Gen. D.H. Hill - Post War

[Bruce Vail]

Here is some red meat for my fellow D.H. Hill Fan Club members, and all the rest of CWT folk interested in Hill's little corner of Civil War history.

In his introduction to the Hill bio Lee's Maverick General , the great historian Gary Gallagher laments that the book spends little time on the General's post-war career. Graduate student Brit Kimberly Erslev did a good job addressing Gallagher's complaint in her 2007 thesis titled "Controversry and Crusade: Daniel Havey Hill and the Shaping of Reputation and Historical Memory," which I found by happenstance while noodling through the net last week.

University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill makes the thesis available on line at: https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/rconcern/file_sets/fn107016z

At 60 pages (traditional typescript), it's a quick read, especially for those with a general familiarity with Hill. Erslev calls Hill an "architect" of the Lost Cause school because of Hill's early post-war publishing enterprises, and his later writings in publications like SHSP and "Century" magazine. I had never thought of Hill as an architect of the Lost Cause, but Erslev seems to have a pretty good case here. I wonder whether other historians agree.

Missing from the thesis are any colorful anecdotes illustrating Hill's acerbic and contrarian character. I think this is what most Club member really enjoy most and I, for one, would wish for a post-war treatment that includes some of this kind of material. (He apparently was fired as President of the Univesity of Arkansas because of his unpleasant personality, for example, but because this incident was unrelated to the Civil War its not discussed in Erslev's thesis. I'd like to know more about that.)

I'm interested in what other CWT folk think of Erslev's work, and of Hill's post-war career in general...

 

[diane]

D H Hill did have a strong hand in helping along the Lost Cause phenomenon - mainly in his attempts to justify and/or clear himself in Chickamauga, the Lost Order matter and Bragg's bag! He also stepped into it deeply by daring to criticize Robert E Lee. Old Rawhide never was afraid to go from the frying pan into the fire if he believed himself to be right, and to give him his due, the reverse was just as true - he would apologize if he was wrong. Didn't do much of that, though! He wrote a magazine called Land That We Love, which was about all things Southern - from food to legends to post-war issues to anything else. It was not exactly a Reconstructed publication, and he put into it all manner of testimony and stories from any Confederate who wished to have his say - including Longstreet. Nor did he shy from a controversy, which is how his son came to be shot. Someone was laying for the general but his son showed instead...so the shooters figured well, his name is Hill, too! I think Hill is just as much an architect of the Lost Cause ideology as Jubal Early or Jefferson Davis.

 

[James N.]

 

[rpkennedy]

Other than Stonewall Jackson and presumably his family, did literally anyone get along with D.H. Hill?

Ryan

 

[James N.]

Another interesting CDV of Hill I'd never seen before.

 

[rpkennedy]

View attachment 329386
Another interesting CDV of Hill I'd never seen before.

Do we have a date on this one James N.? The photos I've seen of him have his beard more closely cropped.

Ryan

 

[diane]

Other than Stonewall Jackson and presumably his family, did literally anyone get along with D.H. Hill?

Ryan

Forrest did!

 

[James N.]

Do we have a date on this one James N.? The photos I've seen of him have his beard more closely cropped.

Ryan

No, I found that one along with the others while doing a search for photos of him to use in my recent Antietam thread.

 

[Bruce Vail]

D H Hill did have a strong hand in helping along the Lost Cause phenomenon - mainly in his attempts to justify and/or clear himself in Chickamauga, the Lost Order matter and Bragg's bag! He also stepped into it deeply by daring to criticize Robert E Lee. Old Rawhide never was afraid to go from the frying pan into the fire if he believed himself to be right, and to give him his due, the reverse was just as true - he would apologize if he was wrong. Didn't do much of that, though! He wrote a magazine called Land That We Love, which was about all things Southern - from food to legends to post-war issues to anything else. It was not exactly a Reconstructed publication, and he put into it all manner of testimony and stories from any Confederate who wished to have his say - including Longstreet. Nor did he shy from a controversy, which is how his son came to be shot. Someone was laying for the general but his son showed instead...so the shooters figured well, his name is Hill, too! I think Hill is just as much an architect of the Lost Cause ideology as Jubal Early or Jefferson Davis.

Erslev writes that Hill mentally melded the personal with the historical. Hill felt his competence as a military man had been unfairly tarnished in the course of the war, just as the performance of the Confederate fighting man had been unfairly tarnished by defeat. Defending his own military honor thus became a totem for defending the honor of the South.

I'd say the same was true for a lot of the South's other top military men, providing much of the energy behind development of the Lost Cause ethic.

 

[Bruce Vail]

Other than Stonewall Jackson and presumably his family, did literally anyone get along with D.H. Hill?

Ryan

There seems to have been a complicated on-again, off-again friendship with Longstreet. Hill had criticized Longstreet's military performance in 1862, but they became co-conspirators against Bragg in 1863. Post War, they agreed that Lee had shown undue preference for Virgina-born officers (as apposed to North Carolinians of Georgians) but the correspondence does not seem to indicate any real warmth between the two.

 

[Bruce Vail]

A post-war image.




A photograph of Daniel Harvey Hill, circa 1865-1875. Image from North Carolina State University.

 

[Bruce Vail]

Do we have a date on this one James N.? The photos I've seen of him have his beard more closely cropped.

Ryan

The image appears to have been modified-retouched, don't you think?

 

[rpkennedy]

The image appears to have been modified-retouched, don't you think?

I agree but I'm far from being an expert on such things.

Ryan

 

[Robin Lesjovitch]

View attachment 329386
Another interesting CDV of Hill I'd never seen before.

This may be a pre-war photo. The devices on his collar do not seem to conform to any he might have worn during the war.... and the buttons are quite large

 

[kholland]

A post-war image.
View attachment 329395
A photograph of Daniel Harvey Hill, circa 1865-1875. Image from North Carolina State University.

Interesting find. I was just getting ready to look for a post war image (been seeing the same image for years) when this appeared. Thanks

 

[James N.]

View attachment 329403
This may be a pre-war photo. The devices on his collar do not seem to conform to any he might have worn during the war.... and the buttons are quite large

I think you may indeed have hit on something! I have frequently repeated here on the forums something I was first made aware of in an article in Civil War Times about a Richmond photographer's prop general's coat that shows up repeatedly on all sorts of unrelated people: Texas Col. Ochiltree, Generals Sibley, Kirby Smith, Marmaduke, and others. Below is a good shot of Marmaduke wearing the coat, which is obviously too large for him. Hallmarks of it are the large, flat, and closely-spaced buttons and general's collar insignia featuring the oversized central star. As can be seen from my list, the wearers were often from the west who might've arrived in the capital lacking suitable finery in which to have their likenesses made; Ochiltree and another unidentified colonel turned down the collar so the wreath-and-stars didn't show. I can't tell about Hill's collar stars, but the buttons bear a close resemblance; possibly there was some reason he needed to wear the prop coat for the photo?

 

[Robin Lesjovitch]

I think you may indeed have hit on something! I have frequently repeated here on the forums something I was first made aware of in an article in Civil War Times about a Richmond photographer's prop general's coat that shows up repeatedly on all sorts of unrelated people: Texas Col. Ochiltree, Generals Sibley, Kirby Smith, Marmaduke, and others. Below is a good shot of Marmaduke wearing the coat, which is obviously too large for him. Hallmarks of it are the large, flat, and closely-spaced buttons and general's collar insignia featuring the oversized central star. As can be seen from my list, the wearers were often from the west who might've arrived in the capital lacking suitable finery in which to have their likenesses made; Ochiltree and another unidentified colonel turned down the collar so the wreath-and-stars didn't show. I can't tell about Hill's collar stars, but the buttons bear a close resemblance; possibly there was some reason he needed to wear the prop coat for the photo?
View attachment 329542

Hill was superintendent of The North Carolina Military Institute prior to the war.
The sort of uniform Hill is wearing could be of the kind he wore then.
I'm just guessing, based on my being unable to determine the collar configuration, and a guess as to Hill's age at the time of the photo.

 

[James N.]

Hill was superintendent of The North Carolina Military Institute prior to the war.
The sort of uniform Hill is wearing could be of the kind he wore then.
I'm just guessing, based on my being unable to determine the collar configuration, and a guess as to Hill's age at the time of the photo.

That's pretty unlikely - most members of military academies wore more-or-less U.S. Regulation uniforms, like Stonewall Jackson wore as a professor at V.M.I. Gray would've been an unlikely choice in antebellum times for uniforms for officers, including at West Point. I think it more possible this is a postwar image.

 

[Robin Lesjovitch]

That's pretty unlikely - most members of military academies wore more-or-less U.S. Regulation uniforms, like Stonewall Jackson wore as a professor at V.M.I. Gray would've been an unlikely choice in antebellum times for uniforms for officers, including at West Point. I think it more possible this is a postwar image.

I do not disagree. However, Hill had not worn any uniform for 10 years prior to beginning at NCMI. Jackson, for example, was just wearing what he had. And, gray was a coming color in the NC military: https://www.guilfordgreys.com/guilford-greys.
I am speculating only to provide options.
The photo offers mysteries. The cut of the coat suggests Confederate, but I think some other explanations might be entertained.

 

[diane]

I suspect the photo in question was taken at the beginning of the war, when Hill was commander of the Bethel Regiment. I do think it's been fooled with! A number of commanders have early pictures like that - they've been altered for recruiting posters, newspapers and other publications.