Lamar, L. Q. C. (Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus), 1825-1893

Lawyer of Georgia and later Mississippi, U.S. congressman from Mississippi, member of President Cleveland's cabinet, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Resident of Oxford (Lafayette County), Miss.

Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825-1893) was a lawyer of Georgia and later Mississippi; United States congressman from Mississippi, 1873-1885; member of President Grover Cleveland's cabinet; and associate justice of the United States Supreme Court, 1888-1893.

Congressman and senator from Mississippi, U.S. secretary of the Interior, associate justice of the Supreme Court.

L.Q.C. Lamar was a member of the U.S. Congress for Mississippi from (1857-1860, 1872-1876) and was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1876. In 1885 President Cleveland appointed him Secretary of the Interior, and in 1887 he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court, where he served until his death.

American lawyer, politician, and Supreme Court justice.

Jurist, educator, U.S. senator and representative from Mississippi, U.S. secretary of the interior, and U.S. and Confederate army officer.

Born near Eatonton, Georgia in 1825, Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar graduated from Emory College in Georgia in 1845. Admitted to the bar in 1847, he moved to Oxford, Mississippi two years later to practice law and served one year as the professor of mathematics at the University of Mississippi. Lamar returned to Georgia in 1852 and became a member of the Georgia State House of Representatives a year later. In 1855, he returned to Mississippi where he served as a U.S. Representative from that state from 1857 to 1860. Lamar retired from Congress to become a member of the Mississippi Secession Convention, and he drafted the state's Ordinance of Secession. During the Civil War, he served as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate Army until 1862 when Jefferson Davis appointed him as Confederate minister to Russia and special envoy to England and France. After the war, Lamar returned to Mississippi to practice law and served as the professor of metaphysics, social science, and law at the University of Mississippi. He also served as a member of Mississippi constitutional conventions in 1865, 1868, 1875, 1877, and 1881. In 1873, Lamar became the first Democrat from Mississippi to sit in the U.S. House of Representatives since the Civil War. In 1877, he became the first former high-ranking Confederate to sit in the U.S. Senate. Lamar possessed a talent for reconciliation and compromise. In 1874, he delivered a memorable eulogy for Radical Republican Charles Sumner in which he urged an end to sectional bitterness. Lamar also proved significant in brokering the Compromise of 1877 in which Republican Rutherford B. Hayes became president despite Democrat Samuel Tilden receiving the majority of popular votes and a seeming majority of the Electoral College. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed Lamar as Secretary of the Interior, and two years later nominated the sixty-three year old to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lamar died of a heart attack in January 1893. His body rests in St. Peter's Cemetery in Oxford, Mississippi.