Hill

ing the suspension of the direct land tax, amount-
ing to about $484,000 in Mississippi, only a small
portion of which had been collected. As a federal
judge during Reconstruction, Hill had occasion
to display the qualities which distinguished him.
He desired to enforce United States laws, but he
did so with as little oppression and hardship as
circumstances permitted. When the act of Apr.
9, 1866, was passed by Congress, giving the ne-
groes civil rights and privileges, he recommended
to the state legislature the repeal of all laws in
conflict with the provisions of the federal statute,
so that litigation might be minimized. The act of
Mar. 2, 1867, which declared null and void all
state interference with acts of military authori-
ties, he upheld as constitutional, but he further
held that it was not designed to deprive citizens
of their constitutional rights to fair public trial.
With the passage of the act of Apr. 20, 1871, au-
thorizing the president to suppress Ku-Klux dis-
turbances by military force, Hill believed that he
should prosecute cases under the law in order to
keep the trials in civil rather than military courts.
This he did by imposing a nominal fine on those
declared guilty of violation of the act, releasing
them on their own recognizance under bond to
keep the peace toward their fellow citizens.

Hill resigned from the bench on Aug. I, 1891;
he was then a man of eighty. Long interested in
education and religion, he had served for many
years as a trustee of the University of Mississippi
and had been an active member of the Cumber-
land Presbyterian Church. Perhaps most satis-
fying ttf him was the fact that although he had
not been a delegate to the constitutional conven-
tion of 1868, he had prepared the provisions re-
garding the judiciary which had become a part
of the fundamental law of the state. Following
his resignation from the bench he continued to
live at Oxford, Miss., where he spent his last
years in peaceful retirement.

[Sources include: Biog. and Hist. Memoirs of Miss.
(1891), vol. I; Dunbar Rowland, Mississippi (1907),
vol. I; J, F. H. Claiborne, Miss., as a Province, Terri-
tory and State (1880), footnote, pp. 471-72; J. W. Gar-
ner, Reconstruction in Miss. (1901) ; Miss. Hist. Soc.
Pubs., vol. V (1902), vol. XIII (1913); Vicksburg
Herald, July 3, 1900 ; Weekly Clarions-Ledger (Jackson,
Miss.), July 5, 1900. There is a manuscript autobi-
ography of Hill in the possession of the Miss. Hist.
Soc.] M.B.P.

HILL,THOMAS (Jan. 7, :8i8-Nov. ai, 1891),
Unitarian clergyman, scientist, college president,
was born in New Brunswick, N. J. His father,
Thomas Hill, was in his youth a farmer near
Tamworth in Warwickshire. He was a Uni-
tarian, and in 1791, during the prevailing polit-
ical, religious, and social upheaval in England,
emigrated to America in search of religious lib-

Hill

erty. Starting business as a tanner in New
Brunswick, N. J., where he later served for
many years as a judge of the court of common
pleas, he married, as his second wife, Henrietta
Barker, whose father likewise had been driven
from England during the religious persecutions
following the Birmingham riot. When young
Thomas was only ten years old his father died,
but the difference between the Christianity prac-
tised in the Hill household and the orthodoxy of
the neighbors had already made its impression
on the boy, as had the elder Hill's Sunday-after-
noon discussions with deitistical friends. The
father was a lover of nature, taught his family
the scientific names of plants, and awakened an
interest in natural science in his children. Be-
fore Thomas was twelve he had read works of
Franklin and Erasmus Darwin. After three
years of formal schooling, during which he
showed especial aptitude for mathematics, he en-
tered the office of the Fredonian in September
1830 as a printer's apprentice. The fare provid-
ed brought on illness and despondency which
finally drove him to flight The next eighteen
months, until October 1834, he spent under
his eldest brother at Lower Dublin Academy,
Holmesburg, Pa. At that time he was inclined
towards civil engineering, but since no place of-
fered itself, he was finally apprenticed to an
apothecary. By May 1838, he had convinced his
brothers of his bent for the ministry, and started
to prepare for Harvard. Lacking only knowl-
edge of the classics, he accomplished his prepa-
ration in the space of fifteen months; one year
under the tutelage of Rufus P. Stebbins [g.w],
the Unitarian minister at Leominster, Mass.,
the remainder of the time at Leicester Academy.
After four years in Harvard College, where
he attained particular distinction in mathemat-
ics and invented an instrument for calculating
eclipses and occultations for which he was
awarded the Scott Medal of the Franklin Insti-
tute, he graduated in 1843. In that year he pub-
lished a little volume, Christmas, and Poems on
Slavery. Entering the Divinity School, he grad-
uated in 1845, married Ann Foster Bellows, of
Walpole, N. H., and was settled happily for
fourteen years as minister at Waltham, Mass.
During this period he published two mathemat-
ical textbooks, two papers on curves, and Georn^
etry and Faith (1849), which was revised and
republished in 1874 and almost completely re-
written in 1882. In 1858 he delivered the Phi
Beta Kappa oration, Liberal Education, at Har-
vard, and the following year gave a series of
Lowell Institute lectures on "The Mutual Rela-
tion of the Sciences." In 1859 he was persuaded,

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