At the outbreak of the American Civil War, D. H. Hill became a colonel of the 1st North Carolina Infantry Regiment, the "Bethel Regiment", at the head of which he won the
Battle of Big Bethel, near
Fort Monroe,
Virginia, on June 10, 1861. Shortly after this, on July 10, 1861, he was promoted to
brigadier general and commanded troops in the Richmond area. By the spring of 1862, he was a major general and division commander in the Army of Northern Virginia. He participated in the
Yorktown and
Williamsburg operations that started the
Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862, and as a
major general, led a division with great distinction in the
Battle of Seven Pines and the
Seven Days Battles. This established a scale of equivalents, where an officer would be exchanged for a fixed number of enlisted men, and also allowed for the parole of prisoners, who would undertake not to serve in a military capacity until officially exchanged. (The cartel worked well for a few months but broke down when Confederates insisted on treating black prisoners of war as fugitive slaves and returning them to their previous owners.) In the
Maryland Campaign of 1862, Hill's men fought at the
Battle of South Mountain. Scattered as far north as
Boonsboro, Maryland when the fighting began, the division fought tooth and nail, buying Lee's army enough time to concentrate at nearby Sharpsburg. Hill's division saw fierce action in the infamous sunken road ("Bloody Lane") at the
Battle of Antietam, and he rallied a few detached men from different brigades to hold the line at the critical moment. The Confederate defeat was largely due to the interception by McClellan of
Special Order 191 from Lee to his generals, revealing the movements of his widely separated divisions. Some have claimed that D. H. Hill received two copies of this order, of which one went astray. But Hill said he received only one copy. Hill's division was largely unengaged at the
Battle of Fredericksburg. At this point, conflicts with Lee began to surface. Hill was not appointed to a corps command on the reorganization of the
Army of Northern Virginia after Stonewall Jackson's death. He had already been detached from Lee's Army and sent to his home state to recruit troops. He led Confederate reserve troops protecting Richmond during the
Gettysburg campaign. In late June, he successfully resisted a half-hearted advance by U.S. forces under John Adams Dix and
Erasmus Keyes. In 1863, he was sent to
Gen. Braxton Bragg's newly reorganized
Army of Tennessee, with a promotion to
lieutenant general, to command
one of its corps. Hill had served under Bragg in Mexico and was initially pleased to be reunited with an old friend, but the warm feelings did not last long. Hill's forces saw some of the heaviest fighting in the bloody and confused
Battle of Chickamauga. Afterward, Hill joined several other generals openly condemning Bragg's failure to exploit the victory.
President of the Confederate States Jefferson Davis personally came to resolve this dispute in Bragg's favor and to the detriment of those unhappy generals. The Army of Tennessee was reorganized again, and Hill was left without a command. Davis then refused to forward Hill's appointment to the
Confederate Senate, and he reverted to major general. Because of this, Hill saw less fighting throughout the remainder of the war. After that, D. H. Hill commanded as a volunteer in smaller actions away from the major armies. Hill participated in the
Battle of Bentonville in North Carolina, the last fight of the Army of Tennessee. Hill was a division commander when he, along with Gen.
Joseph E. Johnston, surrendered on April 26, 1865. ==Later life==