Ambrose+P.+Hill

=Ambrose P. Hill=




 * Ambrose P. Hill was born on Nov. 9 1825 in Culpeper, Virginia & died April 2, 1865 at Petersburg, Virginia.**
 * Ambrose Powell Hill was a professional soldier, and was also an artillery man at West Point in 1847. While at West Point he served in the Confederacy as an infantry soldier .** **After joining the army he quickly jumped from lieutenant to colonel of the 13th Virginia regiment.** **He was at First Manassas, but spent the whole battle in the reserve. He rose to command a Brigade of Virginians at Williamsburg and Yorktown, these were the opening stages of the Peninsular Campaign. His performance earned him the rank of Major General on May 26, 1862, then he took command of a division in the battle at Hanover Court House.** **After the lull, while Lee took command, he fought forcefully through the Seven Days Battle. Soon after that he fought in Jackson’s Corps at Cedar Mountain, Second Manassas, and then captured Harper’s Ferry. On September 17th A.P. Hill was busy clearing up the union troops at Harper's Ferry, at the same time that McClellan was attacking Lee a few miles away at Antietam.**


 * Hill’s men had replaced their torn and tatterd grey coats with new blue ones (which wasn't a very good thing for the union). Burnside’s men were also expecting reinforcements on their flank. Instead, Hill’s men gave the famous Rebel yell and broke the Union charge. There was still some fighting after that, but Hill had saved the day.

Hill, although not as effective as he was in at Fredericksburg. He had been fighting with Jackson, which didn’t make his position any easier. His division was in the third line of Jackson’s flank march at Chancellorsville; they saw little action on May 2, but that night Hill was part of Jackson’s scouting party. When Jackson was wounded Hill helped apply a tourniquet. He then took command of the Corps (he was senior division commander) but only for the moment before he was lightly wounded himself.

Without Jackson, Lee revised his command structure. Hill became a Corps commander, of the new III Corps. His fellow general, Henry Heth, nosed into Gettysburg and started the whole battle. Hill was unwell, and didn’t perform well at the battle. The disaster at Bristoe Station can also be laid at his feet: he simply didn’t perform as well as a Corps commander as he had as a division commander.

He was in charge, but not in command during The Wilderness – Lee knew that Hill wasn’t performing well, so he basically took over. He wasn’t fully fit, and took sick leave, missing Spotsylvania. He got to wear his red battle shirt again at North Anna and Cold Harbor, the last battles of the Overland Campaign as Grant edged around Richmond.**


 * Hill was on-again, off-again during the siege of Petersburg, sometimes present, but sometimes unwell.** **He was shot in the heart by a Union straggler on April 2, 1865. He’d just been at a conference with Lee as the Union were breaking through the defenses west of Petersburg. As Hill rode out to try and bolster the southern forces he didn’t realize how far the breakthrough had gone, and was dropped from his saddle.

Works cited:**

War High Commands, 2001. Web. 22 Mar. 2010. .**
 * Eicher, John H., and David J. Eicher, eds. "Ambrose P. Hill." //Ehistory//. Civil