Leonidas Polk (1804 - June 14, 1864) was a Confederate general who was once a planter in Maury County, Tennessee and a cousin of President James K. Polk. He also served as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana and was for that reason sometimes known as The Fighting Bishop.

General Polk was the leading founder of the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, which he envisioned as a national university for the South and a New World equivalent to Oxford and Cambridge. He served the Confederacy as a Lieutenant-General and was killed in action.

The Leonidas Registry Research Project has proposed this text for the marker on Pine Mountain, Georgia (www.leonidaspolk.org):

CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH KILLED IN ACTION

Upon the death in 1863 of first Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, Rt. Rev. James H. Otey, the Bishop-General Leonidas Polk, C.S.A., first Bishop of Louisiana, became the Chancellor and President of the Board of Trustees of The University of the South at Sewanee, Tennessee, of which he led the founding in 1857 and consecrated the Cornerstone in 1860. While serving in the Confederate Army of Tennessee as a corps commanding Lieutenant-General, Polk was killed atop Pine Mountain the morning of June 14, 1864, by a shell from the enemy's artillery. After funeral services Atlanta, at his burial in Augusta he was eulogized by first Bishop of Georgia, Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott, Presiding Bishop of the Confederacy. His remains were later reinterred in New Orleans by his former diocese.