The 3-inch solid shot that killed Episcopal Bishop and Confederate Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk on the morning of June 14, 1864, nearly tore him in half. When his mangled body was carried down from Pine Mountain, Georgia, on a litter, Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee noted that the bishop-general was 'as white as a piece of marble,' and 'not a drop of blood was ever seen to come out of the place through which the cannon ball had passed.' But plenty of blood had been spilled — advancing Union soldiers found the Georgia clay soaked with it the next day, along with a note reportedly staked by a ramrod into the ground nearby: 'You damned Yankee sons of bitches have killed our old Gen. Polk.'
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The 3-inch solid shot that killed Episcopal Bishop and Confederate Lieutenant General Leonidas Polk on the morning of June 14, 1864, nearly tore him in half. When his mangled body was carried down from Pine Mountain, Georgia, on a litter, Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee noted that the bishop-general was 'as white as a piece of marble,' and 'not a drop of blood was ever seen to come out of the place through which the cannon ball had passed.' But plenty of blood had been spilled — advancing Union soldiers found the Georgia clay soaked with it the next day, along with a note reportedly staked by a ramrod into the ground nearby: 'You damned Yankee sons of bitches have killed our old Gen. Polk.'
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