ordeal. The whole country appeared to be roused
against him, and Hull at once became the best-hated
man in America. A court-martial was appointed.

At first it was hoped that he would be convicted
of treason, but the evidence showed that this
charge could not be sustained. He was tried for
cowardice in face of the enemy, found guilty, and
sentenced to be shot. The latter part of the
sentence President Madison remitted, in consideration
of his past eminent services in the army. So,
stamped with indelible disgrace by all who did not
know the facts, a ruined and dishonored man, in
his sixty-first year General Hull went back to the
farm in Newton that had come to him through
his wife. Here, surrounded by the most devoted
affection, he passed his few remaining years.

A ruined and discredited man he truly was,--the
reputation and the honor due him from his
countrymen irrevocably lost and by no fault of
his own. Yet his grandson, the Rev. James Freeman
Clarke, asserts that he was not once heard
to say an unkind word about the government that
had treated him so cruelly.

After his death, in 1825, one of his daughters
wrote the story of his life from his own writings,
and the Rev. James Freeman Clarke sketched for
the world an outline of his grandfather's services in

[[132]]

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v?