William Hull (24 June 1753 – 29 November 1825) was Governor of the Michigan Territory from 22 March 1805 to 29 October 1813, preceding Lewis Cass.
Biography[]
William Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut in 1753, and he became a lawyer in 1775 and rose to be a Lieutenant-Colonel in the American Revolutionary War, fighting in every major battle from the Battle of White Plains to the Battle of Stony Point and earning the recognition of George Washington and the Continental Congress for his bravery. He was a friend of Nathan Hale, and he unsuccessfully tried to dissuade him from the spy meeting which cost him his life. In 1805, President Thomas Jefferson named Hull the governor of the new Michigan Territory, and all of the territory but two enclaves around Detroit and Fort Mackinac were owned by the Native Americans. In 1807, Hull negotiated the Treaty of Detroit with the Odawa, Chippewa, Huron, and Potawatomi, who ceded most of southeastern Michigan and northwestern Ohio to the United States. In 1812, President James Madison made him the commander of the Army of the Northwest, but he was the victim of his government's poor preparation for the War of 1812, and he was forced to surrender Detroit to the British general Isaac Brock on 16 August 1812. In 1814, he was court martialed for cowardice and sentenced to be shot, but Madison commuted the punishment to dismissal in recognition of his Revolutionary War service. He lived the rest of his life in Newton, Massachusetts, where he died in 1825.