It seems fitting that one born Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar should lead a remarkable life in service to both the United States and the Confederate States of America. Lamar grows up on a plantation in Georgia, graduates from Emory College, marries the daughter of the famous college president, Augustus Longstreet, then becomes a successful lawyer and a math professor in Oxford at the University of Mississippi. At age 26 in 1851 he organizes a Southern Rights Party and backs Jefferson Davis in his losing campaign for Governor. A brief stay back in Georgia ends in 1852 when he returns to Mississippi and is elected to the US House in 1857, brawling there with abolitionist Owen Lovejoy. In 1861 he writes the Ordinance of Succession for Mississippi and serves briefly as Lt. Col. of the 19th MS Regiment before suffering a seizure that finds Jefferson Davis assigning him as a roving minister in Russia. The lost war costs him his plantation and 35 slaves, but in 1866 he is back at Oxford as a Law Professor. He is re-elected to the US House from 1873-77 and wins favor with President Grover Cleveland who names him Interior Secretary and then appoints him to sit on the US Supreme Court in 1888. He writes 96 opinions and 13 dissents in 1888-1893 before his death in 1893.
Lucius Q. C. Lamar
