The history of Detroit and Michigan; or, The metropolis illustrated; a chronological cyclopedia of the past and present, Vol I, Part 62

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co
Number of Pages: 1096

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The Defense of Dearborn, with the evidence it discloses, added to other facts of record, leave little room to doubt that General Hull deserved sentence of death, and it was possibly a mistaken mercy that spared his life, to be afterwards used in vilifying the very President who granted the pardon.

The malignant screed of General Hull called his " Memoirs" is a fit indication of his spirit and man- ners. His military life at Detroit, both before and during the War of 1812, was a mixed compound of pomposity and pusilanimity. He was alternately a braggart and a coward. In fact, there is nothing, either in his civil or military administration in Michigan, that reflects any credit on his character or ability. As a governor, he was such a failure, if no worse, that he might well have been willing that the country should become a British Province, that his doings might be forgotten, or the records destroyed.

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The more it is studied, and the more evidence there is revealed, the worse his record appears. If it be thought that this language is severe, I call attention to the language he applied to many whom the whole country has always delighted to honor. On page 30 of his Memoirs he says, "Both the army and myself have been sacrificed by the Govern- ment, and General Dearborn, the commanding general." On page 130 he says, "No language can describe the base injustice I have experienced, or the vile and disgraceful motives from which such injustice originated." On page 141 he says, "For more than a year every possible effort was made to excite this indignation against me ; and all the offi- cers who could be induced to become witnesses against me were promoted and patronized before the trial commenced. * *

* Neither the admin- istration nor the General (Dearborn) had any other safety than by my condemnation." On page 143 he continues, "I believe, my fellow-citizens, that you will form a correct opinion on this subject, and believe that both the fate of the administration and the fate of the General (Dearborn) depended so much on this trial that they were not willing to trust it to other hands; and likewise that the first court-martial, composed of honorable and independent characters, was dissolved for the same reasons." On page 169 he says, "I was continued by the administration a prisoner in arrest another year, that ample time · might be afforded for selecting such a court-martial, and patronizing and promoting officers, who in their testimony would give opinions which would ef- fect the object of the plot which had been formed."

Notice that he implies that he had been deprived of his liberty. He complains of being under arrest another year, when, in fact, he was practically under no personal restraint. The reason for the postpone- ment of the trial was that Sir George Prevost noti- fied the Government that he did not recognize the exchange of General Hull and some other officer, and this difficulty was not arranged until December, 1813.

After his trial he was ordered to return to Massa- chusetts to await the orders of the President. As to this order, he claims, on page 144, that, as he was sentenced to death, this leniency pending the action of the President with regard to the finding of the court was afforded because "it was undoubtedly hoped that the terror of the charges would have driven me from my country, and that such a deser- tion would have been considered as an acknowledg- ment of my guilt, and an absolution of the faults of the administration." On page 145 he continues, "The despicable meanness of leaving me in a situa- tion to avoid the sentence of which they were ashamed, no language can describe, and no example can be found from Adam to the present moment."

Surely he was hard to please! In the same series of articles he complains both because he was and because he was not placed under arrest. It was cheap work, however, to carp at, criticise, and defy an administration which had ceased eight years be- fore. On page 170 he says, "The truth is, fellow- citizens, the administration well knew your inde- pendent spirit and sense of right, and dared not execute that sentence which injustice had pro- nounced." The thorough dishonesty of his criti- cisms on the court-martial will be apparent to any one who examines the subject. He stultifies him- self and eats his own words over and over again.

The official report of the trial by Colonel Forbes, page 3, says, "The names of the members (of the court-martial) having been called over, the accused was asked if he objected to any of them. He re- plied in the negative, * *

* declaring his con- fidence in the honor of the court."

In his opening address, as officially reported by Colonel Forbes, page 5, he said, "The rank and character of the honorable members of this court will give a weight and sanction to whatever they may determine." In his defense, as quoted by Forbes, on page 19 of first Appendix, he says, "I rejoice that the time has arrived when I may speak in my own vindication, before an impartial and hon- orable tribunal." Further along in his defense, page 115, he says, " Allow me, Mr. President, and gentle- men of the court, with the most heartfelt sensibility, to return you my sincere thanks for the manner in which this trial has been conducted. For though I humbly conceive there has been some departure from accustomed forms, in respect to the examina- tion of witnesses, I know that the court has been governed by nothing but its own sense of propriety. The conduct of the members of this court, and of the Judge Advocate, has been such as I had antici- pated, and everything that I could expect from honorable, impartial, and humane men. Whatever may be your sentence, I shall always, with gratitude, acknowledge that I have had a fair, candid, and patient hearing."

In the face of the foregoing, his own words, writ- ten and delivered at the time of his trial, and then deposited in the War Department, and obtained therefrom by Colonel Forbes, General Hull, on page 146 of his Memoirs says, "Inconsistent, unequal, and tyrannical principles *

* were adopted by the court-martial in the commencement of the trial." On page 217, in referring to the sentence of the court-martial, he says, "It must be evident that a part of the court were opposed to it. I should be happy indeed were it in my power to designate the characters who were only influenced by disinterested and honorable motives."

The calumnious intimations of General Hull are

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repeated in the preface to his Life. On page 14 are these words : "His appointed judges were men high in military rank and titles; but many of them had obtained that elevation and distinction without having rendered any service to the country." General Hull, in his Memoirs, and Mr. Clarke, his grandson and chief defender, would have us believe that the court- martial by which he was tried was organized to secure his conviction, and that not only the admin- istration (otherwise James Madison, President of the United States), and the members of the court- martial were "villains of high degree," but that his former associate officers, Brigadier-General Duncan McArthur, General James Taylor, Quartermaster- General, Colonel James Miller of the Sixth Regiment United States Army, Lieutenant-Colonel T. B. Van Horn of United States Infantry, Colonel Lewis Cass, and Majors Daliba, Whistler, Snelling, Jessup, and others, who witnessed against him, were equally guilty of misrepresentation and falsehood. In his Defense, given by Forbes on page 64 of First Ap- pendix, General Hull says :

A great majority of the young gentlemen who have been called by the Judge Advocate have appeared decorated with their two epaulets ; these have been bestowed, and sometimes with the augmentation of a star, upon gentlemen who began their military career with my unfortunate campaign. By what services many of these gentlemen have merited such rapid promotion, I have not learned. * * * With the exception of a few of the younger officers there are none of them who have not been promoted to their high station without having had any military experience, and without, so far as I have heard, ever having discovered any military talents or genius.

On page 206 of his Memoirs, he says :

General McArthur was a Lieutenant Colonel in my army, and after the campaign, and before he gave in his testimony, was ap- pointed a Brigadier General in the regular army, without having performed any service to entitle him to it, or ever having had any military experience excepting while under my command. The administration could certainly have had no other motive in superseding all the Colonels in the regular army in making the appointments, than to prepare him to testify against me.

General Hull seems to have forgotten, or possibly he only hoped others had forgotten, that many of these officers won their honors by bravery in defeat- ing the British on the same territory that he sur- rendered, within a little more than a year after he had basely yielded that territory.

As to other officers who testified against him, he thus speaks (page 206):

Colonel Snelling was a Captain in my army, and before he appeared as a witness against me, was promoted, and soon had a regiment given to him. * * * Major Whistler was a Captain in my army. * * * At my trial he was wanted by the admin- istration, and he was promoted to the rank of Major, and travelled from Ohio in the midst of winter, to testify against me. He was certainly deeply indebted to the administration, and did not fail in his testimony to make a suitable reward.

Regarding these very officers he so vilifies in his Memoirs he used these words in his letter of August 26, 1812, to the Secretary of War, giving an official report of the surrender (see page 16 of Appendix to Trial) :

Before I close this dispatch it is a duty I owe my respectable associates in command, Colonels McArthur, Findley, Cass, and Lieutenant Colonel Miller, to express my obligations to them for the prompt and judicious manner they have performed their re- spective duties. If aught has taken place during the campaign, which is honorable to the army, these officers are entitled to a large share of it. If the last act should be disapproved, no part of the censure belongs to them. I have likewise to express my obliga- tions to General Taylor, who has performed the duty of Quarter- master General, for his great exertions in procuring everything in his department which it was possible to furnish for the conveni- ence of the army; likewise to Brigade Major Jessup for the correct and punctual manner in which he has discharged his duty.

From his Memoirs and Defense many more quo- tations of similar character might be made, showing the utter inconsistency and recklessness of his state- ments.

General Hull was born in 1753. At the time of his trial he was sixty-one years of age. Was he in his dotage when he published his Memoirs, ten years later? If there were less pettifogging and venom therein, we might try to believe him simply a weak old man. A comparison of statements made by him in his Defense with contradictory statements in his Memoirs reveals an utter disregard of both consistency and truthfulness.

His own Memoirs are the best possible illustration of a statement he makes on page 191 : "The memory of man is not always correct and retentive ; interest, passion, and prejudice frequently have a powerful operation on the mind." Not only is this true of him, but he and his friends seem to have become capable of any audacity in their determination to defend his character. On page II of the preface to his Life, in speaking of his Memoirs, it is said :

These memoirs have been before the public for more than eighteen years, and those of his fellow-citizens who have read them, have risen from their perusal satisfied that the cause of failure in the unsuccessful invasion of Canada was not to be im- puted to the commanding officer, but to an administration that had rushed into war without foresight or preparation.

Reading only his Memoirs, possibly, but not prob- ably, the reader might come to the conclusion inti- mated; but it seems inevitable that any one reading the account of his trial, and General Dearborn's Defense, will be forced to the conclusion that Gen- eral Hull was both cowardly and incompetent. Frequent references are made by him and his friends to his services in the Revolution. The question, however, is not, Was he brave in revolu- tionary days? but, Was he justified in surrendering Detroit ?

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It is for his acts at the time of that surrender that he was tried. Much of the effort in his defense is devoted to matters having no practical bearing on the question at issue. The real question is, Did he at any time during the campaign of 1812 exhibit evidences of bravery or good generalship? No such evidence has been presented, either by himself or his friends. In view of the facts, we must believe either that he was lacking in all the qualities that go to make up a safe leader, and deserved the ignominy that has been heaped upon him, or that the officers of the Government and his old associates were guilty of the meanest possible spite and subterfuge.

Concerning the testimony of the witnesses against General Hull, Mr. Clarke, in his Life of General Hull, on page 404, says, "Subtract that part of their testimony which is made up of their opinions, and the bulk is much reduced." This sword has two edges. It may be truthfully said that both General Hull and Mr. Clarke make free use of opinions in his Defense, while they continually denounce those whose opinions were unfavorable, and even desig- nate some statements given for absolute facts as mere opinions.

Among the palliating reasons assigned by General Hull for his surrender, one of his strongest was the statement that the Government did not support him with a naval force on Lake Erie. On page 8 of his Memoirs he says, "I had every reason to believe, before a war was declared, that such a navy and such an army would have been provided." In the preface to his Life, pages 8 and 9, it is stated that when General Hull left Washington in 1812, "he was assured by the Government that a naval force would be placed on Lake Erie, to keep open his communication with his country." It is deemed a full and sufficient reply to these statements to quote from a letter, dated March 6, 1812, addressed by Governor Hull to the Secretary of War. The entire letter was given by him in connection with his Defense, and covers three pages of fine print. In this letter he said :

I think it must be evident that the establishment of an army at Detroit, sufficient to defend that part of the country, control the Indians, and commence operations on the weakest points of defense of the enemy, would be, as an incipient measure, indis- pensably necessary. * * * A part of your army, now recruit- ing, may be as well supported and disciplined at Detroit as at any other place. A force adequate to the defense of that vulnerable point would prevent war with the savages, and probably induce the enemy to abandon the Province of Upper Canada without op- position. The naval force on the Lakes would, in that event, fall into our possession, and we should obtain the command of the waters, without the expense of building such a force. The British cannot hold Upper Canada without the assistance of the Indians, and that assistance they cannot obtain if we have an adequate force in the situation I have pointed out.

With regard to his carelessness or stupidity in sending the vessel from old Fort Miami on July I,

and allowing his baggage and muster rolls to be placed in it, General Hull, on page 9 of his Memoirs, says, "This first misfortune was occasioned by the neglect of the administration in not giving me in- formation of the war, eight days sooner." On pages 35 and 36, he says :

At this time I had received no information of the declaration of war, and did not consider there was any hazard in the measure. : * * In time of peace with England, there could have been but one opinion with respect to engaging this vessel in the manner it was employed. Having no information of the declaration of war, I must necessarily have believed it was a time of peace, and consequently no blame could be attached to me.

Was it a time of peace? Was General Hull only playing soldier? Was his march through the woods and swamps merely for amusement? War had been anticipated for more than six months, as Gen eral Hull well knew; for he had been in Washing- ton and had discussed the situation.

On page 36 of his Memoirs he says, "On the 24th of June I received a letter from the War Department directing me to march to Detroit with all possible expedition." A whole week went by after he received this letter before he sent the vessel, and, according to his Memoirs, he must still "have believed it was a time of peace," and therefore, he reasons, he was justified in sending the vessel.

War was anticipated, troops were on the march, orders to hasten had been received, and opposing forces were known to be gathering. Should not ordinary reason have taught him that war was probably declared, and that there was danger in sending the vessel ?

On page 22 of his Defense, he says that an order "to repair with as little delay as possible to Detroit," in view of the fact that the enemy would then be at Malden, eighteen miles in the rear, and provided with vessels which would enable them to cut off his supplies, "appeared to me so in- consistent with my military experience that I did not suppose it could have been founded on a declaration of war, or even on a prospect of imme- diate hostilities."

When such an excuse is deliberately offered, we may be justified in believing that if he had received no word of the declaration of war, and if, after his arrival at Detroit, Proctor or Brock had quietly crossed the river, and taken possession of the fort, he would have offered no opposition, because, as he had not been officially notified of the declaration of war, there could be no danger, and no reason to apprehend any.

These statements are illustrations of his argu- ments, and his Defense and Memoirs are full of similar attempts to prove that he was justified in his actions; but no one valid excuse is offered, no convincing proof is brought forward.

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That he was warned that war was imminent, and possibly declared, at the time he sent the vessel, is beyond question. General McArthur testified (see pages 47 and 48 of Forbes' report) that on or about June 26, the time Hull received the first letter, the same mail brought him (McArthur) a letter from a friend at Chillicothe, in which it was stated that "before this reaches you war will be declared," and that it was "the impression at Chillicothe that war was declared;" and further, that these statements were communicated to General Hull, and were the subject of conversation between them; that General Hull "asked what he thought of sending the bag- gage by water;" and that he replied he thought it would be "rather hazardous, as the British might be informed of the declaration of war and seize the vessel."

General James Taylor, of Ohio, testified at the trial (see page 138 of Forbes' report) :

The impression made on my mind, as well as upon others to whom the letter from the Secretary of War, dated 18th June, 1812, was shown, was, that war was inevitable, and that it was sub- stantially, though not formally, declared. I was present when General Hull conversed with Captain Chapin, who commanded the vessel which was sent from the Rapids to Detroit; Chapin talked about dining with the British officers, and asked an exorbi- tant price for his boat. I told General Hull (whom I called out) that I suspected the vessel was sent there to entrap them, and advised that she should not be employed, but that the effects should be sent by wagons. General Hull, however, looked to the expense, and said he did not know much of Chapin, but he knew him to be an American and believed him honest. Chapin reduced his price from 150 to 60 dollars, and was employed.

As Hull was sent to Detroit in anticipation of war, and as he himself urged that he needed ves- sels, and knew that the British had them, was it not foolhardy and careless in the extreme to send his military stores and baggage by the vessel? Did he not have reason to expect that war might be de- clared at any time? Did he not take an unwar- ranted risk in assuming that war had not been de- clared, and that there was no danger? He knew that the mails or express were uncertain, he could not help knowing that there was a possibility of the capture of the vessel; and yet he took the risk. Is it an evidence of good generalship to take a needless risk, involving great danger, with no prospect of gain? The blunder of allowing his muster-rolls to be put on the vessel was a blunder so great that it fell but little short of a crime. It was this occur- rence that gave rise to the specific charge of treason, of which he was found not guilty. If the state- ment made in the Philadelphia Aurora of Septem- ber 22, 1812, was true, even that charge should have been sustained. In that paper Lewis Dent, quar- termaster of Colonel Cass's regiment, who was sent with the vessel to take charge of the baggage, is quoted as saying that on examining the vessel after

she was taken to Fort Malden, in a trunk belonging to General Hull, the declaration of war against Great Britain was found, and that he saw it. It will be remembered that Governor Hull always claimed that the letter containing the declaration of war did not reach him until after the vessel sailed.

We come now to the question of his cowardice. Mr. Clarke, on page 363 of his Life of Hull, says, "It would have required very little courage to fight." It goes without saying that this was the general opinion at the time. It looks very much as though he did not possess even a very little courage. His courage was all in his proclamations, letters, and memoirs, and was of the Falstaffian order. Battles have been won, and victory wrested from defeat, by really brave generals. Of Hull's bravery in the War of 1812, no evidence has been produced. In his Defense, page 60, he says:

I should not, however, have yielded to all these considerations, had the war I was carrying on been only against civilized men. * *

* But I knew how sanguinary and remorseless the savages would be, should my army be subdued and the troops be obliged to yield. The whole country would have been deluged with the blood of its inhabitants. Neither men, women, or children would have been spared.

The same idea is repeated in the preface to the Life of General Hull. On page 16 are these words :

To the latest moment of his life, when aware he was on the verge of eternity, in the full possession of his mental powers, Gen- eral Hull still breathed his thanks to his Heavenly Father that he had been the instrument of saving from the cruelties of a savage foe a people who expected and demanded protection at his hands.

Such sentiments are pathetic, but they have no real bearing on the case. The question of surren- der was a military question. War in its best form is inhuman, and General Hull had no right to sacri- fice Detroit and the territory, a fortified post and an undefeated army, for a possible but really unfounded fear that otherwise the women and children would all be butchered. It was a fear born of cowardice, and not justified by probability. If a battle had been fought, there is no evidence to indicate that, if defeated at all, the defeat of Hull's army would have been so complete and absolute that no further defence could be made, or reasonable terms of capitulation secured. He surrendered without even a pretence of fighting, and the English boasted, and with good reason, that they took Detroit "without the loss of a drop of English blood."

As to Hull's cowardly words and appearance prior to the surrender, the following is pertinent testimony: Captain James Daliba (see page 82, Hull's Trial) testified that he commanded the upper battery on the evening of August 14, and on that

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evening conversed with General Hull "on the pro- priety of driving the enemy from their works" on the opposite shore. He said to General Hull, "Sir, · if you will give me permission, I will clear the enemy on the opposite shore from the lower batteries." The general answered, "Mr. Daliba, I will make an agreement with the enemy that if they will never fire on me, I will never fire on them," and concluded his answer with this sentence, "Those who live in glass houses must take care how they throw stones." Major Thomas S. Jessup, of the Nineteenth Regi- ment of United States Infantry, testified (page 92 of Trial), "I saw General Hull in the fort, and thought him very much frightened when I met him. * *

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The history of Detroit and Michigan; or, The metropolis illustrated; a chronological cyclopedia of the past and present, Vol I, Part 62

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902 Publication date: 1889 Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co Number of Pages: 1096

Author: Farmer, Silas, 1839-1902
Publication date: 1889
Publisher: Detroit, S. Farmer & co
Number of Pages: 1096