Letter on Hill's Death by Charles Venable

Vevay, Switzerland, December 25th, 1883.

My Dear Sir, -- Your postal of November 26, has been forwarded to me here, as well as the clipping from the Dispatch giving Tucker's account of General A.P. Hill's death. Tucker's is a true statement, doubtless, of the circumstances immediately attending the death of General Hill at the hands of the Federal skirmishers -- but his memory has failed him in several points which should have been presented in order to give a true picture of the sad event, and a fuller idea of the anxious devotion to duty and love for his troops which made the General on that fatal morning utterly reckless of his own life.

General Hill reached General Lee's headquarters before light and reported personally to the General in his own room. General Longstreet had arrived from the north side of the Appomattox about one o'clock the same morning and was lying on the floor of the Adjutant's office trying to get a little sleep. A few minutes after General Hill's arrival I walked out to the front gate of the Turnbull House, and there saw wagons and teamsters dashing rather wildly down the River Road (Cox's) in the direction of Petersburg. Walking out on the road, I met a wounded officer on crutches coming from the direction of the huts of Harris's brigade, which lay across the branch in front of the headquarters, who informed me he had been driven from his quarters in these huts (which a few sick and wounded men occupied) by the enemy's skirmishers. I immediately returned to the house, ordered my horse, and reported what I had seen and heard to General Lee, with whom General Hill was still sitting. General Lee ordered me to go and reconnoitre at once. General Hill started up also; we mounted our horses and rode together, General Hill being accompanied by one courier, as I remember, who I thought was Tucker. I had no courier with me. On arriving at the branch (it was barely light at the time), we stopped to water our horses and look around. While thus engaged the enemy made his presence known by firing on us some straggling shots from the direction of the huts and hill towards the Boydton plank road. Soon perceiving half a dozen or more of our own skirmishers near us, who had been driven back by the sudden advance of the enemy, I got General Hill's permission to deploy these in front of us so as to make some show of force. It being impossible to go straight on to the Boydton plank road on the road on which we were riding, we turned to the right and rode up the branch. General Hill, whose sole idea was to reach his troops at all hazards, soon became impatient of the slow progress of our improvised skirmishers, and really there seemed to be no enemy in our front in the direction in which we were riding. So we pressed on ahead of them. After going a short distance it became light enough to see some artillery on the River Road (Cox's) about one hundred and fifty yards distant on the hill to our right. He asked me whose artillery it was. I informed him that it was Poague's battalion which came over the night before from Dutch Gap. He requested me to go at once and put it into position. I leaped my horse over the branch and carried out his request. This was the last I ever saw of General Hill alive. As I rode across the field and up the slope towards Poague's battalion he rode up the branch towards a copse of small pines, with a few large ones interspersed. It was in this copse, doubtless, that General Hill met his death in the manner described by Tucker. The mistakes of Tucker are first as to the distance of the branch in question from the Turnbull House, which is not more than 200 (two hundred) yards, and then as to the time of his conversation with General Hill which must have been after I left him, and some distance up the branch. I remember Tucker's presence but not that of Jenkins at the branch. When we left the gate of the Turnbull House General Hill had but one courier; but another could have easily ridden up behind us without attracting my attention, while we were examining the front so intently in the dim light of the coming day.

The sad event of General Hills' death was the crowning sorrow of that fatal morning. In him fell one of the knightliest Generals of that army of knightly soldiers. On the field he was the very soul of chivalrous gallantry. In moments of the greatest peril his bearing was superb and inspiring in the highest degree. No wonder that Lee, when he saw the horse of his trusted Lieutenant with the saddle empty, led by the faithful Tucker, found time to shed tears, even in the trying moment when the tide of adverse battle, sweeping heavily again us, demanded his every thought. The name of A.P. Hill stands recorded high on the list of those noble sons of Virginia at whose rollcall grateful memory will ever answer: "Dead on the field of honor for the people they loved so well."

I should have added to the account above that in less than half an hour after General Hill was killed, the advanced skirmishers of the enemy were driven from the copse of pines by our men, and his body recovered.

While thus supplementing, and in a manner correcting, Sergeant Tucker's account, I wish to say I have great respect for him. He was a true and faithful soldier -- as brave as a lion. I well remember being with General Hill in the 5th of May, 1864, as his advance guard on the plank road struck the enemy's cavalry outposts in the Wilderness, when Tucker, whose horse had died during the winter, got permission to go on the skirmish line and kill a Yankee cavalry man and appropriate his steed. His eagerness cause him to be imprudent in exposing himself, and he got a bullet in the thigh, which rendered a horse unnecessary to him for some time.

With all the good wishes of the day, I am,

Yours most truly,

Charles S. Venable.