Ambrose Powell Hill

Early life and education

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. 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 (Hill's father) 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 ("Dolly") Morgan McClung, a young widow. He became the brother-in-law of future Confederate cavalry generals John Hunt Morgan (Hill's best man at the wedding) and Basil W. Duke.

American Civil War

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 (Confederate) Army of the Potomac.

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 (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 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.

Death

Hill had said he had no desire to live to see the collapse of the Confederacy. On April 2, 1865 (during the U.S. breakthrough in the Third Battle of Petersburg, just seven days before Lee's surrender at the Battle of Appomattox Court House), he was shot dead by a Union soldier, Corporal John W. Mauk of the 138th Pennsylvania Infantry, as he rode to the front of the Petersburg lines, accompanied by one staff officer. Hill had attempted to induce the Union soldiers to surrender. Instead, the Union soldiers refused and shot Hill through the chest. The rifle bullet traveled through his heart, exited his chest, and sliced off his left thumb. Hill fell to the ground and died within moments.

In the late nineteenth century, interest developed in trying to locate and memorialize the site where Hill was killed, with apparent attempts made to locate the site in 1888, 1890, and 1903. It was not until 1911, however, that the Sons of Confederate Veterans undertook a careful study and located where Hill fell.

In April 1912, the SCV unveiled two monuments denoting the death of A. P. Hill in Dinwiddie County. The larger of these two monuments is located at the Boydton Plank Road and Duncan Road intersection.

The monument reads:

"To the memory of

A.P. Hill, Lt-Gen. C.S.A.

He was killed about 600 yards

northwardly from this marker,

being shot by a small band of

stragglers from the Federal lines

on the morning of April 2, 1865.

Erected by A.P. Hill Camp Sons of

Confederate Veterans-Petersburg, Va."

This location was thought to be chosen because it was easily accessible from the road. A small parking area is located behind the monument on Duncan Road, making it easy and safe to visit and access. The marker is located at GPS coordinates: 37° 11.365′ N, 77° 28.52′ W.

Analysis

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.)

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. 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 combative attitude that he displayed. He often donned a red calico hunting shirt when a battle was about to start, and the men under his command would pass the word, "Little Powell's got on his battle shirt!" and begin to check their weapons.

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.

Nevertheless, Hill was one of the war's most highly regarded generals on either side.

Legacy

In 1897, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) in Petersburg held its first meeting and decided to name its camp after A. P. Hill because he defended the city, his Third Corps included Petersburg's own 12th Virginia Infantry regiment, and because Gen. Hill died in nearby Dinwiddie County during the Third Battle of Petersburg a few days before General Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia. They also erected a marker where Hill fell mortally wounded. Prominent commanders of the camp (lodge) included Congressman Patrick Henry Drewry and Petersburg's multi-term state senator Samuel D. Rodgers. The camp may have lapsed after 1938 but was revived on June 9, 1959, with David Lyon as its Commander. Petersburg also named a school after Hill and others for Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and J.E.B. Stuart.

Hill's sword is on display at the Chesterfield County Museum in Chesterfield, Virginia.

Hill's remains were reinterred twice in Richmond. In February 1867, Hill's remains were reinterred in Richmond's Hollywood Cemetery. During the late 1880s, several former comrades raised funds for a monument to Hill in Richmond. Hill's remains were again transferred, to the base of a monument dedicated on May 30, 1892, on land donated by developer Lewis Ginter. General Henry Heth led the procession to the dedication, and General James A. Walker gave an oration. A bronze statue of Hill, created by Caspar Buberl after William Ludwell Sheppard's design, topped the monument, while its plaster cast was given to the A.P. Hill Camp of Petersburg. The monument was located in the center of the intersection of Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road in what is now the city's Hermitage Road Historic District. This monument was the only one of its type in Richmond under which the subject individual was interred. On June 26, 2020, the Hermitage Road Historic District Association released a public statement requesting that the City of Richmond remove and relocate the monument to a more appropriate location. This request occurred within the context of the contemporary Black Lives Matter movement, and further impetus for the removal of Confederate monuments had been provided by protests in Richmond and elsewhere that followed the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.

In January 2022, the administration of Richmond mayor Levar Stoney announced that the Richmond statue and remains of Hill would be removed soon. The City of Richmond gained authority to remove monuments to war veterans on public city grounds from legislation signed into law by Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on April 11, 2020. Because Hill was the only Confederate general who was buried under his monument in Richmond, government officials delayed any tampering with the monument until they could find a final resting place for Hill's remains. Following the filing of a lawsuit by members of A. P. Hill's extended family of descendants, who claimed that they, and not the City of Richmond, had the right to determine the disposition of the statue, a Virginia circuit court ruled in favor of the city's plan to transfer the statue to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia. The statue was removed on December 12, 2022, after the denial of a motion by the extended family members to stay its removal. It was the last statue of a Confederate officer standing in Richmond. The remains of A. P. Hill, which were exhumed one day later on December 13, were expected to be reinterred in a cemetery in Culpeper, Virginia. Hill was buried in Fairview Cemetery in Culpeper, Virginia, on January 21, 2023. The statue will remain in storage until an appeal by A. P. Hill's descendants is resolved, who want the statue to be relocated to Cedar Mountain Battlefield for it to continue to serve as Hill's grave marker.

In popular culture

Hill is 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.