Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar (1825-1893) was an American politician of the Confederate South. He later became a member of President Grover Cleveland's Cabinet and a Supreme Court justice.

Born in Putnam County, Ga., on Sept. 17, 1825, Lucius Q.C. Lamar was reared by his mother after his father committed suicide. He attended Emory College in Oxford, Ga., and married Virginia Longstreet, the college president's daughter. After studying law for two years, he taught mathematics at the University of Mississippi.

In 1852 Lamar returned to Covington, Ga., to practice law. He was elected to the state legislature as a Democrat. In Mississippi in 1855, he bought a large plantation with many slaves. He was elected to Congress in 1857, where he criticized Stephen Douglas's concept of "territorial sovereignty" as too compromising of the rights of slaveholders. However, with Jefferson Davis he counseled Southern extremists not to bolt the deadlocked 1860 Democratic convention.

In November...