Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II (September 17, 1825 – January 23, 1893) was a Confederate soldier, American politician, diplomat, and jurist. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented Mississippi in both houses of Congress, served as the United States Secretary of the Interior, and was an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He also served as an official in the Confederate States of America.
This article is about the U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice. For his father, a Georgia lawyer and judge, see Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar I.
Lucius Q. C. Lamar
Grover Cleveland
Michael C. Kerr (1875–1876)
Samuel J. Randall (1876–1877)
George Harris (1870)
January 23, 1893 (aged 67)
Vineville, Georgia, U.S.
(now Macon)
St. Peter's Cemetery, Oxford, Mississippi
- Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar I (father)
- Sarah Bird (mother)
Born and educated in Georgia, he moved to Oxford, Mississippi, to establish a legal practice. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1856 and served until January 1861, when he helped draft Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession. He helped raise the 19th Mississippi Infantry Regiment and worked on the staff of his wife's cousin, General James Longstreet. In 1862, Confederate President Jefferson Davis appointed Lamar to the position of Special Confederate Commissioner to Russia. Following the Civil War, Lamar taught at the University of Mississippi and was a delegate to several state constitutional conventions.
Lamar returned to the United States House of Representatives in 1873, becoming the first Mississippi Democrat elected to the House since the end of the Civil War. He remained in the House until 1877, and represented Mississippi in the Senate from 1877 to 1885. He opposed Reconstruction and voting rights for African Americans [1][2] but later came to support black suffrage and opposed the 1890 Mississippi Constitution. In 1885, he accepted appointment as Grover Cleveland's Secretary of the Interior. In 1888, the Senate confirmed Lamar's nomination to the Supreme Court, making Lamar the first Southerner appointed to the court since the Civil War. He remained on the court until his death in 1893.
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In 1857, Democratic Congressman Daniel Wright decided not to seek reelection in Mississippi's 1st congressional district. The Memphis Daily Appeal suggested Lamar as a possible candidate under the Democratic ticket, though he faced difficulties due to his prior support of Howell Cobb, a leader of the Union movement. Nevertheless, at this convention, after numerous indecisive ballots, Mississippi Democrats made Lamar their candidate, and Lamar credited his old friend Jacob Thompson for the win.[36] Lamar campaigned against Whig opponent, James Lusk Alcorn by stressing his strong support of the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and won by a comfortable margin, then two years later faced no opponent and thus easily won reelection.[37]
Lamar's antebellum congressional career primarily focused on sectionalist issues, especially protecting Southern interests in slavery. Lamar supported the proslavery Lecompton Constitution in Kansas without popular ratification, which was the subject of a debate on the House floor on the morning of February 6, 1858.[38] When a South Carolina congressman attacked a Pennsylvania Republican congressman, a brawl ensued,[39] with Lamar attacking Illinois congressman (and Congregational minister) Owen Lovejoy, who had become a prominent abolitionist after a pro-slavery mob killed his brother.[40] Lamar supported the compromise English Bill created by southerners and President Buchanan.[41] Lamar again defended slavery as an institution verbally in an 1860 speech, during which he argued that not everyone is equal.[42] While Lamar never directly advocated for secession, he mentioned it as possible if the South lost the ability to check the majority abolitionist opinion in the government.[43]
After the victory of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln in the November 1860 presidential election was clear, Lamar left Washington on December 12, 1860, to canvass for a seat in the upcoming Mississippi secession convention.[44] On January 12, 1861, Lamar resigned from Congress, as did all other members of the Mississippi delegation.[45][46][47]
Family and education[edit]
Lamar was born on September 17, 1825[3] in Putnam County, Georgia, near Eatonton, at the family's 900 acres (3.6 km2) plantation home known as "Fairfield".[4][5] His parents were Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar and Sarah Bird; he had five siblings.[3] His paternal grandparents were first cousins. The elder Lamar, a lawyer and state judge in Georgia, suffered from depression and committed suicide when Lamar was nine years old.[6] Contemporary accounts explained the suicide as resulting from either insanity or severe dyspepsia.[7] Several members of Lamar's family reached prominence in various levels of government. His uncle, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, participated in the Texas Revolution and served as the second president of the Republic of Texas.[6] He was a cousin to Associate Justices of the Supreme Court Joseph Rucker Lamar[5] and John A. Campbell[8] and was related to U.S. Representatives Absalom Harris Chappell[9] and William Bailey Lamar.[10]
Lamar was briefly educated in the Milledgeville school system before being enrolled at the Manual Labor School in Covington, Georgia, from 1837 to 1840. The school consolidated with Emory College (now known as Emory University) located in nearby Oxford, Georgia, in 1840, leading to Lamar's mother and one of his uncles moving to the town.[11] Lamar was an average student, faring well in subjects he enjoyed and poorly in those he did not. Beyond his studies, he participated in campus debating activities, where he gained experience in public speaking and knowledge of important issues of the time such as slavery.[12] He completed his studies in 1845.[13]
At Emory, Lamar began a relationship with Virginia Longstreet, the daughter of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, president of the college. The couple married in July 1847,[13] and they had four children: L.Q.C. Lamar III, Virginia, Sarah, and Frances.[3] On December 29, 1884, Virginia died from lung disease that had plagued her since 1880.[14] They were married in the President's House at Emory College in Oxford, GA—today the Dean's Residence at Oxford College of Emory University.
Early career[edit]
Georgia lawyer and politician[edit]
In 1845, a few months before his twentieth birthday, Lamar moved to Macon, Georgia, where he studied law in his uncle's office for two years. He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1847 in Vienna.[15] Afterwards, Lamar moved back to Covington, where he set up his own legal practice.[16] Using family connections associated with the Longstreet name, Lamar took his first steps into politics when Newton County sent him as a delegate to the state Democratic convention in Milledgeville in 1847 and 1849. When that convention discussed the Wilmot Proviso, Lamar embraced a staunch proslavery position that he never changed throughout the antebellum period.[17][a]
Mississippi lawyer, slaveowner and politician[edit]
Lamar moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in 1849 after A.B. Longstreet became president of the University of Mississippi.[17][18] In June 1850, Lamar received a license to practice law in Mississippi, and in July, he became the university's assistant professor of mathematics.[19] In the November, 1850 federal census, Lamar owned 14 slaves near Oxford (almost all women and girls)[20] compared to Longstreet's 10 slaves (almost all adults).[21] A decade later, after his brief return to Georgia described below, Lamar owned 31 slaves in Lafayette County, Mississippi, of whom 14 were female and 17 male, including 9 boys and 4 girls under 10.[22]
Lamar's political career in Mississippi began in May 1850, when he addressed a Lafayette County convention on the topic of slavery.[23] In March 1851, he helped organize a local branch of the Southern Rights party in Oxford and soon became its delegate to the statewide party convention in Jackson.[24] Lamar campaigned on behalf of party candidate Jefferson Davis for governor and was the party's spokesman in a debate in Oxford with Unionist-opponent Henry Foote.[25][26] Despite Lamar's efforts, Foote defeated Davis by 999 votes.[27]
Return to Georgia as lawyer and legislator[edit]
Homesick and dissatisfied as a politician, in the summer of 1852, Lamar returned to Covington and entered into a legal partnership with a friend.[28] Lamar reentered politics in Georgia by winning a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives as a member of the Democratic Party in Newton County, which had typically favored Whig candidates.[29] Lamar became chairman of the Committee on the State of the Republic and also served on the Agriculture and Internal Improvements, Judiciary, and Public Printing committees, as well as on two special committees.[30] Throughout the 1853–1854 term, he focused on issues dealing with the Western and Atlantic Railroad, party politics and slavery.[31]
In February 1854, after the legislative term ended, Lamar moved to Macon to open a law office. With support from former congressman A. H. Chappell, Lamar sought the Democratic nomination in 1855 for Georgia's 3rd congressional district but failed to gather enough votes at the convention to become his party's candidate.[32]
Return to Mississippi and Congressman (1857–1860)[edit]
After losing that Georgia congressional campaign, and facing financial troubles as well as family responsibilities, Lamar left Georgia for the final time and returned to Lafayette County, Mississippi.[33] Along the Tallahatchie River north of Abbeville, Lamar established his 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) "Solitude" cotton plantation that by 1857 had 26 slaves, though the plantation was never fully developed.[34] Lamar also practiced law in nearby Holly Springs with two local prominent lawyers, C. M. Mott and James L. Autrey.[35]
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Death and legacy[edit]
Lamar died on January 23, 1893, in Vineville, Georgia. He was originally interred at Riverside Cemetery in Macon, Georgia, but was reinterred at St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1894.
Lamar was later featured in John F. Kennedy's Pulitzer Prize–winning book, Profiles in Courage (1957), for his eulogy for Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner (R) in 1874, along with his support of the findings of a partisan congressional committee regarding the disputed presidential election of 1876, and for his unpopular vote against the Bland–Allison Act of 1878.