L. Q. С. Lamar. bling-block and to the Greeks foolishness." Lamar did not escape the influence of his environment. In one of his letters he writes that he had resolved "never to be a second in a duel." He illustrated the Mississippi idea of the writ of habeas corpus later in life, when he knocked down a United States Mar shal who he thought was about to arrest him wrongfully. He was elected to Congress in 1857. Though he took the floor seldom, he be came prominent as an advocate of States rights. In 1859 he uttered a prophecy which he fulfilled in 1860. "For one," he said in a debate, " I am no disunionist per se. I am devoted to the Constitution of this Union : and so long as the Republic throws its long arms around both sections of the country. 1 for one will bestow every talent which God has given me tor its preservation and its glory. . . . When the Constitution is violated, and when its spirit is no longer observed upon this floor, I war upon your government. 1 am against it. I raise then the banner of secession, and I will fight under it as long as the blood flows and ebbs in my veins." He left Congress to take his seat in the Secession Convention of his State. Upon the breaking out of the war, he joined the Nineteenth Mississippi Regiment, of which he was made lieutenant-colonel and after wards colonel. His method of fighting was described as " wildly brave." "He told one story about himself in the battle of Williamstown. The brigade commander was dis abled, anil he ' somehow ' found himself leading the brigade. His regiment charged clear through the enemy. '• ' It seemed to me.' he quaintly said, ' that we were all likely to be taken prisoners; so I gave the only command I could think of, — to charge back again.'"
His health failing and compelling his re tirement from the armv, he was sent by Jefferson Davis on a diplomatic mission to Russia in 1863.
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'• It has always been understood that the prime object of his trip was to secure a cessation of hos tilities for six months through the friendly media tion of Great Britain, France, and Russia. His visit no doubt added much to the friendliness which England showed toward the Southern States. While he assisted in negotiating the Southern loan, he could not secure the recognition of the Confed erate States as an independent power. In Russia and in France, Lamar performed very delicate diplomatic work."
Gen. Alexander R. Lawton is authority for the statement that Lamar returned in 1864, fully impressed with the conviction that the fall of the Confederate government was only a question of time. He realized that the North could reckon not only on the bravery of its soldiers, but upon what Victor Hugo called " the cowardice of inexhaustible resources." But although hopeless of suc cess, he remained in the service of the Con federacy until the end. Being physically unfitted for the field, he was attached to Longstreet's Corps as Judge Advocate. In 1866 he resumed work in the Univer sity of Mississippi, occupying first the Chair of Political Economy and Social Science, and, in 1867, a Chair in the Law Department. In 1868 he returned to the practice of his profession, and had a fair proportion of such business as came before the courts, though his practice could not be called extensive. In 1872 he was elected to Congress. In order that he might have leisure and quie tude in which to prepare a series of speeches which he proposed to make in his campaign, he retired to his plantation and erected in a secluded place a one-room log-cabin. This he furnished with a chair, table, and mosquitonet, the latter suspended from the ceiling and stretching around him like a tent. There in serene contemplation he thought out his lines of argument, reading meanwhile as a mental tonic Macaulay's "History of Eng land;" while outside the singing insects, in the felicitous phrase of Nathaniel Haw thorne, " sounded the small horrors of their bugle-horns." Lamar was ahvavs an omni
