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Confederate (CSV)

Colonel

Robert Clinton Hill

(1833 - 1863)

Home State: North Carolina

Education: US Military Academy, West Point, NY, Class of 1855;Class Rank: 33/34

Command Billet: Commanding Regiment

Branch of Service: Infantry

Unit: 48th North Carolina Infantry

Before Sharpsburg

After graduating from West Point he was appointed brevet 2nd Lieutenant, 6th US Infantry on 1 July 1855 and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant on 18 October 1855 and assigned to the 5th US Infantry. He saw service on the Sioux Expedition (1855-56), in action against the Seminoles in Florida (1856-57), and on the Utah Expedition (1857-59). He resigned his commission on 3 March 1861.

He was commissioned Lieutenant of Artillery, CSA on 16 March 1861 then Major and Assistant Adjutant General in August, assigned to General Toombs. He went to General Branch's staff in November. He was elected Colonel of the 48th North Carolina Infantry as it was organized on 9 April 1862.

On the Campaign

He commanded the regiment on the Campaign. In action near the Dunkard Church at Sharpsburg on 17 September 1862:

The Forty-eighth Regiment occupied that part of the line at the church. The church was about the center of the regiment. We drove the enemy out of the woods, and charged their line east of the church, but were cut all to pieces. We lost about one-half of our men, killed and wounded ... [map]

The rest of the War

Colonel R. C. Hill was a very fine military man, very strict and much beloved by his men, but being in bad health he was often absent. He only commanded the regiment in the campaign of 1862 and 1863.
He resigned his command and took a position as Captain and Assistant Adjutant General to General Benning in 1863, but died in December.

References & notes

His service and the quotes above from the History.1 Further details from Cullum2 (Hill is Cullum #1709) and Krick.3 His gravesite is on Findagrave; his stone has his death on 4 December 1864.

More on the Web

See his version of a conversation he had with General George Custer near Fredericksburg in August 1863, in a letter he wrote to the Sentinel as published in the New York Times of 20 September 1863.

A watercolor landscape he painted in May 1854 was offered for sale online by the William Reese Company (2020).

Birth

07/28/1833; Iredell County, NC

Death

12/04/1863; near Statesville, NC; burial in Bethany Presbyterian Church Cemetery, Statesville, NC

Notes

1   From History of the 48th North Carolina Infantry by Captain W.H.H. Lawhon, Co. D, April 1901; transcribed by J. Weaver.
Weaver, Jeff, The North Carolina Civil War Home, Published 1998, first accessed 09 August 2005, <http://members.aol.com/jweaver303/nc/nccwhp.htm>, Source page: /48ncinf.htm  [AotW citation 216]

2   Cullum, George Washington, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the US Military Academy, 2nd Edition, 3 vols., New York: D. Van Nostrand, 1868-79, Vol. II, pg. 638  [AotW citation 25845]

3   Krick, Robert E.L., Staff Officers in Gray; A Biographical Register of the Staff Officers in the Army of Northern Virginia, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, pg. 160  [AotW citation 25846]