Hull, William (Territorial Governor)

Born: 1753-06-24 Connecticut

Died: 1825-11-29 Massachusetts

William Hull was an American army officer and territorial governor of Michigan. While growing up, Hull worked on the family farm and received a excellent pre-collegiate education. He matriculated to Yale College, graduating in 1772. After graduation, he worked as a tutor and began studying for the ministry. Hull eventually gravitated to a career in law. He read law at Litchfield, Connecticut, and earned admission to the Connecticut bar in 1775. The onset of the American Revolution, however, disrupted his plans for a legal career. When news of the British advance on Lexington, Massachusetts, reached Connecticut, Hull enlisted with the Connecticut Militia. Soldiers in his company elected him captain, and Hull and his company joined other Connecticut units in the Continental Army. From 1775 to 1781, Hull participated in the battles of Princeton, Trenton, Saratoga, and numerous other engagements, rising in rank from captain to lieutenant colonel. In 1781, he married Sarah Fuller, with whom he had nine children. After General Charles Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown in 1781, Hull worked to get the British to vacate a series of forts on the American-Canadian border. In 1786, he participated in quelling Shays' Rebellion. Hull engaged in diplomacy in the 1790s, traveling to Great Britain and France and working with the British to secure a peace treaty with Indian tribes in the Ohio country. Upon his return from Europe in 1798, he became judge of the Court of Common Pleas in Massachusetts. He also received a commission as major general of the Massachusetts Militia and served in the Massachusetts Senate. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson appointed Hull governor of the Michigan Territory, a position he held until the outbreak of the War of 1812, when Hull received a commission as brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Placed in command of American troops in Ohio and Michigan, Hull launched an invasion into Canada in July 1812. The British and its Indian allies blunted Hull's advance, forcing him to retreat back across the border and seek refuge in Fort Detroit. Facing what he perceived as an overwhelming enemy force and the prospect of a siege, Hull surrendered the fort and the Michigan Territory on August 16. Taken as a prisoner first to Montreal and later to Quebec, Hull was later exchanged for thirty British prisoners. Returning to the United States, Hull faced a court-martial for his conduct at Fort Detroit. After a lengthy proceeding, the court found Hull guilty of cowardice in the face of the enemy and sentenced him to death. President James Madison pardoned Hull, sparing his life, but he was struck off the rolls of the U.S. Army. Hull spent his last years at his wife's farm in Newton, Massachusetts.

Bud Hannings, The War of 1812: A Complete Chronology with Biographies of 63 General Officers (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012), 327-28; "Hull, William," Appletons' Cyclopæpedia of American Biography, rev. ed., (New York: D. Appleton, 1898), 3:308-309; Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict, Bicentennial ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021), 80-83.