Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/124

 116 Southern Historical Society Papers.

D. H. Hill was not a politician in the sense of aspiring to office or attempting to mould public opinion; but when he saw that the leaders of the North had determined that no Southerner should be allowed to take his slaves to the territory wrested from Mexico by the blood and treasure of the South as well as the North, he believed that the irrepressible conflict which Seward declared at a later day was being waged had then begun, and would be settled only upon the bloody field of battle and after a prolonged, sanguinary and doubtful struggle.

Fully persuaded that the inevitable conflict was near at hand, and that it was his solemn duty to prepare the rising generation of his adopted State to meet it, he, in 1859, ave U P ms pleasant home and his congenial duties at Davidson College for those of commandant and manager of the Military Institute at Charlotte.

He harbored no unkind thought of the noble men and women of the North who held opinions different from his own. He respected even the honest fanatic, who fairly and openly contended for his con- victions; but he hated cant and hypocrisy, despised duplicity and dis- honesty, and leveled at them his most effective weapons ridicule and sarcasm. For that portion of our Northern brethren who came to the South to drive hard bargains with our people and cheat them by false pretences, he felt and expressed the most sovereign contempt. For the men of the North who coveted the wealth of the Southern planter, and the women who envied their Southern sisters because of the ease and leisure incident to the ownership of slaves, he made no attempt to conceal his hatred and disgust.

Major Hill brought with him to Raleigh his three professors, Lee, Lane and McKinney, two of whom fell later at the head of North Carolina regiments, and one of whom was the successor of the noble Branch as the commander of one of our best and bravest brigades. He also brought with him almost the whole corps of cadets, whose services proved invaluable as drill-masters of the ten thousand volun- teers then in the camp of instruction of which Hill took charge. For his services in the camp of instruction, General Hill was allowed to select twelve companies to compose the first regiment of volun- teers. The officers of these companies were all leading and influen- tial citizens, and the rank and file were among the first young men in the State in intelligence, wealth and social position. The service of six months proved a training-school for that splendid body of