| Ambrose Powell Hill, Jr. | |
|---|---|
| Nickname | "Little Powell" |
| Born | November 9, 1825 Culpeper, Virginia |
| Died | April 2, 1865 (aged 39) Petersburg, Virginia |
| Place of burial | Richmond, Virginia |
| Allegiance | United States of America Confederate States of America |
| Service/branch | U.S. Army Confederate Army |
| Years of service | 1847–61 (USA) 1861–65 (CSA) |
| Rank | First Lieutenant (USA) Lieutenant General (CSA) |
| Commands held | |
| Battles/wars | Mexican-American War Seminole Wars American Civil War |
Ambrose Powell Hill, Jr. (November 9, 1825 – April 2, 1865), was a career U.S. Army officer in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars and a Confederate general in the American Civil War. He gained early fame as the commander of "Hill's Light Division" in the Seven Days Battles and became one of Stonewall Jackson's ablest subordinates, distinguishing himself in the 1862 battles of Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg.
Following Jackson's death in May 1863 at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Hill was promoted to lieutenant general and commanded the Third Corps of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia, which he led in the Gettysburg Campaign and the fall campaigns of 1863. His command of the corps in 1864–65 was interrupted on multiple occasions by illness, from which he did not return until just before the end of the war, when he was killed during the Union Army offensive at the Third Battle of Petersburg.
Hill is usually referred to as A. P. Hill, to differentiate him from another prominent (unrelated) Confederate general, D. H. Hill.
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Hill, known to his family as Powell (and to his soldiers as Little Powell), was born in Culpeper, Virginia, the seventh and final child of Thomas and Fannie Russell Baptist Hill. Powell was named for his uncle, Ambrose Powell Hill (1785–1858), who served in both houses of the Virginia legislature, and Capt. Ambrose Powell, an Indian fighter, explorer, sheriff, legislator, and close friend of President James Madison.[1]
Hill was nominated to enter the United States Military Academy in 1842, in a class that admitted 85 cadets. He made friends easily, including such prominent future generals as Darius N. Couch, George E. Pickett, Jesse L. Reno, George Stoneman, Truman Seymour, Cadmus M. Wilcox, and George B. McClellan. His future commander, Thomas J. Jackson, was in the same class but the two did not get along. Hill had a higher social status in Virginia and valued having a good time in his off-hours, whereas Jackson scorned levity and practiced his religion more fervently than Hill could tolerate. In 1844, Hill returned from a furlough with a case of gonorrhea, medical complications from which caused him to miss so many classes that he was required to repeat his third year. Reassigned to the class of 1847, he made new friendships in particular with Henry Heth and Ambrose E. Burnside.[2] He graduated in 1847, ranking 15th of 38. He was appointed to the 1st U.S. Artillery as a brevet second lieutenant.[3] He served in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars and was promoted to first lieutenant in September 1851.[3]
From 1855 to 1860, Hill was employed on the United States' coastal survey. He was once engaged to Ellen B. Marcy, the future wife of Hill's West Point roommate George B. McClellan, before her parents pressured her to break off the engagement.[4] On July 18, 1859, he married Kitty ("Dolly") Morgan McClung, a young widow, thus becoming the brother-in-law of future Confederate cavalry generals John Hunt Morgan (Hill's best man at the wedding) and Basil W. Duke.[5]
On March 1, 1861, just before the outbreak of the Civil War, Hill resigned his U.S. Army commission. After Virginia seceded, he was appointed colonel of the 13th Virginia Infantry Regiment[6] The 13th Virginia was one of the regiments in Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army that were transported by railroad as reinforcements to the First Battle of Bull Run, but Hill and his men were dismayed to find that their regiment, at 550 men the smallest in the brigade, was sent to guard the Confederate right flank near Manassas and saw no action during the battle.[7] Hill was promoted to brigadier general on February 26, 1862, and command of a brigade in the (Confederate) Army of the Potomac.[3]
In the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Hill performed well as a brigade commander at the Battle of Williamsburg, and was promoted to major general and division command on May 26.[3] His division did not participate in the Battle of Seven Pines (May 31 – June 1), the battle in which Joseph E. Johnston was wounded and replaced in command of the Army of Northern Virginia by Robert E. Lee. June 1 was the first day that Hill began using a nickname for his division: the Light Division. This contradictory name for the largest division in all of the Confederate armies may have been selected because Powell wished his men to have a reputation for speed and agility. One of Hill's soldiers wrote after the war, "The name was applicable, for we often marched without coats, blankets, knapsacks, or any other burdens except our arms and haversacks, which were never heavy and sometimes empty."[8]
Hill became one of the most prominent and successful division commanders of Lee's army. The Light Division distinguished itself in the Seven Days Battles, Cedar Mountain, Second Bull Run, Antietam, and Fredericksburg. His performance at Antietam was particularly noteworthy. While Lee's small army was enduring strong attacks by the Army of the Potomac outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, Hill's Light Division had been left behind to process Union prisoners at Harpers Ferry. Responding to an urgent call for assistance from Lee, Hill marched his men at a grueling pace and reached the battlefield just in time to counterattack a strong forward movement by the corps of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside, which had threatened to destroy Lee's right flank. Hill's arrival neutralized this threat, bringing an end to the battle with Lee's army battered, but undefeated.[9]
Hill's division initially formed part of James Longstreet's command, but after some argument between Hill and Longstreet, which nearly resulted in a duel,[10] Hill was transferred to Stonewall Jackson's Second Corps.[11] Hill and Jackson argued as well. Jackson charged Hill eight times for dereliction of duty.[12] Hill repeatedly requested that Lee set up a court of inquiry, but the commanding general did not wish to lose the effective teamwork of his two experienced lieutenants.[13] Their feud was put aside whenever a battle was being fought and then resumed, a practice that lasted until the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863.[14] There, Jackson was accidentally wounded by the 18th North Carolina Infantry of Hill's division. Hill briefly took command of the corps and was wounded himself in the calves of his legs. While in the infirmary, he requested that the cavalry commander, J. E. B. Stuart, take his place in command.[15]
After Jackson's death of pneumonia, Hill was promoted on May 24, 1863, to lieutenant general and placed in command of the newly created Third Corps of Lee's army, which he led in the Gettysburg Campaign of 1863. One of Hill's divisions, led by his West Point classmate Maj. Gen. Henry Heth, was the first to engage Union troops at the Battle of Gettysburg. Although the first day of the battle was a resounding Confederate success, Hill received much postbellum criticism from proponents of the Lost Cause movement, suggesting that he had unwisely brought on a general engagement against orders before Lee's army was fully concentrated.[16] His division under Maj. Gen. Richard H. Anderson fought in the unsuccessful second day assaults against Cemetery Ridge, while his favorite division commander, Maj. Gen. William Dorsey Pender, commanding the Light Division, was severely wounded, which prevented that division from cooperating with the assault. On the third day, two thirds of the men in Pickett's Charge were from Hill's corps, but Robert E. Lee chose James Longstreet to be overall commander of the assault.[17] Of all three infantry corps of the Army of Northern Virginia, Hill's suffered the most casualties at Gettysburg, which prompted Lee to order them to lead the retreat back into Virginia.[18]
During the autumn campaign of the same year, Hill launched his Corps "too hastily" in the Battle of Bristoe Station and was bloodily repulsed by Maj. Gen. Gouverneur K. Warren's II Corps. Lee didn't criticize him for this afterward, but ordered him to detail himself to the dead and wounded after hearing his account.[19]
In Overland Campaign of 1864, Hill was spared from disaster at the Battle of the Wilderness as the First Corps under Longstreet arrived just in time to reinforce him against a fierce Union attack.[20] Hill was medically incapacitated with an unspecified illness at Spotsylvania Court House, so Maj. Gen. Jubal Early temporarily took command of the Third Corps, but he was able to hear that his men were doing well and was able to observe the battle at Lee's side.[21] After recovering and regaining his corps, he was later rebuked by Lee for his piecemeal attacks at the Battle of North Anna. By then, Lee himself was too ill to coordinate his subordinates in springing a planned trap of the Union Army.[22] Hill fairly held the Confederate right at Cold Harbor.[23]
During the Siege of Petersburg of 1864–65, Hill and his men participated in many battles: one was the victory at the Crater against Hill's West Point classmate Ambrose Burnside, whom the former repulsed at Antietem and Fredericksburg; another was the Second Battle of Ream's Station. Unfortunately, Hill was ill several times that winter and had to recuperate in Richmond until April 1, 1865.[24]
Hill once said he had no desire to live to see the collapse of the Confederacy, and on April 2, 1865 (during the Union breakthrough in the Third Battle of Petersburg, just seven days before Lee's surrender at Appomattox Court House), he was killed by a Union soldier, Corporal John W. Mauck of the 138th Pennsylvania,[25] as he rode to the front of the Petersburg lines, accompanied by a lone staff officer.
Hill did not escape controversy during the war. He had a frail physique and suffered from frequent illnesses that reduced his effectiveness at Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Court House. (Some historians believe these illnesses were related to the venereal disease he contracted as a West Point cadet.)[26]
Some analysts consider Hill an example of the Peter Principle. Although he was extremely successful commanding his famed "Light Division", he was less effective as a corps commander.[27] He was omitted from Stephen Vincent Benet's poem, "The Army of Northern Virginia" even though all other generals of his rank were present.[28]
Historian Larry Tagg described Hill as "always emotional ... so high strung before battle that he had an increasing tendency to become unwell when the fighting was about to commence." This tendency was to some extent balanced by the implied swagger and combative attitude that he displayed. He often donned a red calico hunting shirt, which his men called his "battle shirt," when a battle was about to commence, and the men under his command would pass the word, "Little Powell's got on his battle shirt!" and begin to check their weapons.[29]
Wherever the headquarters flag of A.P. Hill floated, whether at the head of a regiment, a brigade, a division, or a corps, in camp or on the battle-field, it floated with a pace and a confidence born of skill, ability and courage, which infused its confidence and courage into the hearts of all who followed it.
Hill was affectionate with the rank-and-file soldiers and one officer called him "the most lovable of all Lee's generals." Although it was said that "his manner [was] so courteous as almost to lack decision," his actions were often impetuous, and did not lack decision, but judgment.[31]
Nevertheless, Hill was one of the war's most highly regarded generals on either side. When Hill was a major general, Robert E. Lee wrote that he was the best at that grade in the Army. He had a reputation for arriving on battlefields (such as Antietam, Cedar Mountain, and Second Bull Run) just in time to prove decisive. Stonewall Jackson on his deathbed deliriously called for A.P. Hill to "prepare for action;" some histories have recorded that Lee also called for Hill in his final moments ("Tell Hill he must come up."), although current medical opinions believe that Lee was unable to speak during his last illness.
Hill was depicted in both of Ronald F. Maxwell's Civil War films, Gettysburg (1993) and Gods and Generals (2003). In the former, he was portrayed by historian and Civil War reenactor Patrick Falci; in the latter, by character actor William Sanderson.