The explanation which readily suggests itself, therefore, is that the original draft of the order contained only the portion beginning with the third section and was signed in that shape by Colonel Chilton, but was afterwards modified so as to prefix the two first paragraphs before it was issued. The "lost order" was found by an Indiana soldier, wrapped around three cigars. The first paper drawn would have become useless after the material additions made to it, and might well have been wrapped around cigars by some one at General Lee's headquarters, with the purpose of using it to light them, and then lost before cigars or paper were disposed of, as intended. It will be more readily believed that a clerk or assistant in the office at army headquarters might have been guilty of carelessness than that Ratchford swore to and that Hill told a falsehood. If their positive statements are believed, only the one order, addressed as though sent through General Jackson's headquarters, was received by General Hill. When Lee and Hill were encamped in sight of each other near Fredericktown, and General Lee was then and afterwards (as at South Mountain) habitually sending orders direct to General Hill, it does not seem probable that Lee, whose forte was the power of readily mobilizing his army, would have tolerated such circumlocution as making one courier ride across the Potomac to Jackson with an order which was to be sent back by another messenger to a camp in sight of its starting point on the next day. It would have been a fair compromise between extreme official courtesy and that common sense which always characterized the conduct of our great leaders, if Lee had recognized Jackson's authority by addressing the order as though transmitted through him, and at the same time ordering its delivery directly to Hill, thus conforming his conduct to the conditions which demanded that Hill should know at the earliest possible moment of his proposed plan of operation, and of the prohibition against entering the neighboring town applying only to his own and Longstreet's Division.
The direct testimony bearing upon the dispute in reference to the lost order was the sworn statement of Major James W. Ratchford, Adjutant-General, that only the single copy of the order reached him, which was preserved by General Hill till his death, and the solemn statement of Hill that he himself received no other copy. Leaving out of view the difference between the original paper recorded in Lee's book and the supposed copy delivered to McClellan, there is nothing to contradict the testimony of one of the bravest and truest officers in the army of Virginia and the word of D. H. Hill. The attention of these two officers had been called to the loss of the paper within a few months after it passed into McClellan's hands, when all that had occurred in Maryland was still fresh in their memories, and they then made the same statement that the one reiterates to-day and the other published in 1886. Lee himself charged no particular person with the loss of the dispatch. While he possibly magnified (says Longstreet in his article in the Century Magazine) its effect upon the Maryland campaign, he was inclined to attribute its loss to the fault of a courier. (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, p. 674.) In his report of the operations in Maryland he said: "The small command of General Hill repelled repeated assaults of the Federal army and held it in check for five hours." The only contradicting testimony comes from Major Taylor of General Lee's staff, and being negative in its character, is not entitled to the weight that should be attached to the positive evidence of gentlemen of equal reputation for veracity. The substance of his statement is, that it was his habit during that campaign to send such orders directly to the headquarters of Hill's Division as well as through Jackson to Hill. But he neither recalls the fact of sending the particular paper in question, nor does he name any officer or courier who attests its actual delivery. Admitting the high character of Taylor, as well as that of Ratchford, the verdict of history, under the most familiar rules of evidence, must unquestionably acquit Hill of negligence, and accord to him the high honor of saving the army of Lee by his strategy, coolness, and courage.
At Sharpsburg, the last engagement in which D. H. Hill participated with that army, no figure was more conspicuous and no line firmer than his. As usual, he was the first to open and the last to quit the fight. General Lee said in his report: "The attack on our left was speedily followed by one in heavy force on the center. This was met by part of Walker's Division and the brigades of G. B. Anderson and Rodes of D. H. Hill's command, assisted by a few pieces of artillery. The enemy were repulsed and retired behind the crest of a hill, from which they kept up a desultory fire. At this time, by a mistake of orders, General Rodes' Brigade was withdrawn from its position during the temporary absence of that officer at another part of the field. The enemy immediately passed through the gap thus created and G. B. Anderson's Brigade was broken and retired, General Anderson himself being mortally wounded.... The heavy masses of the enemy again moved forward, being opposed by only four pieces of artillery, supported by a few hundred men belonging to different brigades, rallied by General D. H. Hill and other officers, and parts of Walker's and R. H. Anderson's commands, Colonel Cooke of the Twenty-seventh North Carolina Regiment, of Walker's Brigade, standing boldly in line without a cartridge." "At this critical moment, when the enemy was advancing on Cooke," says General Longstreet, "a shot came across the Federal front, plowing the ground in a parallel line, then another and another, each nearer and nearer their line. This enfilade fire was from a battery on D. H. Hill's line, and it soon beat back the attacking column." (Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. II, p. 670.)
On the right General Lee was stationed in person, and with Toombs' Brigade (says General Longstreet) held the enemy in check till A. P. Hill's Division rushed to the rescue, with Pender on the right and Branch on the left of his line, and aided by well-directed shots from a battery planted by D. H. Hill on his front, drove them back in confusion. Generals Lee, Longstreet, and D. H. Hill concluded during a short suspension of musketry fire to reconnoiter the position of the enemy from the crest of a ridge in front of the Confederate line, which was formed behind a fence. Lee and Longstreet giving General Hill a sufficiently wide berth, went out on foot, while Hill rode. In a few moments, says Longstreet, Hill was making vain and rather ludicrous efforts to dismount from the third horse killed under him in that engagement, the legs of the animal having been cut off at the knees by a cannon ball. When Major Ratchford, who himself was never known to quail in the face of the foe, but whose affection for his friend was unbounded, said to him on this occasion: "General, why do you expose yourself so recklessly? Do you never feel the sensation of fear?" General Hill replied that he would never require his men to go where he did not know the ground or would not go himself, and that he had no fear of death if he met it in the line of duty. His friend then inquired if he would not rather live than die. "Oh, yes," said General Hill, "when I think of my wife and babies I would; but God will take care of them if he allows anything to happen to me."
When, in November, 1862, Hill's Division was ordered to take the lead in the march to Fredericksburg to meet Hooker, a large number of his men had been barefooted since the return of the army from Maryland, yet he accomplished the unusual feat of marching two hundred miles in twenty days without leaving on the way a single straggler. One of the remarkable features of the battle of December 13th, 1862, near Fredericksburg, which followed this sudden transfer of the seat of war, was the fact that D. H. Hill's Division, Jubal A. Early's and most of John B. Hood's were in the reserve line. It was evidence of an easy victory that the services of three such fighting men were not needed in front.
In February, 1863, Hill bade a final adieu to his old division, when he was ordered to assume command in the State of North Carolina. Before the campaign opened in the following spring Hill had made a demonstration against New Bern, followed by an advance upon Washington in this State, which would have resulted in the capture of the latter place but for Lee's order to send a portion of his command to Virginia.
Later in the spring of 1863, Hill was ordered to remove his headquarters to Petersburg, and was placed in command of the department extending from the James to the Cape Fear. When Lee invaded Pennsylvania the citizens of Richmond and the heads of the various departments became greatly alarmed for the safety of the place. The officers in charge of the defenses of the city and of the Peninsula had failed to inspire confidence in their vigilance, efficiency or capacity. When the troops of Dix began to move up the Peninsula from Yorktown and West Point, General Hill was ordered by the President to transfer all available troops from south of the James and assume command of the forces gathered for the defense of the capital city. With the brigades of Cooke and M. W. Ransom, and a few other regiments, General Hill met the army of Dix near Bottom's Bridge, drove them back without serious difficulty in the direction of West Point, and in two or three days restored perfect confidence on the part of the panic-stricken people of the city.
About the 10th of July, 1863, President Davis called at General Hill's quarters three miles east of Richmond, and, after many kind and complimentary comments upon his conduct as an officer during the preceding year, informed him that he was appointed a lieutenant-general, and would be ordered to report forthwith to General Joseph E. Johnston, near Vicksburg, Mississippi. Orders having been issued accordingly, on the 13th of July General Hill, with his staff, set out immediately for his new field. When he reached his home in Charlotte he was notified that his destination had been changed, and he would report for duty to General Braxton Bragg at Chattanooga.
Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill found the army of Bragg encamped along the Tennessee River in and around the small town which has since assumed the proportions of a city. Colonel Archer Anderson, chief of Hill's staff, in his able address upon the battle of Chickamauga, says: "The corps of Hardee had lately gained as a commander a stern and dauntless soldier from the Army of Northern Virginia in D. H. Hill, whose vigor, coolness and unconquerable pertinacity in fight had already stamped him as a leader of heroic temper. Of the religious school of Stonewall Jackson, his earnest convictions never chilled his ardor for battle, and in another age he would have been worthy to charge with Cromwell at Dunbar, with the cry, 'Let God arise and let his enemies be scattered.'"