Lives of Distinguished North Carolinians, with Illustrations and Speeches

by Unknown

From the scores of her surviving heroes of the Palmetto regiment and in the regular army the committee appointed by the State authorities selected Hill to receive one of the three swords awarded, and it is still preserved by his family.

After the close of the late war a Federal officer wrote to General Joseph E. Johnston, asking the name of a Confederate officer who, on the right of our army at Seven Pines, had made himself most conspicuous for his daring and indifference to danger. The only mark of distinction which he could give General Johnston was that he thought the officer rode a white horse. General Johnston replied that he supposed the officer referred to must have been General D. H. Hill. In writing to General Hill about the matter, General Johnston said: "I drew my conclusion that your horse might very well have been taken for white and that no man was more likely to expose himself than you. Do you know that in Mexico the young officers called you the bravest man in the army?"

When the war with Mexico ended Major Hill resigned his place in the army to accept the professorship of Mathematics in Washington College at Lexington, Virginia. Before assuming the duties of that place he was happily married, November 2d, 1852, to Isabella, oldest daughter of Rev. Dr. R. H. Morrison, and granddaughter of General Joseph Graham, who was a distinguished soldier of the Revolution and the father of Governor William A. Graham. Six years later, he was invited to take the same professorship at Davidson College, where for five years he was looked upon as the leading spirit amongst a corps of able and learned professors.

D. H. Hill was not a politician in the sense of aspiring to office or attempting to mould public opinion; but when he saw that the leaders of the North had determined that no Southerner should be allowed to take his slaves to the territory wrested from Mexico by the blood and treasure of the South as well as of the North, he believed that the irrepressible conflict, which Seward declared at a later day was being waged, had then begun, and would be settled only upon the bloody field of battle and after a prolonged, sanguinary, and doubtful struggle.

Fully persuaded that the inevitable conflict was near at hand, and that it was his solemn duty to prepare the rising generation of his adopted State to meet it he, in 1859, gave up his pleasant home and his congenial duties at Davidson College for those of commandant and manager of the Military Institute at Charlotte.

He harbored no unkind thought against the noble men and women of the North who held opinions different from his own. He respected even the honest fanatic, who fairly and openly contended for his convictions; but he hated cant and hypocrisy, despised duplicity and dishonesty, and leveled at them his most effective weapons, ridicule, and sarcasm. For that portion of our Northern brethren who came to the South to drive hard bargains with our people and cheat them by false pretenses, he felt and expressed the most sovereign contempt. For the men of the North who coveted the wealth of the Southern planter, and the women who envied their Southern sisters because of the ease and leisure incident to the ownership of slaves, he made no attempt to conceal his hatred and disgust.

Major Hill brought with him to Raleigh his three professors, Lee, Lane, and McKinney, two of whom fell later at the head of North Carolina regiments, and one of whom was the successor of the noble Branch as commander of one of our best and bravest brigades. He also brought with him almost the whole corps of cadets, whose services proved invaluable as drill-masters of the ten thousand volunteers then in the camp of instruction of which Hill took charge. For his services in the camp of instruction General Hill was allowed to select twelve companies to compose the first regiment of volunteers. The officers of these companies were all leading and influential citizens, and the rank and file were among the first young men in the State in intelligence, wealth, and social position. The service of six months proved a training-school for that splendid body of volunteers that ultimately placed them at the head of companies, regiments, brigades, and divisions. Among its original officers were Major-General Hoke, Brigadier-Generals Lane and Lewis, Colonels Avery, Bridgers, Hardy, W. W. McDowell, J. C. S. McDowell, Starr, Pemberton, Fuller, and a score of others, while a number from the rank and file fell at the head of both companies and regiments at later stages of the struggle.

In the outset of this discussion of the career of D. H. Hill as a Confederate soldier, I lay down and propose to maintain the proposition that from the time when he fought the first fight of the war with North Carolina soldiers on Virginia soil till the day he led the last attacking column of Confederates east of the Mississippi and checked Sherman's advance at Bentonsville, whatever may have been the general result of any engagement, the command of General D. H. Hill was never found when the firing ceased at night in the rear of the position it occupied when the signal of attack sounded in the morning. Apparently reckless in the exposure of his own person, no officer in our armies was more anxious about the health, happiness, and safety of his soldiers. His theory was that spades were instruments of defensive, bayonets of offensive, warfare, and whether the emergency demanded the use of the one or the other, it was to be done with "might and main." When his cadets had asked him whether they should join South Carolina regiments before their own State seceded he prophesied that the war would soon begin and would continue long enough to give every Southerner an opportunity to display his manhood. He rested his hope of success upon the belief that every son of the South would rush to the rescue; that our armies would be supplied by the labor of our slaves, and that we would thus be enabled to throw a force into the field sufficient to meet every Northern man who would tender his services to the Federal Government. Two important elements were wanting as a basis of his calculations—the Southern loyalist and the foreign substitute. When, therefore, General D. H. Hill reported to Colonel J. B. Magruder, then in charge of the Peninsula, and was assigned to the command of the defenses of Yorktown, he realized, in a measure at least, the magnitude of coming contest.