LAMAR, LUCIUS QUINTUS CINCIN NATL.'S (1825-93). An American lawyer and legislator, sou of the preceding. Ile was born in Putnam County, Ga.: graduated at Emory College (Ox ford, Oa.) in 1845; studied law at Macon in the office of A. H. Chappell, and was admitted to the bar in 1847. In 1849 he removed to Oxford, Miss., where, besides practicing law, he was adjunct professor of mathematics in the Uni versity of Mississippi from 1850 to 1852, when he removed to Covington. Ga. lle was elected to the Georgia Legislature in 185:3. and re turned to Mississippi in 1855. In 1857 lie was elected to Congress, and in 1859 lie was re elected. In December. 1860, he resigned to take part in the Secessionist movement in his State. He was a member of the Charleston Con tention of 1860, before which he made a stirring speech, and of the Mississippi Convention which. on January 9, 1861, passed the ordinance of se cession, which he himself had drafted and pre sented. In Slay he was chosen lieutenant-colonel of the first regiment raised in :Mississippi for service 'during the war.' He led his regiment at Yorktown and Williamsburg, but resigned front active service in October. 1862. and early in the following year was sent to Europe as special commissioner of the Confederate States to the Russian Empire. He did not proceed to his post, however, and, his commission not oeing confirmed by the Confederate Senate, he returned to America early in 1864. after having spent some months in London and Paris. From De cember, 1864. until the close of the war. he
served as judge-advocate of the military court of the Third Army Corps, with the rank of colonel. lie was professor of ethics and meta physics at the University of Alississippi—a chair which he had held for a short time in 1S00- 01— in 1866 and 1867, and of from 1867 to 1870; was a member of Congress from Ism 1877, and of the United States Senate front I si7 to 1885: was Secretary of the Interior in Presi dent Cleveland's Cabinet from 1'485 to 188'4, and was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1888 until his death. His efforts were directed ehielly to bringing about a reconciliation and a better understanding between the North and the South, and a remarkable eulo gy of Senator Sumner, delivered by him before the House in 1874, did more than perhaps any other one thing up to that time toward accomplishing this result. lle opposed with great energy and eloquence all schemes involving the debasement Or undue inflation of the currency, and in 1878 showed his strength of conviction and independ ence of mind by refusing to resign or change his views on this question at the command of the Mississippi Legislature. and by appealing to the people, who enthusiastically sustained him. Among his many notable orations and addresses perhaps the ablest was that delivered at the unveiling of the Calhoun monument at Charles ton, S. C., in 1887. Consult Mayes, Lucius Q. C. Lamar: His Life, Times, and Speeches (Nash ville, Tenn., 1S96).