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

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 of Georgia 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 the more conservative Hill clashed with the Radical wing of his own party. As a result of a compromise between Democrats and moderate Republicans, Hill became Georgia’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. Georgia did not send another Republican to the Senate until 1980.

Bradley R. Rice is emeritus professor of History at Clayton State University. He is past president of the Georgia Association of Historians and former board member of the Georgia Historical Society. For over fifteen years Rice served as editor of the learned journal of the Atlanta History Center. The author and editor of several articles and books, Rice retired to Madison, Georgia, where he serves as chair of the Historic Preservation Commission.