in every appointment in the State, from a president to a postman; with ribald slander for its only stock in trade. * * When any man of any grade of desert in intellect or character can climb to any public distinction, no matter what, in America, without first grovelling down upon the earth, and bending the knee before this monster of depravity; when any private excellence is safe from its attacks, and when any social confidence is left unbroken by it, or any tie of social decency or honour is held in the least regard; when any man in that Free Country has freedom of opinion, and presumes to think for himself, without humble reference to a censorship, which for its rampant ignorance and base dishonesty he utterly loathes and despises in his heart; when those who most acutely feel its infamy and the reproach it casts upon the nation, and who most denounce it to each other, dare to set their heels upon it, and crush it openly in the sight of all men-then I will believe its influence is lessening."