HISTORY

Court Marshal of William Hull, March 18, 1813

Two months after his release in a prisoner exchange, the general court marshal of William Hull begins. He is charged with treason for surrendering Ft. Detroit the previous year.

March 26, 1813

The court decided that General Hull was not guilty of treason, but found him guilty of cowardice, and neglect of duty as well as unofficer-like conduct. He was sentenced to be shot dead, and his name to be struck from the rolls of the army. The court strongly recommended him to the mercy of the President, on account of his age and his revolutionary services. Mr. Madison pardoned him, and he retired to his farm, to live in comparative obscurity, under a cloud of almost universal reproach, for about twelve years. He wrote a vindication of his conduct in the campaign of 1812, in a series of letters, published in the American Statesman newspaper in Boston, and on his dying bed he declared his belief that he was right, as a soldier and a man, in surrendering Detroit. He had the consolation of feeling, before his death, a growing sympathy for him in the partially disabused public mind, which prophesied of future vindication and just appreciation.