Dr. Doherty near Beattie's Ford, but became dissatisfied with this profession and abandoned it for the law. But his element was political life, and he was eminently successful as a politician. In 1836, he was elected a member of the Legislature. He was re-elected to each Legislature until 1841, when he was elected a member of the 27th Congress (1841-43). In 1844 he was appointed Superintendent of the Mint at Charlotte, and in 1846 he was nominated by the Democratic Convention as Governor, but declined. He resigned his place in the Mint and went to Mexico as a Captain of Dragoons. On his return (1849) he was elected Senator, with his two Lieutenants (E. C. Davidson and Harrison) as colleagues in the Legislature. In 1861 he was defeated for Congress by Hon, Alfred Dockey..
General D. H. Hill, long a resident of Charlotte, is a native of South Carolina, but his services and fame are shared by North Carolina. He was educated at the United States Military Academy at West Point, at which he graduated in 1842, in same class with Generals Newton, Rosecrans, Rains, Whiting, Longstreet and others, and was commissioned a Lieutenant of Artillery. In 1847 he was promoted for gallant and meritorious conduct in the battles of Contreras and Churubusco, and the storming of Chapultepec, in the Mexican War. He resigned in 1849 and accepted a Professorship of Mathematics in Washington College, Lexington, Virginia. This he subsequently resigned and accepted a similar position in Davidson College, in this State, which he resigned to accept the Superintendency of the Military Institute at Charlotte, of which flourishing school he was the head, when the Civil War began.
He is esteemed as an admirable and able professor, thoroughly versed in the studies of his department, and possessing the faculty of stimulating his students to their greatest efforts. He published in 1858 a text-book on Algebra, which Stonewall (T. J.) Jackson, then also a Professor in the Virginia Military Institute, regarded "as superior to any other work in the same branch of science."
In 1860 he delivered a lecture in several places in this State, complaining of the gross injustice done to the South, by the Northern historians, and asserted that all the battles gained by the North were insignificant compared with those of "the South which did all the open, real, and hard fighting." This feeling with General Hill is intense and has characterized his whole life and has become as near a passion as his nature permits. He has quiet and determined manners--not genial, but reserved, it gives the impression to strangers of one who is content to mind his own business without concerning himself with the business of any one else.
Having served with distinction in the Mexican War rising to the grade of Major by brevet, he entered with great zeal into the cause of the Confederacy, and took a conspicuous part in our Civil War. To detail all the military movements and battles in which General Hill bore a conspicuous part, would be to write a history of this war; which is not the aim of these sketches. The correspondence between General Hill and Edward Stanley, Military Governor of North Carolina (March 1863) is one of the keenest specimens of invective since the days of Junius.
After the war was over he edited a magazine called the Land we Love, and weekly paper at Charlotte called the Southern Home. In these periodicals the future historian will find rich materials for his task. He is eminently and sincerely religious in his temperament, an elder in the Presbyterian Church, exemplary, conscientious, and zealous; and has written several essays on Theology.
He removed to the Southwest, a few years since and is the head of the University of Arkansas, at Fayetteville in that State.
He married Isabella, the eldest daughter of Rev. Dr. Robert Hall Morrison; whose sister
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