US Congressman, Civil War Confederate Army Officer, US Senator, Presidential Cabinet Secretary, United States Associate Supreme Court Justice. He was born in Putnam County, Georgia, he was the son of a superior court judge. He was named after his father but wasn't a junior; therefore he's also refered to as Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar II. He graduated from Emory College in Oxford, Georgia, in 1845, he then studied law under a relative in Macon, Georgia, and was admitted to the bar in 1847. Hoping for a greater opportunities in a less settled state, he moved in 1849 with his wife, who was a first cousin to James Longstreet, to Oxford, Mississippi. Here, he established his law practice and taught mathematics at the University of Mississippi. He returned to his native state in 1852 and served in the Georgia legislature. He moved back to Mississippi in 1855, this move would be permanent. He stood firmly for the Union as the sectional crisis festered, but his commitment to slavery and States Rights indentified him with the Southern Democrats, and as a Southern Democrat he was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1857 and in 1859. He backed John C. Breckinridge at the 1860 Democratic national convention in Charleston, South Carolina, urging his colleagues not to support the session later held in Baltimore, Maryland, to nominate Stephen A. Douglas. Regardless of his Union sympathies, he never questioned the right of secession and saw dissolving the Union to preserve Southern rights as the only response to Abraham Lincoln's election. Early in 1861 he resigned his congressional seat and returned home to draft the Mississippi ordinance of secession. Though a military career seemed out of character, he helped recruit the 18th Mississippi. He served as the regiment's Lieutenant Colonel until May 1862, resigning officially a few months later, after suffering a stroke that would recur as "mini strokes" throughout his life. Still eager to serve the Confederacy, he accepted from President Jefferson Davis an appointment as special commissioner to Russia. March 1863 saw his arrival in London, and his being recalled after the Russian fleet sailed into New York harbor that fall in a diplomatic show of friendship toward the Lincoln administration. In Richmond he lobbied faithfully against President Davis' critics. Davis rewarded him with the judge advocacy of the III Corps, Army of Northern Virginia. He held this post from December 1864 until the fall of Richmond. After the war ended he returned to his law practice and teaching. He also reentered politics in 1872 as Mississippi's first Democratic congressman since the imposition of Radical Reconstruction. The elegy he delivered in Congress when Senator Charles Sumner died, attracted national attention in a limited way easing some of the bitterness Northerners felt toward the South. He emerged as Mississippi's foremost politician, becoming popular nationally for his sincere and thoroughly pragmatic pleas for reconciliation. He was elected to the United States Senate in January 1876, though he did not take his seat until March 1877. In Washington he championed the "New South" and enhanced his growing reputation by opposing the free silver movement, against instructions from his state. President Grover Cleveland named him Secretary of the Interior in 1885 and nominated him to the Supreme Court 2 years later. The Senate confirmed the appointment reluctantly because of his status as a former Confederate, but he served competently on the Court until his death.He is the only Mississippian to ever serve on the high court. He was originally buried in Riverside Cemetery, Macon, Georgia, but was reinterred in Mississippi in 1894. He has three state counties named after him; in Georgia, Mississippi and in Alabama. He was also the nephew of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, the third president of the Republic of Texas, and the son-in-law of Augustus Baldwin Longstreet, who was president of four universities including the University of Mississippi and author of a well known book of humor.