LAMAR, LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCINNATUS (1825 1893), American statesman and judge, was born in Putnam county (Ga.), Sept. 17, 1825. His father, Lucius Q. C. Lamar a judge of the superior court of Georgia, was the compiler of the Laws of Georgia from 18w to z8zg (1821). In 1845 young Lamar graduated at Emory college (Oxford, Ga.), and in 1847 was admitted to the bar. In 1850-52 he was adjunct professor of mathematics in the Mississippi State university. In 1852 he removed to Covington (Ga.) to practise law, and in 1853 was elected a member of the Georgia house of representa tives. In 1855 he returned to Mississippi, and in 1857 became a member of the U. S. House of Representatives, where he served until Dec. 186o. He was elected to the "secession" con vention of Mississippi and drafted for it the Mississippi ordi nance of secession. He was appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the Confederate army in the spring of 1861 and a colonel in May 1862, but in October he resigned from the army. In Nov. 1862 President Jefferson Davis appointed him special commissioner of the Confederacy to Russia; but he did not proceed farther than Paris before his mission was terminated by the refusal of the Confederate Senate to confirm his appointment. From 1873-77
he was again a Democratic representative in Congress ; from 1877-85 he was a U. S. Senator; from 1885 to Jan. 1888 he was secretary of the interior; and from 1888 until his death at Macon (Ga.), on Jan 23, 1893, he was an associate justice of the Su preme Court of the United States. On the Supreme Court bench his dissenting opinion in the Neagle Case, based upon a denial that certain powers belonging to Congress, but not exercised, were by implication vested in the department of justice, is famous. But he is perhaps best known for the part he took after the Civil War in helping to effect a reconciliation between the North and the South.
See Edward Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar: His Life, Times and Speeches (Nashville (Tenn.), 1896).