Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 1,322
By This is the grave of Benjamin Hill.
Born in 1823 in Hillsboro, Georgia, Hill grew up in the slaver class and he would spend his life defending slavery and white supremacy. He went to the University of Georgia, graduating in 1844. He passed the bar the same year and opened a law practice in the town of LaGrange, Initially, Hill was a strong Whig. That wasn’t so uncommon at this time. Given that both of the national parties took no position of slavery, preferring to sweep it under the rug, one could be a slaver and a pro-corporate development type pretty easily. Plus, the old Dunningite myths about slavery being somehow an opposite of northern capitalism have now been blown out of the war by scholars, to the point that no one can seriously argue that slavery was not central to the growth of American capitalism, north and south.
But the parties were changing. Tyler’s annexation of Texas and Polk stealing half of Mexico to expand slavery meant that southern Whigs had no place to go. One could no longer succeed in southern politics, at least on the state or congressional level, without supporting the actions of southern extremists and especially the Democratic Party after Polk. Hill remained a Whig through 1851, when he managed to win election to the Georgia state legislature. But that was unstable. He was allies with Alexander Stephens in something Georgia now ex-Whigs called the Constitutional Union Party. It didn’t last and he lost his election campaign the next year. He lost in 1855 as well. He moved to the Know-Nothings by 1856, supporting Millard Fillmore, as a way out of supporting the Democrats since the new Republican Party was complete anathema. But that didn’t last either. By 1860, he was in the John Bell camp of “moderation” on treason in defense of slavery, which meant that if the North gave the South everything it wanted, it wouldn’t secede at that particular point in time, but made no promises for the future. This was completely untenable everywhere but the Upper South.
Like his ally Alexander Stephens, Hill voted against secession, believing that it would doom slavery more quickly than staying in the Union. But when Georgia went, Hill went along in committing treason in defense of slavery and he did not look back. He became close to Jefferson Davis and won election first to the Confederate Congress and then the Confederate Senate. The reason behind their sudden alliances is that Hill, really still a Whig at heart, supported Davis’ tendency for a strong executive, which the real fireeaters like Hill’s and Davis’ enemy Joseph Brown hated.
Southern elite society was super violent. This was part of the larger societal disgust northern Republicans had for the Southern elites. As these Northern elites were moving into a version of middle class masculinity that valued self-restraint and propriety, Southern elites valued honor defended by violence. That’s why Preston Brooks could nearly kill Charles Sumner on the Senate floor and become a hero in the South for it. But while today we see this as an outlier over extremists, the truth was that these southern elites committed violence against each other all the time. This context leads to understand Hill taking a ink bottle and beating his fellow traitor William Yancey in the head with it on the floor of the Confederate Senate over some disagreement or another. He did enough to first drop Yancey onto a desk and then onto the floor. Classy. In fact, Yancey never returned to the Treason Senate. He was already a sickly man with kidney problems and Hill’s attack just weakened him tremendously. Losing an evil fireeating scumbag like Yancey should make none of us sad, but Hill was just as bad, even if not as extreme on the issue of secession itself.
The Civil War experience of course turned Hill into a white supremacist Democrat. He hated the end of slavery, he hated former slaves getting the vote, and he hated Reconstruction. Once Andrew Johnson pardoned him for his crimes of treason, as he did most of the Confederate leaders, Hill was back in politics. He became a major speaker around the South against Reconstruction by 1867, gaining him national attention, much of it favorable not only in the South but in the North, where probably a majority of whites figured now that technical slavery was over, southern whites should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted.
After Georgia was “reconstructed” and whites took back power, Hill headed back to Congress in 1875. He served a term and then was sent by the Georgia legislature to the Senate. He stayed there for five years, a continued white supremacist. But he died in 1882 so never completed his term, not that his replacement was any better. He was just another pro-railroad, pro-white supremacy guy who wasn’t remembered much at all after his time in Washington. Hill was 58 years old on his death.
Benjamin Hill is buried in Oakland Cemetery, Atlanta, Georgia.
If you would like this series to visit other senators of the era, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. James George is in North Carrollton, Mississippi and Charles Van Wyck is in Milford, Pennsylvania, although he was a senator from Nebraska. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.