Hull, William

HULL, WILLIAM. (1753–1825). Continental officer. Connecticut. William Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut, on 24 June 1753, graduated from Yale College when he was nineteen years old, studied law at Litchfield, and was admitted to the bar in 1775. He was appointed a captain-lieutenant in the Seventh Connecticut Regiment on 6 July 1775 and captain on 9 October, and served in the Boston lines. On 1 January 1776 he became captain of the Nineteenth Continental Regiment (Connecticut). He rose steadily in rank, becoming major of the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment on 1 January 1777 and lieutenant colonel of the Third Massachusetts Regiment on 12 August 1779. He served almost continuously, taking part in the battles of White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Saratoga, Monmouth, and Stony Point, and for three winters in a row commanded the American advanced lines just above New York City. He led the bold raid on Morrisania, New York, on 22-23 January 1781. Brave and energetic, he won commendations from Washington and Congress. Retained in Colonel Henry Jackson's Continental Regiment on 3 November 1783, he served to 20 June 1784.

After leaving the army he returned to the law, became active as a Jeffersonian politician, and helped suppress Shays's Rebellion. President Jefferson appointed Hull governor of the newly organized Michigan Territory on 22 March 1805. President Madison named him a brigadier general on 8 April 1812, with the job of defending the territory with a motley army of militia and volunteers. He suffered a series of defeats at the hands of the British, including the surrender of Detroit on 16 August 1812, and was cashiered after a court-martial presided over by Henry Dearborn. (Three days after he surrendered Detroit, his nephew Captain Isaac Hull won his famous victory over the Guerrière.) William Hull spent his remaining years at Newton, Massachusetts, where he had established a home after the Revolution. He published a defense of his conduct at Detroit in 1824, a year before he died at home on 29 November 1825.

SEE ALSO Dearborn, Henry; Morrisania, New York; Shay's Rebellion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Maria H., and James F. Clarke. Revolutionary Services and Civil Life of General William Hull: Prepared from His Manuscripts by His Daughter, Together with the History of the Campaign of 1781 and Surrender of the Post of Detroit. New York: D. Appleton, 1848.

Hull, William. Memoirs of the Campaign of the North Western Army of the United States. Boston: True and Greene, 1824.

                              revised by Harold E. Selesky