Daniel Harvey Hill, Proponent and Target of the Lost Cause
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“NEARLY THERE:” DANIEL HARVEY HILL, PROPONENT AND TARGET OF THE LOST CAUSE Brit Kimberly Erslev A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2011 Approved by Advisor: Joseph T. Glatthaar Reader: William L. Barney Reader: W. Fitzhugh Brundage Reader: Larry J. Griffin Reader: Richard H. Kohn ©2011 Brit Kimberly Erslev ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT BRIT KIMBERLY ERSLEV: “Nearly There:” Daniel Harvey Hill, Proponent and Target of the Lost Cause (Under the direction of Joseph T. Glatthaar) The life of Confederate Major General Daniel Harvey Hill (1821-1889) provides an ideal lens through which to explore the themes of honor, duty, southern identity and Civil War historical memory. A South Carolina native and product of the first formal American military educational institution at West Point, Hill combined a professional outlook with a belief in a superior Southern martial ethos and masculine duty to family and country. He was a born fighter with an irritable personality who incited controversy during his military and civilian careers. As a proponent and target of the Lost Cause, Hill actively shaped this civil religion while in the process nearly undermining his own efforts. By exploring the fluid and intertwined constructs of honor, duty, identity, and memory in one man’s experience, this dissertation will illuminate the complexity of southern attitudes before, during, and after the Civil War, and question generalizations regarding Confederate veterans’ approach to Lost Cause ideology. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and assistance of many people. First, my advisor, Dr. Joe Glatthaar, encouraged me to tackle a challenging but fascinating topic and always believed in my ability to get the project done while I conducted my day job in the U.S. Army. My fellow graduate students and professors in the UNC Department of History with whom I took classes from 2005 to 2007 thoughtfully critiqued my early attempts at research papers and broadened my understanding of what it means to be a good historian. My colleagues, supervisors, instructors, and friends at the United States Military Academy at West Point and the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas have constantly, in their own individual ways, provided feedback and the encouragement to keep going. Finally, my mom and dad, my life-long cheerleaders, have provided love and support going back to the first time when they took me to Colonial Williamsburg and I decided that I wanted to be a historian. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………..vi INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTERS I FOLLOWING TRADITION: CHILDHOOD AND CADET YEARS….…….......15 II “A SUBLIME AND EXALTED FEELING:” LIFE IN THE OLD ARMY……..31 III “UNSOUGHT PRIMACY:” HILL IN THE CLASSROOM….……………...…70 IV AN OLD HAND AT DODGING BULLETS: SECESSION,….………....……..91 BIG BETHEL, AND WILLIAMSBURG V NOT WAR BUT MURDER: SEVEN PINES AND THE SEVEN DAYS..…....118 VI FROM THE GAP TO BLOODY LANE: THE MARYLAND CAMPAIGN…156 VII DEALING WITH SKULKERS: THE DEFENSE OF NORTH CAROLINA..179 VIII A “BARREN VICTORY:” CHICKAMAUGA…………………….…...……201 IX FROM THE MILITARY DOLDRUMS BACK INTO THE FRAY: …………233 THE FINAL YEAR OF THE WAR X WRITING THE LAND WE LOVE : A PUBLISHING CAREER BEGINS….….259 XI UNRECONSTRUCTED EDITOR: HILL’S THE SOUTHERN HOME ….…...281 XII EDUCATING THE SOUTH: UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT AND…………...299 LOST CAUSE CHRONICLER XIII “THE BEST PART OF MILLEDGEVILLE:” REMEMBERING HILL……328 EPILOGUE……………………………………......………………………………………..343 REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………..347 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. Battle of Monterrey, September 21-23, 1846………….…………………………………44 2. Battle of Contreras, August 20, 1847…………………………………………………….58 3. Battle of Chapultepec, September 12-13, 1847….……………………………………….63 4. Battle of Seven Pines, afternoon-evening of May 31, 1862…………………………….120 5. Battle of Mechanicsville, June 26, 1862………………………………………………...133 6. Battle of Gaines’s Mill, afternoon of June 27, 1862…………………………………….139 7. Battle of Malvern Hill, July 1, 1862…………………………………………………….150 8. Battle of South Mountain, September 14, 1862…………………………………………168 9. Battle of Antietam, Sunken Road, morning of September 17, 1862……………………175 10. North Carolina theater of operations, January-July 1863……………………………...186 11. Situation at McLemore’s Cove, 8:00 AM, September 11, 1863………………………207 12. Chickamauga, Union and Confederate troop dispositions, morning of………………..220 September 20, 1863 13. Battle of Bentonville, March 19, 1865…………………………………………………256 vi INTRODUCTION On Sunday, September 22, 1889, two days before he died, Daniel Harvey Hill sat on the porch at his Charlotte, North Carolina home, “talking cheerfully in the sunshine for about an hour.” 1 The following afternoon, he sat and read the New York Sun . One can imagine the sarcastic and self-described “unreconstructed” Carolinian making audible comments about “Yankee” editorials just as he had done in writing a decade before in his own publication. The same day, however, he asked his second son Harvey if he had telegraphed his youngest son Joseph, because the old general thought he was shortly going to die. Hill also calmly asked his daughter Nancy to watch him Monday night as he slept in case he passed away. As Harvey later related to Joseph, their father “seemed entirely indifferent about death” those last days. He drifted in and out of consciousness his last day on earth, but Harvey and his sister were able to make out one final phrase from their father’s lips—“nearly there.” 2 “Nearly there” neatly encapsulates Hill’s presence in historical literature. He is one of the few Civil War generals who lacks a full biography, and scholars have not consistently examined his formative influence on Southern education and historical memory. Living from 1821 to 1889, he experienced and played a heretofore unrecognized part in major American political events of the century, including the Mexican War, the Secession Crisis, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. He came to adulthood in a U.S. Army unsure of its position in 1 D.H. Hill, Jr., to Joseph Hill, September 26, 1889, Daniel Harvey Hill Papers, North Carolina State Archives (hereafter cited as D.H. Hill Papers, NCSA). 2 Ibid. society and ended it unsure of his childrens’ prospects for success in a rapidly changing world. Because of his varied experiences inside the military and out, Hill’s life provides an ideal lens through which to explore the themes of honor (including reputation), duty (defined by military professionalism and masculine obligations), Southern identity, and the historical memory of the Civil War. Although I pose different questions for different times during his life, all four of these threads intersect repeatedly in the development of the individual and of society. By exploring the fluid and intertwined constructs of honor, duty, identity, and memory in one individual’s experience, this dissertation will illuminate the complexity of Southern attitudes before, during, and after the Civil War. Hill occupied a particular niche within the discourse of the Lost Cause as both a proponent and target of collective and historical memory. Starting from its earliest manifestations, the Lost Cause had always worked to exclude certain individuals who deviated from the prevailing interest, and this tendency increased after Robert E. Lee’s passing and seeming deification by Virginian war veterans. Consequently, studying the nuances of the Lost Cause myth and historical memory of the South reveals how someone like Hill could support the myth while himself being supported by and at certain times criticized by it. The study of individuals such as Hill provides new angles from which to evaluate the trajectory and staying power of Lost Cause ideology. The first part of this dissertation examines Hill’s early life in South Carolina and at West Point in order to discover what values and lessons he learned from his upbringing and his attendance at the United States Military Academy, and to understand his development as a Southern American male in the nascent U.S. Army. Moving next to his Mexican War service and his return to civilian life as a college instructor, the work probes the beginnings 2 of Hill’s distaste for federal bureaucracy and the North, an attitude that compelled him to resign his commission and express his opinions through lectures and an algebra textbook containing “anti-Yankee” mathematical problems. 3 During these years he refined his particular world view which was grounded in an intense hatred of hypocrisy and an increasingly emotional reaction to sullied personal and regional honor. The dissertation then takes up Hill’s service as a Civil War general, evaluating his military performance on and around the battlefield to determine how effective his leadership was according to U.S. Army practices of the time, and noting the perceptions of supervisors, peers, and subordinates. It presents a more holistic look at Hill the military officer and commander than the usual historical caricatures of eccentric, one-dimensional crank or beloved tactical leader. This part of the dissertation focuses especially on two controversial episodes in Hill’s Civil War career: his role as the addressee of Robert E. Lee’s “Lost Dispatch” prior to the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg, and his participation in the “revolt of the generals” after the Battle of Chickamauga, which resulted in his removal from corps command. How did accusations of wrongdoing affect the rest of Hill’s wartime career, and what was their collective impact upon his and other people’s perceptions of himself as an officer and man? As the Lost Dispatch in particular entered “official” Southern histories of the war during and immediately after the Confederate surrender, the topics of Hill’s honor and reputation carried through to his postwar activities and heralded the beginning of contested Southern and national memories of the war.