The Life And Legacy Of Major General D. H. Hill C.S.A. (1821 - 1889)

Confederate Major General D. H. Hill
(July 12, 1821 - September 24, 1889)

Daniel Harvey Hill was born at Hill's Iron Works on Thursday, July 12, 1821 in York District (now York County, South Carolina) to Solomon and Nancy Cabeen Hill. His maternal grandfather was a native of Scotland.

Hill's paternal grandfather, William "Billy" Hill, was a native of Ireland and local Revolutionary War hero who made cannon for the Continental Army and served as a colonel of militia in various campaigns under Patriot General Thomas "Gamecock" Sumter during the summer and fall of 1780 -- probably best known for his role in the events leading up to the Battle of Huck's Defeat (Wednesday, July 12, 1780).

He entered the West Point U.S. Military Academy in 1838 at age 17 and graduated 28th in his class of 56 fellow cadets in the Class of 1842. Included among his classmates were several future American Civil War generals: Earl Van Dorn, William Starke Rosecrans, Abner Doubleday, and fellow South Carolinian, James Longstreet, whom he maintained a life-long friendship with.

Following his graduation, Hill was assigned to the 1st U.S. Artillery at the rank of 2nd Lieutenant. He was later transferred to the 3rd Artillery on Tuesday, October 20, 1843, then later to the 4th U.S. Artillery. He was promoted to 1st Lieutenant on Wednesday, March 3, 1847.

During the Mexican-American War (1846-1848) Hill served under U.S. Major General Winfield Scott. He first saw action with the 4th U.S. Artillery at the Siege of Veracruz (March 9-29, 1847) then later at Cerro Gordo (Sunday, April 18, 1847). During the war, Hill was promoted twice; first to captain for bravery at the Battles of Contreras and Churubusco (August 19-20, 1847), then to major also for bravery at the Battle of Chapultepec (September 12-13, 1847).

In 1848, Hill married Isabella Sophia Morrison, with whom he would have seven children: Robert Hall (1850-1857). Mary Eugenia Arnold (1852-1934), Willie Morrison (1855-1856), Nancy Lee (1857-1938), Daniel Harvey Jr. (1859-1924), James Irwin (1864-1866), and Joseph Morrison (1864-1950).

After the war ended, Hill resigned his commission in 1849 and became a professor of mathematics at Washington College (now Washington and Lee University) in Lexington, Virginia. Later in 1854, he joined the faculty at Davidson College near Charlotte, North Carolina.

In 1857, Hill’s sister-in-law, Mary Anna Morrison, married fellow artilleryman and Mexican War veteran and future Confederate Lieutenant General Thomas Johnathan Jackson, a teacher at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) next to Washington College in Lexington where Hill previously taught mathematics. The two men had struck up a close friendship while Hill was in Lexington. Jackson, a devout Christian, was also the founder of a Sunday School for both enslaved and free African-Americans in Lexington.

Like his brother-in-law, Daniel Harvey Hill also had a history of teaching black children -- notably one of the freed slaves on his family's Iron Works as a young boy. The child, Elias Hill, was taught to read and write by Daniel, and would later become a black minister in York County before the upcoming War Between The States (1861-1865) and during the Reconstruction Era (1867-1876).

In 1858, seeing the need for a "Southern West Point" Hill founded the North Carolina Military Institute in Charlotte becoming its superintendent with fellow educator and future Confederate General James Henry Lane, the later founder of the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. The school based its academic and disciplinary structures on the West Point model. The school did not last long with the start of the American Civil War and the cadets taking up arms for the Southern Confederacy when North Carolina seceded from the United States on Monday, May 20, 1861.

Hill immediately offered his services to the State of North Carolina and was appointed the rank of colonel of the 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment where, less than a month later, he fought in the first land battle of the war at the Battle of Big Bethel, near Newport News, Virginia on June 10, 1861 -- a Confederate victory. For his quick action and courage, on July 10, 1861, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general and given command of Confederate troops guarding the new Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia.

By the spring of 1862, Hill was a major general and division commander in the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. He participated in the Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862. Hill led his division with great distinction in the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31-June 1, 1862) and later at Malvern Hill (Tuesday, July 1, 1862) during the Seven Days Battles.

At Malvern Hill, he unsuccessfully urged General Robert E. Lee not to attack what would prove to be an impregnable Federal position. One of his brigades would loose over 40 percent of its strength as casualties in the battle as a result. This would be the beginning of Hill's outspoken wartime criticisms of the famous Southern general which eventually resulted in his expulsion from the Army of Northern Virginia.

Following the Seven Days Battles, Hill's division was left behind to defend Richmond from Union forces still in the area while the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia marched north to engage another Union Army at the Second Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) on August 29-30, 1862).

During this time in Richmond, Hill developed a system for prisoner of war exchanges with Union Major General John A. Dix. On Tuesday, July 22, 1862, the agreement known as the Dix-Hill Cartel was established. The cartel worked well for a few months, but broke down when the Confederate government insisted on treating captured black Union prisoners as fugitive slaves and returning them to their previous owners. This would largely lead to many Union and Confederate prisoners of war suffering and needlessly dying long-term harsh conditions -- both unintentional and otherwise -- in the horrid prisoner of war camps throughout eastern America.

Hill and his division returned to the Army of Northern Virginia in time for its first invasion of the Northern States in September of 1862.

During the Maryland campaign, Hill was mistakenly sent two copies of Lee's Special Orders No. 191, which detailed the divided positions of Confederate forces as it attempted to march north towards Pennsylvania. One of these copies was accidentally left (likely never delivered) in a field near Frederick, Maryland wrapped around three cigars, where a Union soldier, Corporal Barton W. Mitchell of the 27th Indiana Volunteers (who would later be wounded at the subsequent Battle of Sharpsburg), discovered it on September 13th. The copy of Lee's order was sent up the chain of command and delivered to the commander of the Army of the Potomac Union Major General George B. McClellan.

Hill would later claim that he was only given one copy of what would later be known as Lee’s Lost Order.

Realizing that Lee’s divided army was now vulnerable, McClellan pursued the Confederates with uncharacteristic speed. 

Hill's division fought to slow down the Union advance at the Battle of South Mountain (or Boonsboro Gap) on Sunday, September 14, 1862. Scattered as far north as Boonsboro, Maryland when the fighting began, but for the entire day Hill's vastly outnumbered division fought with distinction, slowing down McClellan and buying Lee's army enough precious time to concentrate at nearby Sharpsburg, Maryland.

General D.H. Hill and his now 2,500 man division took part in some of the bloodies fighting during the Battle of Sharpsburg (near Antietam Creek) on Wednesday, September 17, 1862 holding the center of the Confederate lines against waves of Union assaults on the Sunken Road (also known as "Bloody Lane") He rallied a few detached men from different brigades to hold the line at the critical moment and later allowing the Confederates to withdraw in good order.

After the battle, Lee's army retired back across the Potomac River into Virginia, giving the Union army its first major victory of the war and Abraham Lincoln the moment he needed to issue his famous Emancipation Proclamation, expanding the war to preserve the Union into a crusade to end slavery in the eyes of European and other foreign powers that might have come to the aid of the young Confederate States.

Hill's division also participated in the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 12-13, 1862.

James Wylie Ratchford, a South Carolinian on Hill’s staff, wrote that Stonewall Jackson said of Hill: "there was not another man in the Southern army superior in his military genius than D.H. Hill."

Although General D.H. Hill was widely recognized as a superb combat leader, he also had a tendency to make powerful enemies. One Confederate official described Hill's personality as: "harsh, abrupt, often insulting in the effort to be sarcastic."

According to  his friend, General James Longstreet, Hill’s cause was furthermore undermined by the fact that he was a North Carolinian in an army of Virginians -- though this fact is in dispute since many of the best division-level officers of the Army of Northern Virginia were from States other than Virginia.

Hill was an outspoken critic of decisions made by Lee and Braxton Bragg, two men highly favored by Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In addition to his old classmate, Longstreet, Hill was also a good friend to Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston, a fact which also didn't earn him any points with Davis.

Nonetheless, Hill had an excellent reputation on the battlefield.

In the spring of 1863, Hill was detached from the Army of Northern Virginia to help defend North Carolina and Southern Virginia. He never rejoined Lee’s army.

After helping defend Richmond during Lee’s 1863 invasion of Pennsylvania and the Gettysburg Campaign, D.H. Hill was sent west to command a corps in Braxton Bragg’s Army of Tennessee along with General Longstreet. Hill led his corps in some of the heaviest fighting in the bloody victory at the Battle of Chickamauga (September 19-20, 1863). After the battle, however, tensions with Bragg over his failure to properly exploit the victory led to Hill being sidelined and to the cancellation of his formal promotion to lieutenant general.

Hill would not command troops in a significant engagement again until the Battle of Bentonville (March 19-21, 1865) in the final weeks of the war. Hill was again a division commander when he, along with General Johnston, surrendered the Confederate Army of Tennessee on Wednesday, April 26, 1865 to Union Major General William T. Sherman at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina.

Following the war, Hill sought to document Southern history by establishing two literary publications: The Land We Love and My Southern Home, both of which included coverage of literature, history, and agriculture. He edited the journal from 1866 to 1869.

From 1877 to 1884, Hill was elected to serve as the first president of the University of Arkansas.

In 1885 he became president of the Military and Agricultural College (Georgia Military College) of Milledgeville, Georgia. He held the post for four years until August of 1889 when he resigned due to failing health and returned to Charlotte, North Carolina, where he died on Tuesday, September 24, 1889 at age 68.

Daniel Harvey Hill is buried with his wife, Isabella, in the Davidson College Cemetery in Davidson, North Carolina.

 

A special thanks to the following sources for the information in this blog post:

Lee's Maverick General: Daniel Harvey Hill by Hal Bridges. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8032-6096-2. First published 1961 by McGraw-Hill.
Generals in Gray: Lives of the Confederate Commanders. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1959. ISBN 978-0-8071-0823-9.
North Carolina History Project: Daniel Harvey Hill (1821-1889) by Troy L. Kickler.
North Carolina State Department of Archives and History online.