FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. Withrow “History of Canada,” pp. 301-302.
[2] William Hull was born in Derby, Connecticut, on June 24, 1753. He graduated with honors from Yale at the age of nineteen, studied law and was admitted to practice. He allied himself with the Revolutionary party and obtained a commission from Congress eventually rising to the rank of a colonel. At the conclusion of peace he held a judicial office in Massachusetts and served for eight years as a senator. In 1805 he was appointed the first governor of the territory of Michigan and was commissioned a brigadier general in the army of the United States on April 8, 1812. He was court-martialed for his surrender of Detroit in 1814 and after a trial of three months he was ordered to be shot, but President Madison remitted his sentence in consideration of his services in the Revolutionary war. His name was, however, dropped from the army lists. He died at Newton, Massachusetts, in November, 1825.
[3] Their arrival at Quebec is thus described by A.W. Cochran, assistant civil secretary to the governor general in a letter to his mother: “Both men and officers are a shabby looking set as ever you set your eyes on, and reminded me of Falstaff’s men very forcibly. Some of the officers talked very big and assured us that before long there would be 100,000 men in Canada and that they soon would have Quebec from us.” Later on, writing to his father from Montreal on October 10th he further expresses his views on the Americans: “The Americans, I think, bid fair to rival and surpass the French in gasconading as well as in everything that is dishonorable, base and contemptible. * * * Yankees cannot tell a plain story like other folks; they cannot help ‘immersing the wig in the ocean’ as Sterne says of the Frenchmen.”
[4] The spot chosen was Grenadier Island, eighteen miles from Sacketts Harbour.
[5] “Wilkinson’s Memoirs,” Vol. III, Appendix No. 1.
[6] Abattis. These were obstructions made by felled timber which served as a succession of breastworks.