A. P. Hill
Ambrose Powell Hill Jr. was a Confederate general who was killed in the American Civil War. He is usually referred to as A. P. Hill to differentiate him from Confederate general Daniel Harvey Hill, who was unrelated.
A Virginian, Hill was a career United States Army officer who had fought in the Mexican–American War and Seminole Wars before joining the Confederate States Army. After the start of the American Civil War, he gained early fame as the commander of the "Light Division" in the Seven Days Battles. He 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 summer 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. He was killed during the Union army's offensive at the Third Battle of Petersburg.
Early life and education
Hill, known to his family as 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, 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. The younger Powell Hill lived with his family in a home on North Main Street in Culpeper as a child from age four or age seven.Hill was nominated to enter the United States Military Academy in 1842 in a class that started with 85 cadets. He made friends easily, including such prominent future generals as Darius N. Couch, George Pickett, Jesse L. Reno, George Stoneman, Truman Seymour, Cadmus M. Wilcox, and George B. McClellan. His future commander, Thomas J. "Stonewall" 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. In contrast, 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, causing medical complications that caused him to miss so many classes that he had to repeat his third year. Reassigned to the class of 1847, he made new friendships, in particular with Henry Heth and Ambrose Burnside. Hill continued to suffer from the effects of the STI for the rest of his life, being plagued with recurrent prostatitis, which was not treatable before the advent of antibiotics. He may have also suffered urinary incontinence due to inflammation of the prostate pressing on his urethra, which could also lead to uremic poisoning and kidney damage.
He graduated in 1847, ranking 15th of 38. He was appointed to the 1st U.S. Artillery as a brevet second lieutenant. He served in a cavalry company during the final months of the Mexican–American War but fought in no major battles. After some garrison assignments along the Atlantic seaboard, he served in the Seminole Wars, again arriving near the war's end and fighting various minor skirmishes. He was promoted to first lieutenant in September 1851.
Career
Robertson's biography of Hill quotes his wife Kitty as saying her husband "never owned slaves and never approved of the institution of slavery." His family, however, was involved with the institution. In the 1850 census, Thomas Hill enslaved 20 people in Culpeper County. Ten years later, Thomas Hill Jr. enslaved at least 38 people in Culpeper County. Hill's uncle Ambrose P. Hill, for whom he was named, was also a major planter in Culpeper County, Virginia, based on using enslaved labor. In the 1840 census, the senior Ambrose P. Hill enslaved 32 people, 30 people in the 1850 census, and 10 in 1860.From 1855 to 1860, A. P. Hill worked for the United States Coast Survey. He was once engaged to Ellen B. Marcy before her parents pressured her to break off the engagement. She married Hill's West Point roommate George B. McClellan, who later was Commanding General of the United States Army. Although Hill denied he felt ill will afterward, during the war, a rumor spread that Hill always fought harder if he knew McClellan was present with the opposing army because of Ellen's earlier rejection.
On July 18, 1859, Hill married Kitty Morgan McClung, a young widow. He became the brother-in-law of future Confederate cavalry generals John Hunt Morgan and Basil W. Duke.
American Civil War
Early months
On March 1, 1861, after some slave states had declared secession from the United States, and as the Virginia Secession Convention of 1861 met, Hill resigned his United States Army commission. After Virginia declared secession, Hill accepted a commission as colonel of the 13th Virginia Infantry Regiment, which included units from his native Culpeper County, and nearby Orange, Louisa and Frederick Counties, as well as the Lanier Guards of Maryland and the Frontier Rifles of Hampshire County in what would soon become West Virginia. The 13th Virginia was one of the regiments in Brig. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston's army that was transported by the railroad as reinforcements to the First Battle of Bull Run, but Hill and his men were sent to guard the Confederate right flank near Manassas and saw no action during the battle. Hill was promoted to brigadier general on February 26, 1862, and commanded a brigade in the Army of the Potomac.Light Division
In the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, Hill performed well as a brigade commander at the Battle of Williamsburg, where his brigade blunted a U.S. attack, and was promoted to major general and division command on May 26. Hill's new division was composed mainly of brigades pulled from the Carolinas and Georgia.His division did not participate in the Battle of Seven Pines, 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 Hill began using a nickname for his division: the Light Division. This contradictory name for the largest division in all Confederate armies may have been selected because Hill wished his men 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."
Hill's rookie division was in the thick of the fighting during the Seven Days Battles, being heavily engaged at Mechanicsville, Gaines Mill, and Glendale. Following the campaign, Hill became involved in a dispute with James Longstreet over a series of newspaper articles that appeared in the Richmond Examiner; relations between them deteriorated to the point that Hill was placed under arrest and Hill challenged Longstreet to a duel. Following the Seven Days Battles, Lee reorganized the army into two corps and assigned Hill's division to Stonewall Jackson. Their relationship was less than amicable, and the two quarreled many times. Hill frequently found himself under arrest by Jackson.
At the Battle of Cedar Mountain on August 9, Hill launched a counterattack that stabilized the Confederate left flank, preventing it from being routed. Three weeks later, at the Second Battle of Bull Run, Hill was placed on the Confederate left along the unfinished railroad cut and held it against repeated U.S. attacks. During the campaign, Hill became involved in several minor disputes with Jackson concerning Jackson's marching orders to Hill.
Hill's performance at the Battle of Antietam was particularly noteworthy. While Lee's army was enduring strong attacks by the U.S. Army of the Potomac outside Sharpsburg, Maryland, Hill's Light Division had been left behind to process U.S. prisoners of war 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 threatened to destroy Lee's right flank. Hill's arrival neutralized the threat, ending the battle with Lee's army battered but undefeated. Hours after the battle, Hill told an inquisitive major that Burnside owed him $8,000. During the retreat back to Virginia, he had his division push back a few regiments from the U.S. V Corps.
At the Battle of Fredericksburg in December 1862, Hill was positioned near the Confederate right along a ridge; because of some swampy ground along his front, there was a 600-yard gap in Hill's front line, and the nearest brigade behind it was nearly a quarter mile away; the dense vegetation prevented the brigade commander from seeing any Union soldiers advancing on his position. During the battle, Maj. Gen. George Meade's division routed two of Hill's brigades and part of a third. Hill required assistance from Maj. Gen. Jubal A. Early's division to repulse the U.S. attack. Hill's division suffered over 2,000 casualties during the battle, which was nearly two-thirds of the casualties in Jackson's corps; two of his brigade commanders were wounded, one mortally. After the battle, one of his brigade commanders, Brig. Gen. James J. Archer, criticized him for the gap left in the division's front line, saying that Hill had been warned about it before the battle but had done nothing to correct it. Hill was also absent from his division, and there is no record of where he was during the battle; this led to a rumor spread through the lines that he had been captured during the initial U.S. assault.
Hill and Jackson argued several times during the Northern Virginia Campaign and 1862 Maryland Campaign. During the invasion of Maryland, Jackson had Hill arrested and charged him with eight counts of dereliction of duty after the campaign. During the lull in campaigning following the Battle of Fredericksburg, Hill repeatedly requested that Lee set up a court of inquiry. Still, the commanding general did not wish to lose his two experienced lieutenants' effective teamwork, so he refused to approve Hill's request. Their feud was put aside whenever a battle was being fought and then resumed afterward, a practice that lasted until the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863. There, Jackson was accidentally wounded by the 18th North Carolina Infantry of Hill's division. Hill briefly took command of the Second 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.