Few legal communities have seen a member or former member elevated to the United States Supreme Court, but the Macon Bar once had this honor.
Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar read law in Macon in the office of his cousin, Absolom Chapple. Upon admission to the bar, he practiced with Chapple for a short time in Macon. He then married the daughter of the president of Emory University, and moved with his father-in-law, and his new wife to Mississippi.
L. Q. C. (his friends called him Luche) really considered Georgia to be his home. He returned to Georgia and the Macon Bar for another short time, but after his defeat in a race for Congress, Lamar moved back to Mississippi in 1855.
During the War Between the States, Lamar served first in the army and then in the diplomatic corps of the Confederacy. After the war, Lamar attained prominence in his adopted state. He was the first former Confederate admitted to Congress after the War Between the States, representing Mississippi in the Senate. He served in the cabinet of President Grover Cleveland as Secretary of the Interior, and was then appointed by Cleveland to the U. S. Supreme Court, the first Southerner to receive a postwar appointment.
While in the cabinet, L. Q. C., then a widower, was married in Macon to a local widow, Mrs. Henrietta Holt. She had been the sweetheart of his youth.
While in Macon in 1893, Justice Lamar died of a stroke in the home of relatives. The funeral held here was huge, attracting national news coverage. He was buried in Rose Hill cemetery, with a copy of the Constitution in his hand. A vault had been prepared for him in a redoubt left over from the city's wartime earthworks.
Even in death, Lamar's stay in Macon was brief. The State of Mississippi requested the return of his body, and the family agreed. Lamar is now buried in Oxford, Mississippi.
_ Frank M. McKenney