Hills and Hills

Confederate General A.P. Hill, 1825 - 1865, is not to be confused with railroad magnate James J. Hill, 1838 - 1916. A West Pointer in ante bellum days (1847), Ambrose Powell Hill rose from the ranks to command the Confederacy's famous Light Division. "Resplendent in red battle-shirt," he led the charge which saved Lee's Army of Northern Virginia from defeat at Sharpsburg. Though illness prevented Hill from attaining full potential, he battled to the end, killed a week before Appomattox while commanding one-third of Lee's remaining forces. Dying, both Lee and Stonewall Jackson called on A.P. Hill.

Canadian born James J. Hill proved a visionary of another sort. Accidental loss of an eye precluded a career in medicine, plus active service in the Civil War. But in his early twenties, based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Hill not only organized the First Minnesota Volunteers but applied himself as agent for the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad to learn every aspect of military commissariats from taking bids to warehousing. Ambitious and knowledgeable by war's end, Hill first partnered with Hudson Bay Company officials, then used financial contacts at the Bank of Montreal to acquire the St. Paul & Pacific at a steep discount in the Panic of 1873. Pressing hard, Hill laid a mile of track each day to win a $2-million Minnesota Land Grant for expanding railway links on schedule. Two virgin-harvest seasons followed, enabling him to promote mass-immigration from Norway and Sweden with the promise of fertile farmland at $2.50 - $5.00 per acre along his right-of-way.

From surveying to materials and construction, James J. Hill personally oversaw every aspect of his operations. By 1882 he had advised the Canadian Pacific Railroad on routes to the Northwest, and dealt with J.P. Morgan to tap Wall Street capital. Pushing hard as ever, Hill's Great Northern Railway mobilized 8,000 workers and 3,300 four-horse teams to reach Puget Sound in 1893. Despite legal difficulties, another panic that same year enabled him to absorb competitors, always pricing goods and services near cost. Together, he and Morgan fended off raids by E.J. Harriman, imported 6,000,000 Northern European immigrants in just two years, and began exporting American cotton products from Seattle to China and Japan.

Still battling Harriman, Hill retired to St. Paul during the Panic of 1907, dying in 1916 at age 79. Every train and steamship of his Great Northern empire halted for five minutes; as his New York Times obituary stated, "Greatness became him, and was a condition of his errand here."