Daniel Harvey Hill
From Dixiepedia: The PC-Free Encyclopedia
Daniel Harvey Hill (12 July 1821 - 24 September 1889) - better known as D.H. Hill - was born in York District (near Charlotte, North Carolina), South Carolina. Attended West Point, graduating 28th out of 56, commissioned into the Infantry. Served in the Mexican War, and resigned in 1849 to teach mathematics at Washington College. Authored a textbook on algebra, called Elements of Algebra. Married the sister of the woman who would become Stonewall Jackson's second wife. Taught at Davidson and was selected as the Superintendent of the North Carolina Military Institute in 1859. Commissioned Colonel of the 1st NC Infantry, he served at Big Bethel, the Peninsula Campaign, Seven Pines, Seven Days, South Mountain, Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg. Because of his cantankerous personality, Lee got him promoted to the command of the Department of North Carolina. Sent to aid Bragg before Chickamauga, he fill in with the anti-Bragg clique, for which President Davis banished him to backwater assignments. He saw action one final time at Bentonville, where he said that the Yankees fought poorly because they were so habituated to pillage and rapine. After the war, Hill remained thoroughly unreconstructed, editing the magazine, Land We Love. He also wrote religious texts, one called The Crucifixion of Christ (1859), another with the title The Sermon on the Mount (1858). Hill also wrote articles for magazines such as Century Magazine on his war experiences. He died in 1889.
Before the war, Hill wrote an algebra textbook, Elements of Algebra in which are found arithmetical problems which point to Yankee fraud or cowardice. For example, one problem states: "The field of battle at Buena Vista is 6½ miles from Saltillo. Two Indiana volunteers ran away from the field of battle at the same time; one ran half a mile per hour faster than the other, and reached Saltillo 5 minutes and 54 6/11 seconds sooner than the other. Required their respective rates of travel." In another problem, Hill asks students to calculate Yankee fraud. "A Yankee mixes a certain number of wooden nutmegs, which cost him ¼ cent apiece, with a quantity of real nutmegs, worth 4 cents apiece, and sells the whole assortment for $44; and gains $3.75 by the fraud. How many wooden nutmegs were there? Ans. 100." Elements of Algebra, pg. 124.
D.H. Hill's Comments on Northern Hypocrisy
The following comments were made during an address by Lieutenant-General D. H. Hill before the Society of the Army and Navy of the Confederate States on 6 June 1887 in Baltimore, Maryland:
Results of the War. I would place first of these the general diffusion of love for the Constitution of the United States. Time was when the South-hating philanthropists denounced it as "a covenant with death and a league with hell," gotten up by the slave-power in the interests of slavery. But in 1861, the philanthropists experienced a change of heart, and ever since have talked of the Constitution as that "sacred instrument," that "bulwark of freedom," that "palladium of liberty," etc., etc. I am glad of their conversion, suspiciously sudden though it was, and I hope that they will never fall from grace. As a stalwart Presbyterian, I believe in the perseverance of the saints.
Change of views in regard to the intellectual, moral and social status of the Negro. The philanthropists used to tell of the cruelty and brutality of slaveholders to their slaves, and said that they had reduced the negroes to the lowest state of ignorance, barbarism and bestiality. But in the reconstruction period, the philanthropists underwent a radical change of views and discovered that these negroes, whom they had described as more savage and degraded than the barbarians on the Congo, were not merely enlightened and civilized enough to be freemen and voters, but also to be United States Senators and Congressmen, Foreign Ministers, Consuls and Marshals, Governors of States, Judges, Members of State Cabinets, etc. I am glad that the philanthropists found out that the Old South had trained its slaves so carefully for these high and responsible duties. No other masters in the world's history ever gave such training to their slaves. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution of the United States are the grandest possible eulogies to the Old South. But there was one great error in this training. The simple-hearted, confiding Southern masters, always careless of their own money, did not teach their slaves to be cautious about their investments, and tens of thousands of these credulous creatures put their money in a bank in Washington, established by the philanthropists, and lost it all.
Development of Great Men. I love to hear the praises of the wonderful deeds of McClellan, Grant, Meade, and Hancock, for if they were such great warriors for crushing with their massive columns the thin lines of ragged Rebels, what must be said of Lee, the two Johnstons, Beauregard, and Jackson, who held millions at bay for four years with their fragments of shadowy armies? Pile up huge pedestals and surmount them with bronze horses and riders in bronze. All the Union monuments are eloquent of the prowess of the ragged Rebels and their leaders. Suppose the tables had been turned, and that either of the five Southerners named above had been superior to his antagonists in all the appliances and inventions of war, and had been given, moreover, an excess of two millions of men over them, how many statues, think ye, my countrymen, would there be of bronze warriors and prancing chargers? The Congressmen from the Old South have voted liberally for all legitimate pension bills to Union veterans, for they know what a tough job it was for the 2,859,132 Union soldiers, with their magnificent outfit, to overcome the 700,000 Rebels, poorly fed, poorly clothed, and poorly equipped. These pension bills are splendid tributes to the pluck, patience, perseverance, and fortitude of the chivalry of the Old South (Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XVI (Richmond, Virginia, January-December, 1888).
