PINE MOUNTAIN, WHERE POLK, THE FIGHTING BISHOP OF THE CONFEDERACY, WAS KILLED
The blasted pine rears its gaunt height above the mountain slope, covered with trees slashed down to hold the Federals at bay; and here, on June 14, 1864, the Confederacy lost a commander, a bishop, and a hero. Lieut.-General Leonidas Polk, commanding one of Johnston’s army corps, with Johnston himself and Hardee, another corps commander, was studying Sherman’s position at a tense moment of the latter’s advance around Pine Mountain. The three Confederates stood upon the rolling height, where the center of Johnston’s army awaited the Federal attack. They could see the columns in blue pushing east of them; the smoke and rattle of musketry as the pickets were driven in; and the bustle with which the Federal advance guard felled trees and constructed trenches at their very feet. On the lonely height the three figures stood conspicuous. A Federal order was given the artillery to open upon any men in gray who looked like officers reconnoitering the new position. So, while Hardee was pointing to his comrade and his chief the danger of one of his divisions which the Federal advance was cutting off, the bishop-general was struck in the chest by a cannon shot. Thus the Confederacy lost a leader of unusual influence. Although a bishop of the Episcopal Church, Polk was educated at West Point. When he threw in his lot with the Confederacy, thousands of his fellow-Louisianians followed him. A few days before the battle of Pine Mountain, as he and General Hood were riding together, the bishop was told by his companion that he had never been received into the communion of a church and was begged that the rite might be performed. Immediately Polk arranged the ceremony. At Hood’s headquarters, by the light of a tallow candle, with a tin basin on the mess table for a baptismal font, and with Hood’s staff present as witnesses, all was ready. Hood, “with a face like that of an old crusader,” stood before the bishop. Crippled by wounds at Gaines’ Mill, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga, he could not kneel, but bent forward on his crutches. The bishop, in full uniform of the Confederate army, administered the rite. A few days later, by a strange coincidence, he was approached by General Johnston on the same errand, and the man whom Hood was soon to succeed was baptized in the same simple manner. Polk, as Bishop, had administered his last baptism, and as soldier had fought his last battle; for Pine Mountain was near.
LIEUT.-GEN. LEONIDAS POLK, C. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1911, REVIEW OF REVIEWS CO.
IN THE HARDEST FIGHT OF THE CAMPAIGN—THE ONE-HUNDRED-AND-TWENTY-FIFTH OHIO
During the dark days before Kenesaw it rained continually, and Sherman speaks of the peculiarly depressing effect that the weather had upon his troops in the wooded country. Nevertheless he must either assault Johnston’s strong position on the mountain or begin again his flanking tactics. He decided upon the former, and on June 27th, after three days’ preparation, the assault was made. At nine in the morning along the Federal lines the furious fire of musketry and artillery was begun, but at all points the Confederates met it with determined courage and in great force. McPherson’s attacking column, under General Blair, fought its way up the face of little Kenesaw but could not reach the summit. Then the courageous troops of Thomas charged up the face of the mountain and planted their colors on the very parapet of the Confederate works. Here General Harker, commanding the brigade in which fought the 125th Ohio, fell mortally wounded, as did Brigadier-General Daniel McCook, and also General Wagner.
