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Daniel Harvey Hill

www.sonofthesouth.net

Originally aired on December 08, 1995 - In part 67 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson profiles the life and career of the cantankerous Confederate warrior Daniel Harvey Hill.

#67 – Man with a Bitter Tongue

It is time for our unique-individual-of-the-month discussion. This installment focuses on a son of the Carolinas, Daniel Harvey Hill. His whole life was a succession of sharp ups and downs.

Born in South Carolina in July, 1821, Hill graduated in the middle of the famous West Point Class of 1842. He earned two brevet promotions for gallantry in the Mexican War. Then came a professorship of mathematics, first at Washington College in Lexington, and then at Davidson College in North Carolina. In that period, Hill became a brother-in-law of the future Stonewall Jackson.

Hill was superintendent of a military school in Charlotte when civil war came. He entered Confederate service as colonel of the 1st North Carolina and was the victor in the opening land battle of the war at Big Bethel, near Hampton, Virginia. A major general by the following spring, Harvey Hill was in the thick of combat at Williamsburg, Seven Pines, the Seven Days, South Mountain, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.

Then the downfall came. The cause was Hill’s physical condition and temperament. He was a small, delicate man, bent with arthritis, plagued by dyspepsia, and cursed with a bitter tongue. Nobody ever doubted his fighting ability, but his countenance – sarcastic and always opinionated – alienated everyone around him.

Hill once snorted that he had never seen a dead Confederate with spurs on – an obvious slap at every Southern cavalryman. On another occasion, when a regimental musician applied for a furlough, Hill fired back the answer: “Disapproved – shooters before tooters”. Hill was an unbending Calvinist who looked on all Yankees as infidel. His men called him “Old Rawhide” for good reason.

General Lee grew tired of the man’s constant carping and transferred him from Virginia. Hill eventually ended up with the Army of Tennessee. Yet after the 1863 fighting at Chickamauga, Hill was so outspokenly contemptuous of army commander Braxton Bragg that Jefferson Davis refused to submit Hill’s promotion to lieutenant general for confirmation. Hill verbally blasted the President and went home in disgust. He saw but limited duty for the remainder of the conflict.

In the postwar years, Harvey Hill edited The Land We Love, a popular monthly magazine. He became president of the University of Arkansas and later head of a Georgia military college. Hill died of cancer in September, 1889, and was buried in the campus cemetery at Davidson College.

Just how barbed his pen could be is best seen in an obscure letter he wrote while commanding the Department of North Carolina. In the spring of 1863, a Union army raided the eastern part of the state. Federal General John Foster reprimanded Hill for burning the town of Plymouth to prevent its capture. Hill thereupon let the Union officer have it in a response sent through the lines.

“A meddling Yankee,” Hill told Foster, “troubles himself about everybody’s matters except his own and repents of everybody’s sins except his own. Should the Yankee burn a village in Connecticut or Massachusetts, we would….bid them God-speed in their work of purifying the atmosphere…You are the most atrocious house-burner as yet unhung in the wide universe…You have made two raids when you were weary of debauching in your negro harem…Your whole line of march has been marked by burning churches, school-houses, barns, privates residences, (and the like)…

“Let me inform you that I will receive no more white flags from you except the one which covers your surrender…No one dislikes New England more cordially than I do, but there are thousands of honorable men even there who abhor your career fully as much as I do.”

Harvey Hill had such a captivating way with words.

Dr. James I. "Bud" Robertson, Jr., is a noted scholar on the American Civil War and Alumni Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Virginia Tech.