Joshua Hill of Madison: Civil War Unionist and Georgia's First Republican Senator, 1812-1891

"In 1876, Joshua Hill mused, 'not a foot print will remain to show that I was of those who lingered by the stormy sea of politics.' He was too pessimistic about his legacy. Distinguished Georgia historian Tom Dyer declared that Hill was 'undoubtedly Georgia's most prominent wartime Unionist.' Nevertheless, Hill's career lacks the full biography that it deserves. Joshua Hill served in the United States House of Representatives prior to the Civil War and strongly opposed secession. During the War he ran for governor as the so-called peace candidate and later met with William T. Sherman in peace negotiations that failed. In November 1864 when the March to the Sea reached his hometown, Hill interceded with the Union command and earned his legendary title as the man who saved Madison, the village 'too pretty to burn.' During Reconstruction, Hill supported Republican President Ulysses S. Grant and endorsed black suffrage, yet he clashed with the Radical wing of his party. As a result of a compromise between Democrats and moderate Republicans, Hill became the state's first Republican member of the U.S. Senate. After two years Confederate General John B. Gordon replaced him in 1873. Hill remained a Republican senior statesman until his death in 1891, and Georgia did not send another Republican to the Senate until 1980. Bradley R. Rice's meticulous research has produced a long overdue account of the life and times of the man who was, as his gravestone reads, 'a staunch southern friend of the Union.'"--