Daniel H. Hill Quotes
It was not war, it was murder.
Hill, Daniel H. "McClellan's Change of Base and Malvern Hill." Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence Clough Buel, vol. 2, The Century Co., 1888, p. 394.
Clark’s men had English Colonel Hamilton under siege by making him think there were many more Americans in Clarks army than the real 180 or so. He tried to get Hamilton to surrender by threatening if they had to take the fort they would treat Hamilton and the British as murderers—Hamilton had paid hostile Indians for American scalps. At that point a party of Clark’s men arrived with 4 or 5 Indian prisoners who had been captured raiding
civilian farms. After the Indians were executed, Hamilton agreed to surrender.
The Christian Crusaders had captured Jerusalem and slaughtered the Muslim civilian inhabitants. In the 21st century, some Islamic terrorists justified the beheading of captured Christian prisoners as revenge for this massive Christian beheading of Muslims almost 1,000 years earlier.
He was then a young Lieutenant.
Lawrence of Arabia. In the Middle East, Lawrence led a small Arab army against the Turks and the Germans. In a battle near Tafas, the captured 250 Turkish and German soldiers as prisoners. They them shot them all in cold blood with their Hotchkiss machine gun. What makes this quotation so significant is that one of the great British heroes of WWI was actually guilty of War Crimes. An American journalist gave Lawrence and his exploits great publicity without mentioning the atrocities. The British chain of command also ignored the transgression of one of the most fundamental rules of war even though the clear evidence was in basic battle report files. However, the British never removed the report from the files or destroyed it. The Turks and the Germans while they respected the rules of war with the English, French, and most allies, treated the Arabs much more harshly and murdered Arab prisoners on many occasions. In part this atrocity at Tafas was an act of vengeance and retaliation. But Lawrence never even tried to explain it.
Although a very aggressive military commander, Grant did not approve of proposals to have wars of extermination which many called for against different Native American tribes.
Daniel Harvey Hill was a Confederate general during the American Civil War and a Southern scholar. He is usually referred to as D. H. Hill, in part to distinguish him from unrelated Confederate general A. P. Hill, who served with him in the Army of Northern Virginia.
