Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II
Born	17 9, 1825
Birthplace	Eatonton, Georgia, United States
Died	Template:Death date and age Macon, Georgia, United States
Nationality	American
Occupation	Politician, jurist, diplomat
Known for	U.S. Senator from Mississippi, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Secretary of the Interior
Education	Emory College (A.B.)

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II (September 17, 1825 – January 23, 1893) was an American politician, diplomat, and jurist who served as a United States Representative and Senator from Mississippi, as United States Secretary of the Interior under President Grover Cleveland, and as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. His career spanned from the antebellum era through the Civil War and into the period of national reconciliation that followed Reconstruction, making him one of the most consequential — and controversial — Southern political figures of the nineteenth century. Lamar is remembered for his role in drafting Mississippi's ordinance of secession, for his celebrated eulogy of Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner that symbolized sectional reconciliation, and for his later service on the nation's highest court. He was featured as one of eight senators profiled in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage (1956), a selection that has itself become a subject of historical scrutiny regarding the lionization of Lost Cause figures in American political memory.

Early Life

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II was born on September 17, 1825, in Eatonton, Putnam County, Georgia. He was named after his father, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, a prominent Georgia attorney and judge, whose own name reflected the classical republican ideals popular among the Southern planter class. The elder Lamar died by suicide in 1834 when the younger Lamar was only nine years old, a traumatic event that profoundly shaped the boy's upbringing. Lamar was raised thereafter by his mother, Sarah Bird Lamar, in a household that maintained its standing among the Georgia gentry despite the loss of its patriarch.

The Lamar family had deep roots in Southern political life. Lamar's uncle, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, served as the second President of the Republic of Texas, and the extended Lamar family was prominent in Georgia and across the Deep South. These connections instilled in the young Lamar a sense of public duty and political ambition that would define his adult life.

Growing up in antebellum Georgia, Lamar was educated in the traditions of the Southern planter elite. He displayed intellectual aptitude from an early age and was drawn to the study of law, literature, and classical languages. His formative years coincided with a period of intensifying sectional conflict over the expansion of slavery, tariff policy, and states' rights — issues that would come to dominate his political career.

Education

Lamar attended Emory College (now Emory University) in Oxford, Georgia, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1845. At Emory, he studied under Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, a noted author, educator, and jurist who would become one of the most important influences on Lamar's intellectual and political development. Longstreet served as president of Emory and later became Lamar's father-in-law when Lamar married Longstreet's daughter, Virginia.

After graduating from Emory, Lamar studied law and was admitted to the bar in Georgia. His legal education was shaped by the prevailing jurisprudential traditions of the antebellum South, which placed heavy emphasis on constitutional interpretation favorable to state sovereignty and the institution of slavery.

Career

Early Legal and Political Career

Following his admission to the bar, Lamar practiced law briefly in Georgia before relocating to Oxford, Mississippi, where his father-in-law Augustus Baldwin Longstreet had become president of the University of Mississippi. Lamar taught mathematics at the university for a period and continued his legal practice. Mississippi, a cotton-producing state deeply committed to the institution of slavery, provided fertile ground for Lamar's political ambitions.

Lamar entered politics as a Democrat and was elected to the United States House of Representatives from Mississippi, serving from 1857 to 1860. During his time in the House, Lamar was a forceful advocate for Southern interests, including the expansion of slavery into the western territories and the doctrine of states' rights. He aligned himself with the most ardent defenders of the slaveholding South in Congress.

Secession and the Civil War

As the sectional crisis deepened following the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, Lamar played a direct role in Mississippi's withdrawal from the Union. He drafted Mississippi's ordinance of secession, which was adopted on January 9, 1861, making Mississippi the second state to secede. Mississippi's declaration of the causes of secession explicitly cited the preservation of slavery as the paramount motivation for leaving the Union, a document that historians have pointed to as evidence of slavery's centrality to the Confederate cause.

During the Civil War, Lamar served the Confederacy in multiple capacities. He initially served as a colonel in the Confederate Army, commanding the 19th Mississippi Infantry Regiment. After health problems forced him to leave active field command, he served the Confederate government as a diplomat, traveling to Europe in efforts to secure recognition and support for the Confederacy from foreign powers, particularly Great Britain and France. He also served as a judge advocate in the Confederate Army.

Reconstruction and Return to Congress

Following the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865, Lamar returned to Mississippi and to the practice of law. He also returned to teaching at the University of Mississippi, where he served as a professor of law and political science. During the early years of Reconstruction, former Confederates like Lamar were barred from holding political office under the terms of the Fourteenth Amendment, which disqualified from public service those who had previously taken an oath to support the Constitution and then engaged in rebellion.

As Reconstruction waned and federal oversight of Southern states diminished, Lamar re-entered politics. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1872, returning to Congress for the first time since secession. His reappearance on the national stage was part of a broader pattern known as "Redemption," in which former Confederates and their allies regained political control of Southern states, displacing the biracial Republican coalitions that had governed during Reconstruction.

The Sumner Eulogy and National Reconciliation

Lamar's most celebrated moment in Congress came on April 27, 1874, when he delivered a eulogy on the floor of the House for Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, the radical Republican and ardent abolitionist who had died the previous month. Sumner had been one of the most polarizing figures in American politics — famous for his uncompromising opposition to slavery and, notoriously, for the brutal caning he received on the Senate floor from South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks in 1856.

Lamar's decision to eulogize Sumner was a calculated act of political theater. By praising a man whom most white Southerners had despised, Lamar signaled a willingness to move beyond sectional bitterness — at least rhetorically — and to pursue reconciliation between North and South. The speech was widely covered in the national press and won Lamar considerable acclaim in both sections of the country. It established his reputation as a statesman willing to rise above regional grievance, a reputation that would serve him well in subsequent decades.

It was this speech, and the broader narrative of reconciliation it represented, that later attracted the attention of John F. Kennedy (and his ghostwriter Theodore Sorensen), who included Lamar as one of the eight senators profiled in Profiles in Courage. Kennedy's book presented Lamar as a figure who sacrificed political popularity for the sake of principle and national unity. However, subsequent historians have scrutinized this portrayal, noting that the version of "reconciliation" Lamar championed came at the direct expense of Black Southerners, whose political rights were systematically dismantled during the very period in which Lamar was celebrated as a statesman of peace.

United States Senator

In 1877, Lamar was elected to the United States Senate by the Mississippi state legislature. His tenure in the Senate coincided with the final collapse of Reconstruction and the consolidation of white supremacist "Redeemer" governments across the South. Lamar served in the Senate until 1885, during which time he was a leading voice for the Democratic Party's Southern wing.

In the Senate, Lamar championed policies favorable to Southern agricultural interests and opposed measures aimed at protecting the civil and political rights of African Americans. He supported the withdrawal of federal troops from the South and the restoration of what he termed "home rule" — a euphemism for the restoration of white political control in former Confederate states. At the same time, his reputation for moderation and eloquence earned him respect among Northern colleagues, facilitating the bipartisan consensus that allowed the abandonment of Reconstruction-era protections for Black citizens.

Kennedy's Profiles in Courage highlighted an episode in which Lamar broke with his constituents by supporting a compromise on a silver coinage bill, presenting this as an act of principled independence. Historians have since debated whether this moment represented genuine political courage or a more complex calculation about Lamar's national ambitions.

Secretary of the Interior

In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed Lamar as Secretary of the Interior, making him the first Southerner to serve in the Cabinet since the Civil War. His appointment was itself a potent symbol of sectional reconciliation and of the Democratic Party's efforts to reintegrate the South into national governance.

As Secretary of the Interior, Lamar oversaw the administration of public lands, Indian affairs, and other matters under the department's purview. His tenure was marked by efforts to reform the management of public lands and to address some of the abuses associated with the patronage system, though the scope of reform was limited. His administration of Indian affairs reflected the prevailing assimilationist policies of the era.

Supreme Court Justice

In 1888, President Cleveland nominated Lamar to the Supreme Court of the United States. His confirmation was contested, in part because of his Confederate past and in part because of political opposition from Republicans in the Senate. The confirmation process itself was notable in the history of the Court; it occurred during a period in which such proceedings were becoming more politically charged and publicly scrutinized. Lamar was confirmed by the Senate on January 16, 1888, by a vote of 32 to 28.

Lamar served on the Supreme Court from 1888 until his death in 1893. His tenure on the bench was relatively brief and not marked by landmark opinions. He was known for his courtly manner and his distinguished physical appearance, including a prominent beard that later earned him mention in surveys of notable Supreme Court facial hair.

Personal Life

Lamar married Virginia Longstreet, the daughter of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, in 1847. The marriage connected Lamar to one of the most prominent intellectual and political families in the antebellum South. Virginia Lamar died in 1884. In 1887, Lamar married Henrietta Dean Holt.

Lamar's personal life was shaped by the upheavals of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He experienced the destruction of the Southern planter economy, the death of friends and relatives in the conflict, and the social and political transformations that followed. Despite these disruptions, Lamar maintained his standing as one of the most influential figures in Mississippi public life throughout the postwar decades.

Lamar died on January 23, 1893, in Macon, Georgia, while still serving on the Supreme Court. He was buried in Oxford, Mississippi, in the city where he had spent much of his career.

Recognition

Lamar's legacy has been commemorated in numerous ways across the American South. The University of Mississippi, where he taught and which served as the base for much of his political career, has long honored his memory. However, the commemoration of figures associated with the Confederacy at the university has become a subject of significant debate. The university's broader reckoning with its Confederate symbols — including the relocation of a Confederate soldier monument from the center of campus in 2020 — reflects ongoing public discussion about how institutions memorialize individuals whose careers were intertwined with the defense of slavery and white supremacy.

Lamar's inclusion in John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage brought him renewed national attention in the twentieth century. The book, published in 1956 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Biography, presented Lamar as an exemplar of political courage for his willingness to defy sectional passions in the interest of national unity. However, the framing of Lamar's story in Profiles in Courage has come under increasing scrutiny. As journalist and historian George Plimpton's family story illustrates, the reconciliation narrative that Kennedy endorsed obscured the violent suppression of Black political participation that accompanied the return to power of figures like Lamar. Kennedy's portrayal drew on Lost Cause mythology — the romanticized reinterpretation of the Confederacy and Reconstruction that minimized the centrality of slavery and the injustices of the post-Reconstruction era.

Lamar County in Mississippi and Lamar County in Texas are named in honor of the Lamar family, though the Texas county honors his uncle Mirabeau B. Lamar rather than L.Q.C. Lamar II himself.

Legacy

The legacy of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II occupies a contested place in American historical memory. During his lifetime, he was celebrated in both North and South as a figure of reconciliation — a former Confederate who helped bridge the sectional divide that had nearly destroyed the nation. His career trajectory from secessionist to Supreme Court justice was seen by many contemporaries as emblematic of the nation's capacity for healing.

However, modern scholarship has subjected this narrative to critical reexamination. The "reconciliation" that Lamar symbolized was achieved on terms that abandoned the promise of racial equality that had animated the Civil War amendments to the Constitution. The withdrawal of federal protection for Black voters, the rise of Jim Crow laws, and the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans across the South occurred during and after Lamar's political career, and Lamar himself was an active participant in the political movement that brought about these outcomes.

The reassessment of Lamar's legacy is part of a broader national reckoning with the commemoration of Confederate figures. The debate over monuments, building names, and historical narratives at institutions like the University of Mississippi reflects the tension between honoring historical figures for their roles in sectional reconciliation and acknowledging their complicity in racial oppression.

Kennedy's Profiles in Courage remains one of the most widely read works of American political biography, and Lamar's chapter continues to introduce new readers to his story. Yet as The Atlantic noted in a 2023 reassessment, the book's treatment of Lamar and of Reconstruction more broadly reflected mid-twentieth-century assumptions about the Civil War era that have since been challenged by historians. The portrayal of Reconstruction as a period of misgovernment from which the South needed to be "redeemed" — a view implicit in Kennedy's sympathetic treatment of Lamar — has been replaced in mainstream historiography by an understanding of Reconstruction as an incomplete revolution in racial justice, cut short by violent white resistance.

Lamar's career thus serves as a case study in the complexities of American historical memory: a figure once celebrated as a peacemaker whose legacy is now understood in the fuller context of the racial injustices that his version of "peace" entailed.