Troup County GaArchives Photo Place.....Ben Hill Home 
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Christine Thacker http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00033.html#0008100 May 8, 2007, 4:40 pm

Source:             Sesquicentennial Supplement III Ledger- Enquirer
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http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/troup/photos/benhillh12760gph.jpg
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                          Ben Hill Was Agent Of Change
                             By James M. Gifford 
                             Guest Columnist

  Ben Hill, a successful lawyer and gifted statesman, was one of mid-nineteenth 
century Georgia's most important politicians. A man of conservative instincts, 
he was flexible and realistic enough to change with the changing circumstances 
of Civil War and Reconstruction. A number of better-known ante-bellum Southern 
leaders never adjusted to post-war conditions, but men like Ben Hill quietly 
guided Georgians through the transition from Old to New South and helped to 
heal the breach in the Union.
  Shortly after the turn of the nineteeth century, John and Sarah Parham Hill 
moved from North Carolina to Jasper County, Georgia where Benjamin, the seventh 
of their nine children, was born. When young Ben was ten years old his family 
moved to the recently-opened Indian lands in Troup County.
   As a child, he became accustomed to hard work and infrequent educational 
opportunities, but, when he had the chance to go to school, he demonstrated his 
scholastic aptitude so thoroughly that his family made considerable sacrifices 
to send him to the University of Georgia.  Four years later, at the age of 
twenty-one, he graduated with valedictory honors. That same year (1844), he was 
admitted to the bar and began a life-long practice.
  Eloquent, confident and well-trained, Hill soon gained a reputation for 
success that made him a wealthy man. Before he returned to LaGrange, in Troup 
County, to begin law practice, he had married Caroline Holt of Athens. 
Eventually they had six children.
  " After six years of private practice, Hill was elected to the state House of 
Representatives (1851). He was  devoted to the South and the Union, so he 
encouraged Georgians to accept the Compromise of 1850. Hoping the acceptance 
and the compromise were final, Hill  returned to his practice in LaGrange.
  His party loyalties changed from Whig to Consitutional Union to American 
or "Know-Nothing" during the next five years. In 1856, he ardently campaigned 
for Millard Fillmore, the "Know-Nothing" party's  presidential nominee. 
While "stumping" the state, he came in conflict with former Whig friends Robert 
Toombs and Alexander H. Stephens, who had moved  into the Democratic party. 
Hill, unquestionably his party's most able Georgia spokesman, successfully 
debated  his former colleagues. Toombs came off second best under Hill's 
withering attacks, and Hill so exasperated  Stephens that the emaciated little 
warrior challenged him to a duel, but Hill was one of the many Americans  
opposed to the code duello, and he skillfully declined.
  His popularity was growing, and two years later he  ran against, but lost to 
Joseph E. Brown in the guber-natorial election. When the American party died a 
natural death, Hill returned to the Constitutional Union  party and supported  
John Bell in 1860. Following Lincoin's election, he attended the secession 
convention held at Milledgeville in January 1861 to fight disunion, but when 
his best efforts failed he reluctantly signed the ordinance of secession.
  Although Hill did not favor war, he could not turn his back on the South. He 
attended the Provisional Congress at Montgomery and helped formalize the 
Confederate government. In November 1861, he was elected a Confederate senator 
and served for the remainder of the war. Although Hill was not afraid to change 
his mind, he was not a man of  vascillating loyalties.  
  Once committed, Ben Hill remained dedicated. In Georgia, he staunchly 
defended some of Jefferson Davis' controversial war-time measures against the 
criticisms of Robert Toombs, Joe Brown, Linton Stephens, and other state 
leaders. Davis later dubbed him "Hill, the faithful." Arrested with so many 
other Southern leaders at the end of the war, Hill spent three months in a New 
York jail. When President Johnson pardoned him, he returned to LaGrange.
  For two years he stayed out of politics and tried to rebuild his finances, 
but eventually his loyalty to Georgia and the South made him speak out against 
Radical Reconstruction. In the Summer of 1867 he 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.
   For the next three years, Hill's courage and eloquent opposition to 
Reconstruction enhanced his regional fame, and won him national recognition.
  After one of his fiery speeches, someone told Hill's son: "One hour after 
that speech of Ben Hill, I knew that the redemption of Georgia was 
accomplished. All the bayonets in the United States could not have awed nor all 
the wealth of the government debauched a people who had listened to that 
speech" (Quoted in Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 7, 1906. p. 6). But just as he 
had changed his mind about slavery and secession, Hill changed on 
Reconstruction.
  By 1870 Hill was encouraging Georgians to accept the Reconstruction Acts and 
sacrifice pride to restore national unity. "It will be easier to reconcile the 
South, to the Union than to reconcile the North to the Constitution," he said 
(Letter. July 4, 1866. reprinted in Savannah Daily News and Herald, July 9. 
1866). Such feelings were unpopular, and Ben Hill, once a "man of the people," 
was denounced for his perfidy and cast into political oblivion for five years. 
Then in 1875 he was elected to the United States House of Representatives. He 
quickly won reputation as an able spokesman for the South and played a valuable 
role in the Hayes-Tilden election dispute compromise. His popularity in Georgia 
was returning, and he was elected to the United States Senate on January 26, 
1877. His career was cut short when he contracted cancer of the tongue and died 
in agony on August 16, 1882.



Special Sesquicentennial Supplement III
Ledger- Enquirer, Sunday, April 30, 1978, pg S-14.
     (Columbus, Georgia)
  
  

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