Throughout his book, Hartley examines these polarizing perspectives and draws his own fair-minded conclusions.  He does so with well-documented and well-written prose, reminiscent at times of the late Shelby Foote.  Even though the biography primarily focuses on the Civil War years, military historians and confessional Protestants both should enjoy Hartley’s engaging presentation of a complex, multitalented man who, as his tombstone says, cared not for the opinion of others, “but feared and trusted God with all his heart.”

At the turn of the twentieth century, Henry Alexander White overviewed the lives of many Southern Presbyterian Leaders from 1683 to 1911.  While he focused mostly on ministers and missionaries, White offered a brief chapter on three Presbyterian deacons and elders “who through faith wrought with might in behalf of [the] Southern Church” during the American Civil War (446).  In that group, he included Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill, a man whom White said, was of courage, prayer, “lofty ideals, . . . wide sympathies and tenderness of manner, possessed of humor and great patience and supreme trust in the wisdom and mercy of God” (452).

Since White’s publication, historians have examined aspects of Hill’s life, but no one has published a “full-length, cradle-to-grave critical biography” (xvii).  Chris Hartley seeks to remedy this situation with Confederate General D. H. Hill: A Military Life (Savas Beatie, 2026).  Readers of this book discover that Hill descended from an illustrious line of Scotsmen, two of which fought the British during the American Revolution.  Harvey was born on July 12, 1821 in York District, South Carolina, the eleventh child of Solomon and Nancy Hill.  Solomon died in debt when Harvey was only four, so Nancy had to raise all the children and pay off her husband’s creditors.  Harvey entered the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1838, graduating four years later, 28^th in his class.  Lt. Hill joined the artillery and received assignments at Fort Kent (Maine), Savannah (Georgia), Fort Moultrie (South Carolina), and Fort Monroe (Virginia).  Hill then went on to fight in the Mexican-American War, where he met Lt. Thomas J. Jackson.

Shortly thereafter, he married Isabella Morrison (sister of Mary Anna, Jackson’s future wife) and resigned from the army to take a mathematics professorship at Washington College in Lexington, Virginia, then under the leadership of Rev. George Junkin.  Thanks to his father-in-law, Rev. Robert Hall Morrison, Hill transferred to Davidson College, North Carolina in 1853.  While teaching there, Professor Hill wrote a mathematics textbook (Elements of Algebra), two religious books (A Consideration on the Sermon on the Mount and The Crucifixion of Christ), and a handful of articles for the Southern Presbyterian Review and the Southern Quarterly Review.  As the sectional conflict deepened between the North and the South, Hill moved to Charlotte in 1859 to become the superintendent of the North Carolina Military Institute.

Tensions boiled over with Abraham Lincoln’s election as United States President, and Hill offered his military services to the newly formed Southern Confederacy.  He was initially given the rank of colonel, but by the end of the Civil War, rose to the rank of lieutenant general, leading troops at Big Bethel, Williamsburg, Seven Pines, Gaines Mill, Malvern Hill, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chickamauga, and Bentonville.  At Gen. Robert E. Lee’s request, Hill also helped formulate a prisoner exchange system with U. S. Gen. John A. Dix in the summer of 1862.  Two years later, Hill assisted Rev. Robert Dabney (a distant cousin-in-law) with his research for his soon-to-be published biography of Stonewall Jackson.

After the war, Hill resumed his work as a writer, offering contributions to The North Carolina Presbyterian, the Southern Historical Society Papers, and The Century Magazine (his articles for the latter eventually were incorporated into the four-volume Battles and Leaders of the Civil War).  He also became the editor of The Land We Love magazine (1866-1869) and The Southern Home newspaper (1870-1877).  Hill turned to education again, serving as the president of the Arkansas Industrial University (1877-1884) and the Middle Georgia Military and Agricultural College at Milledgeville, GA (1885-1889).  He died only a few months after resigning from the college.

Hartley confirms that Hill was a profoundly religious man.  While living in Lexington, he became the superintendent of his church’s Sunday School.  When he moved to Davidson College, he likewise taught a Bible class for his students and converted his notes into the two religious books previously referenced.  During the Civil War, he promoted revivals in Confederate camps, attending religious services and once even preaching himself (127).  Hill’s trust in God made him one of the bravest soldiers in battle.

Hartley claims that Hill’s “religious beliefs evolved” (xvi) from an “austere Presbyterian faith of his youth[,] . . . deeply rooted in the Old Testament”, to “a New Testament outlook” of love (13, 325), which he first purportedly learned as a young artillery officer attending St. John’s Episcopal Church in Savannah (30).  But this interpretation seems to be mistaken.  While Hill later decried the “gloom[iness]” of his boyhood church (325), he always affirmed the Westminster Confession (even recommending it to Jackson), which says that: “The justification of believers under the old testament was, in all . . . respects, one and the same with the justification of believers under the new testament.”  It might be better to say, then, that Hill’s boyhood church, unlike other Presbyterian assemblies, did not clearly proclaim the gospel contained in its creed, but Hill later came to embrace this faith while listening to the evangelical preaching of Bishop Stephen Elliott in 1843.

As Hartley notes, Hill was not a perfect man.  He owned six African slaves whom, from all accounts, he instructed in the Scriptures and treated well (87).  But he was prejudiced against them, and was determined to fight the Yankees, in part, to keep blacks from becoming equal with whites (89).  Hill was also a critic (of Yankees, exempts, fellow officers, superiors, and family members) whose words at times rang true but often with little tact.  Some historians have attributed Hill’s critical nature to poor health (particularly a recurring spinal ailment), while Hill believed “his mother had instilled [the trait] in him” at an early age (xix).  Hartley thinks it had more to do with a “desperation to succeed where his father had failed” (14, 500).  Maybe it was a combination of factors.  Hill also had a tender side to his nature (165) which he manifested every now and then, even to old army friends in blue (xix, 232).

It is no wonder then that Hartley calls Hill “a magnet.  He attracted some people but repelled others” (xii).  Throughout his book, Hartley examines these polarizing perspectives and draws his own fair-minded conclusions.  He does so with well-documented and well-written prose, reminiscent at times of the late Shelby Foote.  Even though the biography primarily focuses on the Civil War years, military historians and confessional Protestants both should enjoy Hartley’s engaging presentation of a complex, multitalented man who, as his tombstone says, cared not for the opinion of others, “but feared and trusted God with all his heart.”

Jonathan Peters is an administrative assistant at Reformation Bible Church and Harford Christian School in Darlington, MD. He also transcribed and edited Our Comfort in Dying: Civil War Sermons by R. L. Dabney, Stonewall Jackson’s Chief-of-Staff (Sola Fide Publications, 2021).