decree of an irresistible fate which pitted Mr. Hill and Governor Brown against each other. They had first met as foemen in contesting the prize of the State governorship in 1857. They had not agreed by any means upon the issues of secession. They were now on opposite sides of the controversy aroused over the conscription Act; and they were destined to unfurl opposing banners during the venomous campaigns of reconstruction.

Returning to Georgia, Mr. Hill not only defended the conscription law with great eloquence before the State Legislature, taking the ground that the measure was constitutional, expedient and wise, but he also made speeches in various parts of the State, showing the dangers which lay concealed in the vapors of internal strife and rallying the people to the support of the Confederate government.

It may be said in this connection that one of the grounds on which Governor Brown opposed the measure besides asserting it to be unconstitutional was that it was unnecessary, so far at least as Georgia was concerned; but he also took the ground that it discriminated unjustly between slaveowners who were exempted and non-slaveowners who were drafted. However, in spite of what might have been the defects of the measure, it was not resisted to the point of doing the cause any serious harm; and though Governor Brown continued to oppose the measure from principle, there was no disaffection or lack of enthusiasm for Confederate interests.

An event which took place during the senatorial career of Mr. Hill and which has been greatly magnified and distorted in going the rounds of gossip, was the unfortu

nate personal difficulty which occurred between himself and William L. Yancey on the floor of the Confederate Senate. The colloquy grew out of the ardent championship with which Mr. Hill as usual was defending the administration. An exciting debate on some very important question had been in progress for several days, and Mr. Yancey, who was one of the boldest men as well as one of the greatest orators which this section of country has ever produced, was fearlessly criticising some executive action which he thought to be fraught with serious issues.

Animadverting upon certain statements which Mr. Hill had made, he declared in the heat of towering argument that he had spoken what he knew to be false. This was a declaration which carried a challenge, and reaching for a missile with which to answer the charge, he found an inkbottle. This he hurled at Mr. Yancey with the force of a catapult, but with the aim of a rifleman, striking the surprised Senator on the cheekbone. He had shown himself an adept in the use of inkbottles, whether employed in the gentle art of letters or in the deep-chested and muscular science of pugilism; but he had also nettled the Titan wrath of one of the superb invincibles.

Things looked serious. Mr. Yancey was not the man to brook an affront. But the possibility of further difficulties was prevented by the interference of Senators who now rushed between the combatants; and the doors being closed the affair was amicably settled by mediating friends and mutual explanations. With some difficulty Mr. Yancey suppressed his resentment, feeling that the hot haste in which Mr. Hill had acted was perfectly natural under the circumstances, and that the whole affair grew out of differences too trivial to estrange pa

triots. He and Mr. Hill subsequently became fast friends. The story that Mr. Yancey, who lived several years after this encounter, eventually died from the effect of the blow is only artistic fiction, intended to give "the finishing" touches to an affair which is sufficiently dramatic without such embellishment. The wound produced an effusion of blood, but it was never regarded as serious, and Mr. Yancey resumed his argument soon after the difficulty occurred. He subsequently died from kidney trouble; both his brother, Colonel B. C. Yancey, of Rome, and his son, Colonel Goodloe Yancey, of Athens, continuing to be Mr. Hill's steadfast friends and supporters.

During the last days of the war, when the fortunes of the Confederate cause were hastening toward the catastrophe of Appomattox, Mr. Hill threw all the powers of his eloquence into the effort to keep alive the waning star. He saw that the hopes of the country were now flagging with the tattered remnants of the thin Confederate ranks, and he sought to quicken the pulse-beat in the shriveled and wasted arteries. Coming to Georgia, he delivered at LaGrange on March 11, 1865, one of the noblest appeals of his life; and those who heard the speech declared that never were feelings more profoundly stirred. Disabled old soldiers were ready to enlist again. Women felt like marching forward. It nobly attested the fidelity as well as the eloquence of Mr. Hill. He had been among the last to accept secession. He was now among the last to accept defeat; nor did he intend to surrender now until he had first exhausted every resource which devotion could suggest. Within less than one

month Appomattox had been lost, and Dixie's dream instead of leaving her at dawn fulfilled had left her at midnight in despair. But it was not the fault of Benjamin H. Hill.

Returning with heavy heart to his home in LaGrange, Mr. Hill remained for some time unmolested under his quiet roof, and he had the pleasure while here of conferring with many of his Confederate colleagues who became his guests. There was no present business to engage him in the courts, and he was just beginning to overhaul his plantation when the arresting officers suddenly turned up; and fearing unpleasant scenes with Mr. Hill's indignant fellow townsmen, they insisted in rushing him off at night without giving him any opportunity for ceremonious farewells. Not the least resentful of all the loyal followers of Mr. Hill were the faithful negroes who had been his slaves and who were still to be his servants.

Stopping with Mr. Hill at this time was Stephen R. Mallory, the efficient secretary of the Confederate navy; and Mr. Mallory shared the fate of his host. Taken to Fort LaFayette in New York harbor, the two men were put into separate cells where they remained under close watch until eventually paroled. Mr. Hill then came back to Georgia where he quietly resumed the practice of his profession, which he uninterruptedly continued until called from retirement by the sovereign voice of his countrymen to lead the crusade of resistance against the iniquities of reconstruction.

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CHAPTER XXX.

Hill's Defiance of Federal Bayonets.

O face the guns of an enemy in time of war when the music of battle is afloat requires no greater heroism than thousands of brave men are prepared at almost any time to manifest; but to face an array of hostile guns in time of peace, when the minstrelsy of war is silent and, except for the inner promptings of duty, there are no martial emotions to quicken the pulsebeat and to tighten the sinews, is an act of courage which no man can possibly exhibit unless he is cast in the Spartan mold of Georgia's prince-eloquent of protest, Benjamin H. Hill.

The typical hero of the popular imagination is bedecked with sash and sabre and moves with buttoned front to the cadences of fife and drum, but the real hero is independent of such mere accessories; and from Cæsar to Napoleon the searchlight will be turned in vain upon the battle-fields of history to find an act of courage superior to the spectacle of bold resistance which Mr. Hill exhibited in Davis Hall when he defied the bayonets of the Federal soldiery during the days of reconstruction.

It was in the bluntest of Highland speech that heroic old John Knox rebuked the crown of Scotland and in the teeth-born terror of words only that Demosthenes with