Benjamin Harvey Hill (September 14, 1823 – August 16, 1882) was a politician whose "flamboyant opposition" to Congressional Reconstruction is credited with helping inaugurate Georgia's Ku Klux Klan.

Although he initially opposed secession and was elected as a Unionist in 1860, he nonetheless voted to secede in that year, and represented Georgia as a Confederate senator during the conflict.

[3] After the war and near the end of the Reconstruction era, Hill was elected in 1874 to the United States House of Representatives, and in 1877 as a U.S. senator from Georgia.

Hill was known as "the peerless orator" for his skill in delivering speeches,[5] and he was the only non-Democratic member of the Georgia secession convention on January 16, 1861.

Following Stephens' highly regarded argument, based on a conservative reading of the Constitution, Hill struck a more pragmatic tone.

His arguments related to the conservative belief that disunion would ultimately lead to the abolition of slavery and the downfall of Southern society.

[8][9] Yancey left Congress before adjournment to recover from the injury, and his health deteriorated rapidly over the next months before he died on July 27, 1863, of kidney disease.

[9][10] At the end of the Civil War, Hill was arrested as a Confederate official by the Union and confined in Fort Lafayette from May until July 1865.