Bull's-eye: 'You damned Yankees have killed old General Polk'

A close-up of monument at the Leonidas Polk death site at Pine Mountain.

This 20-foot monument, dedicated in 1902, marks where Polk was killed.

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On a recent visit to the site where Leonidas Polk was killed in Kennesaw, Ga., I examined the monument to the slave-holding lieutenant general, inspected the remains of a four-gun Confederate battery position nearby, and shook my fist at a modern house, gazebo, and tennis court. (Georgia developers show little mercy for Civil War battlefields; the monument ground is private property.)

Leonidas Polk was killed at Pine Mountain
on June 14, 1864. (Alabama Department
of Archives and History)

Then I listened, aghast, to a period preacher named "Archibald Everhart," who lost me roughly 10 seconds into his oration in front of the obelisk marking Polk's death at Pine Mountain: "Glory to the Southern saint ...." 

Oh, Lord.

On June 14, 1864, Polk -- "The Fighting Bishop" -- was nearly sliced in two by a well-aimed (or damned lucky) U.S. Army artillery round, rocking the Confederacy. "No event of a personal description -- saving the fate of Stonewall Jackson," a Southern newspaper wrote, "compares with it for painful interest and national calamity."

"Saddest event which has ever occurred in the [Army of Tennessee] since the death of Albert Sidney Johnston," wrote another. "You damned Yankees have killed old General Polk," a Confederate soldier reportedly wrote on a piece of paper attached to a ramrod next to a stump on Pine Mountain.

Polk, a West Point graduate and an Episcopal bishop before the war, had fought in nearly every major Western Theater battle. In his pocket when he died were a blood-stained prayer book and three copies of Balm for the Weary and Wounded -- each intended as a gift for generals John Bell Hood, Joseph Johnston, and William Hardee.  

Union newspapers weren't shy about speaking ill of the dead. Polk "has given no proofs of military prowess to especially endear him to the rebels," wrote the New York Observer. "In fact, he was a better bishop than a soldier. "

"... slavery was the poison that vitiated this man's life," wrote the Nashville Daily Union, throwing more gasoline on the Polk funeral pyre, "and led him to turn his back on the church ..."

I didn’t have time to find the position from which U.S. artillery fired the deadly shot, which you can read about here in a 2006 Civil War Times magazine feature. This was a full-circle visit for me: Polk’s Ashwood Hall mansion near Columbia, Tenn., was subject of my recently published CWT column. I'll post it when The Gods of Historynet make it available.

   GOOGLE STREET VIEW: Neighborhood where the Polk monument stands in clearing.

The Polk death site monument stands in a clearing on private property.

ABOVE AND BELOW: A gazebo peeks from behind the remains of a
 four-gun Confederate battery position near site of Leonidas Polk's death.

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SOURCES

-- Chicago Tribune, June 30, 1864.

-- Nashville Daily Union, June 21, 1864.

-- New York Observer, June 1864.

-- Southern Confederacy, June 15, 1864.