# Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar *American politician, diplomat, jurist and Confederate officer (1825–1893)* Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II (September 17, 1825 – January 23, 1893) was a Mississippi member of the [[Democratic Party (United States)|Democratic Party]] who sat in both chambers of Congress, headed the Department of the Interior under President Grover Cleveland, and served as an associate justice of the [[Supreme Court of the United States]].[^1] Before those federal offices he was a Confederate soldier and official.[^1] Lamar was a native of Georgia and was schooled there. In 1849 he settled in Oxford, Mississippi, and opened a law practice.[^1] Voters sent him to the [[United States House of Representatives]] in 1856. He held the seat until January 1861, the month he took part in drafting Mississippi's Ordinance of Secession.[^1] He helped raise the 19th Mississippi Infantry Regiment and served on the staff of General James Longstreet, his wife's cousin. In 1862 Confederate president Jefferson Davis named him Special Confederate Commissioner to Russia.[^1] After the war he taught at the University of Mississippi and sat as a delegate to several state constitutional conventions.[^1] In 1873 he became the first Mississippi Democrat elected to the House since the Civil War. He stayed in the House until 1877 and sat in the Senate from 1877 to 1885.[^1] The record of those years shows his opposition to Reconstruction and to voting rights for African Americans.[^1] Cleveland made him Secretary of the Interior in 1885. In 1888 the Senate confirmed him to the Supreme Court, the first Southerner appointed to it since the Civil War. He sat on the Court until his death in 1893.[^1] ## Family and education Lamar was born on September 17, 1825, near Eatonton in Putnam County, Georgia, on the family's 900-acre plantation, "Fairfield".[^2] His father, also named Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar, was a Georgia lawyer and state judge. He took his own life when the younger Lamar was nine.[^2] Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, the second president of the Republic of Texas, was his uncle. Associate Justices [[Joseph Rucker Lamar]] and John A. Campbell were his cousins.[^2] From 1837 to 1840 Lamar attended the Manual Labor School in Covington, Georgia. In 1840 that school merged with Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, where he finished his studies in 1845.[^2] At Emory he began courting Virginia Longstreet, the daughter of the college's president, Augustus Baldwin Longstreet. The two married in July 1847.[^2] ## Early career In 1845 Lamar went to Macon, Georgia, and spent two years studying law in his uncle's office. He was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1847.[^3] Newton County sent him to the state Democratic convention in Milledgeville in 1847 and 1849. When that convention took up the Wilmot Proviso, he adopted a pro-slavery stance that he held for the rest of the antebellum period.[^3] Lamar moved to Oxford, Mississippi, in 1849, after A.B. Longstreet became president of the University of Mississippi.[^3] He was licensed to practice law in Mississippi in June 1850, and the next month the university made him its assistant professor of mathematics.[^3] The November 1850 federal census lists him as the owner of 14 slaves near Oxford, almost all of them women and girls. A decade later he owned 31 slaves in Lafayette County: 14 female and 17 male, among them 9 boys and 4 girls under the age of 10.[^3] His Mississippi political activity began in May 1850 with an address on slavery to a Lafayette County convention. In March 1851 he helped organize a Southern Rights Party branch in Oxford.[^3] ## Secession At the 1860 Democratic Convention in Charleston, Lamar carried Jefferson Davis's message that Southern delegates should concentrate on defeating Stephen Douglas rather than leave the convention. The Mississippi delegation had already walked out.[^4] Lamar then worked with Davis to bring Mississippi's delegates to the reconvened convention in Baltimore.[^4] After [[Abraham Lincoln]] won the presidency, Governor John J. Pettus called the state's congressional delegation together to recommend a secession policy.[^4] Lamar, along with Senators Davis and Albert G. Brown, favored secession in cooperation with other Southern states. The rest of the delegation outvoted them, and the three then joined the resolution so that it passed unanimously.[^4] Mississippi's secession convention organized on January 7, 1861, with Lamar seated as a delegate from Lafayette County.[^4] ## Role in the Confederacy Lamar entered Confederate service as a lieutenant colonel. In Oxford he and his law partner, C. H. Mott, organized the 19th Mississippi Regiment, which registered with the Confederate War Department on May 14, 1861.[^5] In Richmond he gave the closing address at an event led by Jefferson Davis. In it he said he looked forward to the day when "this beloved country of ours" would be "a country to live for, to pray for, to fight for, and if necessary, to die for."[^5] The regiment fought at the Battle of Williamsburg, where Mott was killed. Lamar then took command of the regiment.[^5] A seizure later forced him out of combat.[^5] He returned to service on November 19, 1862, when Davis appointed him a diplomat to the Russian imperial government.[^5] ## Post-war period After the war Lamar went back to Oxford. His plantation had been damaged and its slaves freed, and the land reverted to his father-in-law.[^6] He practiced law with Edward C. Walthall in Coffeeville. In the fall term of 1866 he took up a professorship at the University of Mississippi, and by 1867 he chaired its law department.[^6] Also in 1867 he became a director of the Mississippi Central Railroad Company.[^6] He resigned his professorship in 1870. The Wikipedia account attributes the resignation to his fear that the university would be radicalized and might admit Black students after a new governing board was installed.[^6] According to the same account, Lamar became known in the 1870s and 1880s as a leading figure in the Democratic Party's opposition to the mostly Republican African-American officeholders in Mississippi.[^6] The account describes his testimony before the 42nd Congress's Joint Committee to Inquire into the Conditions of Affairs in the Late Insurrectionary States as a defense of the Southern social order and the Ku Klux Klan.[^6] ## Congressional career (1873–1885) Lamar won election to the House again in 1873. He was the first Mississippi Democrat elected there since the Civil War, and he served until 1877.[^7] Under the law of the time, senators were chosen by the state legislature, and Mississippi's legislature elected him to the United States Senate, where he served from 1877 to 1885.[^7] He opposed Reconstruction and regarded freedmen and other Black Americans as unfit to vote. He promoted "the supremacy of the unconquered and unconquerable Saxon race."[^7] ## Later career ### Secretary of the Interior (1885–1888) After winning the 1884 election, Cleveland nominated Lamar for Secretary of the Interior. Lamar was confirmed with little difficulty despite questions about his Confederate service and his limited administrative experience.[^8] His was the first Democratic administration in 24 years. Under it he replaced Republican officials with Democrats in response to patronage requests, though he did so cautiously.[^8] As secretary, Lamar cut the department's fleet of carriages for high officials and opposed efforts to dissolve Indian reservations.[^8] He promoted a new Indian policy built on citizenship and individual land-holding, and he endorsed the Dawes Act of 1887.[^8] He defended the Homestead Act of 1862. He also worked to reclaim more than 45,000,000 acres, mostly from railroad corporations.[^8] His term ran from March 6, 1885, to January 10, 1888.[^8] ### Supreme Court (1888–1893) Republican Justice William B. Woods died in office in May 1887. Cleveland nominated Lamar to the seat on December 12, 1887.[^8] Lamar was confirmed in 1888 as the first Southerner appointed to the Court since the Civil War, and he served until his death.[^1] ## Death and legacy Lamar died in Vineville, Georgia, on January 23, 1893.[^9] He was first buried at Riverside Cemetery in Macon, Georgia. In 1894 his remains were moved to St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi.[^9] John F. Kennedy's *Profiles in Courage* (1957), which won a [[Pulitzer Prize]], includes Lamar for three acts:[^9] - his 1874 eulogy for Massachusetts Republican Senator Charles Sumner; - his support for the findings of a partisan congressional committee on the disputed presidential election of 1876; - his vote against the Bland–Allison Act of 1878. ## Memorials and namesakes Counties in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are named for Lamar.[^10] So are Lamar Hall on the University of Mississippi campus, Lamar Avenue in Oxford, and a road in [[Memphis]].[^10] The Lamar School in Meridian, Mississippi, a former segregation academy, also bears his name.[^10] In Yellowstone National Park, the Lamar River was named by geologist Arnold Hague during the 1884–85 Geological Survey. Lamar Valley and other park sites honor Lamar as Secretary of the Interior.[^10] Emory University's School of Law once had two professorships named for Lamar. In April 2022 Emory removed his name from both after its Committee on Naming Honors recommended the change, citing his staunch defense of slavery.[^10] ## Notes [^1]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), lead section — dates, party, offices, secession role, Confederate appointment, congressional and Court service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^2]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Family and education" — birth, family, schooling, marriage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^3]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Early career" — legal training, conventions, Mississippi move, 1850 census holdings and the count a decade later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^4]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Secession" — 1860 conventions, Pettus conference, January 7, 1861 convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^5]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Role in the Confederacy" — 19th Mississippi Regiment, Richmond address, Williamsburg, November 19, 1862 appointment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^6]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Post-war period" — professorship, railroad directorship, 1870 resignation, Joint Committee testimony. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^7]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Congressional career (1873–1885)" — House 1873–1877, Senate 1877–1885, positions on Reconstruction and suffrage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^8]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Later career" — Interior tenure and policies, December 12, 1887 nomination. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^9]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Death and legacy" — death, burial, reinterment, *Profiles in Courage*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar [^10]: Wikipedia contributors, *Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar* (revision 1376038184, retrieved 2026-10-26), "Memorials and namesakes" — namesakes and Emory's April 2022 removal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quintus_Cincinnatus_Lamar