Sen. Benjamin Harvey Hill (D-GA)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Harvey_Hill

Benjamin Harvey Hill (September 14, 1823 – August 16, 1882) was a U.S. Representative, U.S. senator and a Confederate senator from the state of Georgia.

Biography

Hill was born September 14, 1823 in Hillsboro, Georgia in Jasper County. He was of Welsh and Irish American ancestry. He attended the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia where he was a member of the Demosthenian Literary Society and graduated in 1844 with first honors. He was admitted to the Georgia bar later in 1844. He married Caroline E. Holt in Athens, Georgia in 1845.

Political career

Hill was a candidate representing a number of parties, reflecting the volatile politics before the American Civil War and after. He was elected to the state legislature of Georgia in 1851 as a member of the Whig Party. He supported Millard Filmore running on the Know-Nothing ticket in 1856, and was an elector for that party in the Electoral College. In 1857, he ran for governor of Georgia unsuccessfully against the Democratic nominee Joseph E. Brown. In 1859, he was elected to the state senate as a Unionist. In 1860, he was again an elector, this time for John Bell and the Unionist party.

Hill known as "the peerless orator" for his skill in delivering speech, was the only non-Democratic member of the Georgia secession convention on January 16, 1861, where he spoke publicly against the dissolution of the Union, along with Alexander Stephens, a former opponent. Following Stephens' highly regarded argument based on a conservative reading of the Constitution, Hill struck a more pragmatic tone. His arguments related to the conservative belief that disunion would ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery and the downfall of Southern society. He quoted Henry Ward Beecher, a Northern abolitionist who enthusiastically supported the dissolution of the Union as a means to end slavery, and described the anti-slavery Republican Party as a "disunionist" party, in contrast to the "Union men and Southern men" participating in the convention. Acknowledging the need to respond to the threat of Lincoln's election, Hill argued that his fellow Georgians should continue to resist Lincoln democratically within the bounds of the Constitution. He compared this course to George Washington, "so cool, so brave, and so thoughtful." He argued that the Northern states would eventually follow the British course of rising abolitionist thought, followed by acceptance again of slavery due to economic necessity. But he allowed that the South should prepare for secession and war if it should become necessary.

Ultimately, Hill voted for secession and became a political ally of Jefferson Davis, who was elected as president of the Confederacy. When the Confederate government was formed, Hill transferred to the Confederate Provisional Congress. He was subsequently elected by the Georgia legislature to the Confederate States Senate, a term which he held throughout its existence.

At one point in the Senate, Hill and fellow Senator William Lowndes Yancey had to be separated by other members after a bloody scuffle on the floor.

At the end of the Civil War, Hill was arrested as a Confederate official by the Union and confined in Fort Lafayette from May until July in 1865.

Postwar career

Unlike many Confederate politicians, Hill had a long and distinguished career as a "reconstructed" Southerner and U.S. politician. He ultimately became a Democrat after the Civil War ended. He spoke out passionately against Radical Reconstruction and in the summer of 1867 made a series of speeches in Atlanta, the most famous being the Davis House speech of July 16, 1867, denouncing the Reconstruction Acts of 1867. His courage and eloquence enhanced his regional fame and won him national recognition.

In 1875 he was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives, serving from May 5, 1875 - March 3, 1877. He quickly won a reputation as a spokesman for the South. He was later elected by the Georgia legislature to the U.S. Senate on January 26, 1877, as Reconstruction was ending. He served in the U.S. Senate from March 4, 1877, until his death on August 16, 1882. His obituary was featured on the front page of the Atlanta Constitution, on August 17, 1882.

He is buried in historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia.

Honors

There is a life-size statue of Hill looking down from atop a similarly sized plinth inside the Georgia State Capitol in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as a larger than life portrait in the Capitol Rotunda. Ben Hill County, Georgia is named in his honor.

A presence in Georgia state politics for more than three decades, Benjamin Hill was by turns a prosperous lawyer, opponent of secession, ardent supporter of the Confederacy, apologist for Reconstruction, and, at his death, Democratic U.S. senator from Georgia.

Like his personal nemesis and fellow political survivor from the era, Joseph E. Brown, Hill manifested a remarkable political flexibility that was often taken for perfidy. Ben Hill County in south central Georgia was named for him upon its creation in 1906.

Born in Jasper County on September 14, 1823, Benjamin Harvey Hill matriculated at the University of Georgia and graduated in 1843. He then promptly gained entrance to the bar and nurtured a thriving law practice in LaGrange. Although he could be a political chameleon, Hill generally worked toward sectional comity. He thus entered public life as a supporter of the Union and the Compromise of 1850.

During a one-year term as a state representative from 1851 to 1852, Hill joined the short-lived Constitutional Union Party of Howell Cobb, Robert Toombs, and Alexander Stephens. Passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought him back into politics as an independent in 1855, and he narrowly lost a seat in the state assembly to a Democratic stalwart in a heavily Democratic district. Two years later, the American Party nominated him as their gubernatorial candidate. He lost that race to the theretofore obscure Joseph E. Brown and retired from the political arena for another two-year interval.

After a brief postwar imprisonment, Hill's career entered its most controversial and ultimately most successful phase. Initially his actions followed the white Democratic Party line. He backed U.S. president Andrew Johnson's lenient plan to bring the South back into the Union and later fought against the perceived excesses of congressional Reconstruction. Then in 1870 he took on the Bourbon Democrats, who were poised to "redeem" the state, in an extraordinarily brave plea that Southern whites recognize the Reconstruction amendments as a fait accompli and move on to other matters. This unpopular stance earned Hill a stint in the political wilderness. Having spent most of his lifetime backing losing causes, however, Hill ended his career on top, winning a seat in the U.S. Congress for Georgia's Ninth District in December 1875. There he earned a national reputation as a champion of the white South by taking on such strident Radicals as James G. Blaine. Two years later he resigned from the House of Representatives to take a Senate seat, which he occupied until his death on August 16, 1882.

Source: http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/ben...