'Up Came Hill' -- Soldier of the South (Part 2)

After Service in Mexico and Florida
He Resigns As War Clouds Loom In South

By William J. Robertson IV

This is the second of a series of articles on the life and army career
of General A. P. Hill, gallant Confederate leader, whose statue adorns the Boulevard, North.

After a visit to Culpeper in the summer of 1847, A. P. Hill went to Washington, received his assignment to Scott's troops on duty in Mexico.

From the capital, he journeyed to Richmond, thence to Petersburg, where he had a daguerreotype made, took a train for Wilmington, N. C.   At Wilmington he took ship to Charleston, S. C., from there he journeyed through Savannah, Macon, Columbus, where he inspected five troops of Calvary and five of infantry, drawn from civilian ranks.

It seemed to him they were eternally drinking and caught the colonel imbibing potent fluid with the drummer boy!

From Columbus, he traveled to Mobile, thence to New Orleans.

In the Louisiana city he ran into an epidemic of yellow fever!

A. Mr. Nickles, whom he had never seen before, kindly invited him to his home outside New Orleans to await the boat to Vera Cruz.

When he drove in a buggy through the city five days later to take ship, he saw hundreds of coffins lining the streets, black hearses traveling slowly in every direction. It gave him the creeps; he wanted to be at sea as quickly as possible.

The vessel that carried him South had on board a group of officers and soldiers and 150 horses and mules. When 80 miles out, Hill early one morning was thrown from his berth, a resounding crash bewildered him. A fellow-passenger let out a blood-curdling shriek!

It sent chills down his spine. He rushed out on deck, found himself the first man there. Leaping over to the wheelhouse, he discovered that it, wheels and bulward, had been carried away in collision with a ship from Galveston!

The impact knocked horses and mules down, rolled them to one side of the ship; the vessel careened at an angle of 45 degrees. Hill gave the alarm, ran into his room for his watch and purse, tore a leaf from the dining room table, hurried back to the deck.

The vessel suddenly shifted, the horses and mules righted themselves, the captain appeared and cried that all was safe.

The passengers assembled; they spied Hill with the table-leaf and laughed loudly to his discomforture.

The captain angrily hushed them. They didn't know it, he said, but the young lieutenant was right. "He might have needed the raft!"

The boat returned to New Orleans for repairs, and the second voyage was uneventful.

*          *          *

In October, 1847, Hill joined General Joseph Lane's regiment of infantry, sent to reinforce Scott as he pushed for Mexico City.

Scott had captured the Mexican capital, but Vera Cruz, Jalapa, the National Bridge (Puente Nacionale), Huamantia, Puebla, Atlixico and Tlaxcala were still being molested by bands of Mexican guerillas.

General Lane's regiment was encamped at Jalapa when Hill reached Vera Cruz and he was assigned to a detachment of 200 American cavalrymen, with 30 wagon trains, and ordered to make a quick march to join Lane.

Hill wore flaming red flannel shirt--he had a prediliction for red--a pair of coarse blue soldier's pants, red-top boots, to which were attached a pair of immense Mexican spurs. On his head set at a jaunty angle, was a huge sombrero.

His weapons consisted of a long artillery sabre, a pair of horse pistols in holsters, a pair of revolvers in a wide black belt, a large butcher knife for cutting bread and meat, in a smaller belt.

Not the trim simplicity of his beloved Napoleon, but you had to consider the country you were fighting in! He was in the army now, with a vengeance . . . all he wanted was to flush a band of belligerent Mexicans!

Hill's Mexican War experiences, however, were more like a role in a comic opera than a real war.

His nearest approach to danger was when he was left with a detachment of 50 of his own men who tried to mutiny on him. Ordered to remain with two wagons that had broken down until help came, the hours grew long, the men grew restless and hungry. They insisted on pushing ahead.

For Hill, orders were orders, and when three or four of the ringleaders threatened to march away, he threw a leg over his saddle, posted himself in the middle of the road, cocked the two horse pistols and sat looking at his mutineers ominously.

They changed their minds.

After joining Lane at Jalapa, the march to Mexico City was a series of false alarms, bad judgment on Lane's part, the loss of several hundred men from spot-shot ambushes.

At Humantla the regiment came up with a large force of Mexicans. They showed fight at first, but after a brief exchange, turned and fled like frightened chickens.

The spectacle amazed and disappointed the young soldier, reminded him more of a horse race than a battle.

At Atlixico, the American troops took possession of a Catholic Church. During the night, a suave priest, who professed friendship for the young officer, stole away with one of Hill's horse pistols. Pistol and priest were never seen again so nothing could be done about it.

*          *          *

Another exciting skirmish occurred near the town of Huegocingo, when Hill and his detachment spied what appeared to be a battery of small Mexican artillery.

They gave chase, over ditches, through cornfields, helter-skelter, Hill leading with his sword waving in the air. When they came upon the battery in a road it turned out to be a large carriage--filled with pretty girls, escorted by their father and brothers!

They were wheeled about and taken before General Lane. Hill thought the young women were beautiful, but this was not his idea of emulating Napoleon at Austerlitz.

Encamped at Tlaxacala, he was filled with romantic thoughts of home and war one night, when suddenly he was attacked by an army of fleas. He wrote to his mother, "The fleas in this country compose by far the most numerous part of the population, and no stranger ever becomes thoroughly acclimated until he has undergone the operation of flea-bottom-y."

Lane finally reached Mexico City, reported to Scott, and his officers were told they might find quarters in private dwellings if they desired.

Hill and a fellow-officer went house-hunting, discovered a likely looking mansion and knocked eagerly on the door.

A low, heavy-set Mexican woman, disappointingly unlike the beautiful maidens the poets write about, appeared. Hill explained his purpose.

"Wretches! Heathens! Northern Barbarians!" she cried in elegant Spanish. "What do you mean by treating a defenseless woman in this fashion"

Hill expostulated. The abuse continued.

"Do you know who I am?" she exclaimed.

The Lieutenant shook his head.

She laughed hysterically, raised her head proudly.

"I am Donna Francisca!"

"Donna Francisca," he said doubtfully, stroking his chin. "Francisca who, might I ask?"

The woman chattered excitedly; they couldn't follow her Spanish.

"Donna Francisca de Santa Anna!" she said at last.

The officers were amazed, but Hill used his wits.

"Why," he said, "that being the case, do you know, Madame, that if it becomes known that you are the sister of General Santa Anna, some of our men might offer violence--they might pull your house down over your head!"

With a frightened look she invited them in.

For a week or more Hill and his companion were quartered in two of the choicest rooms in the home of General Santa Anna's sister.

When he left she wept.

*          *          *

In Mexico City, Hill's life was uneventful. The thing that impressed him most was the flaming beauty of the Mexican girls.

" 'Tis a fact," he wrote his father, "that the ladies of Mexico are beautiful, -- and, oh, how beautiful -- but very few of them have ever read Wayland's 'Moral Science' . . . You know my failing. "Til an inheritance of the family, this partiality for the women."

On another occasion, he wrote: "How would you relish a Mexican daughter-in-law? . . . ? Tis Sunday, and the bells (belles) call me to my devotions."

The young officer learned one thing they didn't teach at the academy, that it is possible not to hate a considerable portion of an enemy population.

*          *          *

In the spring of 1848, peace was completed between the United States and Mexico. In the autumn of 1849, Hill, still a second lieutenant, was ordered to duty in Florida against the Seminole Indians. The Seminoles were hardly more exciting than the fleet-footed Mexicans.

That year the few remaining bands that had not been sent to reservations in the West under the treaties of 1832 and 1833, were roaming the Everglades under Chief Williams Bowlegs.

Depredations against white settlers, robbery, destruction of property and murder were credited to his genius; he was as elusive as a fox.

It was to subdue William Bowlegs and his tribe that American troops were sent into Florida in 1849. In the detachment was the First Artillery Regiment, for which Hill was appointed regimental quartermaster.

For seven years, with the exception of a brief tour of duty on the banks of the Rio Grande, Hill served in Florida, with dreariness, monotony and mosquitoes plaguing him.

His experiences are contained in a diary kept in a small ledger-book in a fine hand, a sage of despair and disgust. Even his old friend, Napoleon, could not have stood it for long, he once insisted.

And he and his troops never caught up with William Bowlegs!

In 1855, he wrote his favorite sister, Lucy, in Culpeper:

" 'Tis said by some that we are all to hunt up Bowlegs and his tribe, but I do not believe it, as "twould be unwise in Uncle Sam to engage in such an expensive war as "twould prove to be, and only to drive out a few poor, lazy, harmless devils from the country that no white man could, or would live in."

 

*          *          *

From 1856 to 1861 Hill was close to the events that were bringing a division between the North and South.

Under his father's tutelage and after leaving Culpeper he had studied the political developments which revolved around the issue of slavery.

He had an abiding pride in his native Virginia; he subscribed fully to the Calhoun doctrine of States' rights. Slavery, he felt, was an occasion, rather than a cause for disaffection.

Personally he opposed slavery and sympathized with the Negroes. He could tolerate no cruelties, no injustices that were ever perpetrated on them.

When a young Negro was lynched by a mob in Culpeper in 1849, for the alleged murder of a white man, Hill wrote his brother, indignantly.

"Virginia," he said, "must crawl unless you vindicate good order or discipline, and hang every _____ __ __ _____ connected with the outrage."

It was discovered years later that the negro was innocent.

It was not difficult for Hill to see the inevitable war clouds gathering over Washington, fragments of which would sooner or later drift to the South.

He felt foreboding when Lincoln was elected in 1860; watched with thoughtful interest the withdrawal of the senators from Alabama, Florida and Mississippi, in turn.

Senators Fitzpatrick and Clay of Alabama, Senators Yulee and Maloory of Florida.

And, finally, his old friend, Senator Jefferson Davis of Mississippi!

*          *          *

The day they withdrew he visited the Senate gallery and heard their speeches. Jefferson Davis cried out:

"That if the North has resolve on hostile relations toward the seceded States, of which I am one, then we will invoke the God of our fathers, who delivered them from the power of the Lion, to protect us from the ravages of the bear; and thus, putting our trust in God and in our own firm hearts and strong arms, we will vindicate the right as best we may!"

The speech made Hill deeply thoughtful. Conflict, he felt, was inevitable. South Carolina, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi already had seceded. When would Virginia join them?

He decided to quit the regular army and on March 1, 1861, he handed in his resignation, and returned to Culpeper, to the home of his elder brother, Edward Baptist Hill.

His father had died in 1857, and his mother passed through the portals of death in the summer of 1853, while he was in Florida.

It was a sad home-coming; but he would go there and await the call that he knew was bound to come.

Six weeks later, Lincoln issued his famous call for volunteers to "suppress the rebellion," and Virginia threw in her lot with the Confederacy.

Hill made application to Governor Letcher for a brigade. A month went by. He was disappointed when he received a colonel's commission and assigned to the Provisional Army. It was dated May 9, 1861 and he was ordered to duty at Harper's Ferry. He was in his thirty-sixth year.

(TO BE CONTINUED NEXT SUNDAY)

(Editor's note: October 28 article not available )