To James Madison from Isaac A. Coles, 4 June 1814
From Isaac A. Coles
Enniscorthy albemarle June 4th. 1814.
I. A. Coles late col: of the 12th. Regt. of infantry, begs leave to make known to the President, the reasons which have compelled him to resign his commission in the army of the United States.
1st, Because junior officers have been promoted over him, without being entitled to that distinction by any preeminent services.
The cases of Col: Ripley & Col: Preston are alluded to.
Col: Ripley was junior to Col. Coles, tho’ it is believed that he is a meritorious and deserving officer.1
Col: Preston also junior to Col: Coles has not been distinguished except at williamsburg, when he served under Col: Coles’ Command, & was wounded late in the action as he was drawing off his men.2
This promotion is also marked by another circumstance not unworthy the notice of the President. There had been a long contest between col. Preston & Col: Coles for rank—the subject was referred by the senate to the Secretary of War who publicly, & in a written communication to that Body, decided in Col: Coles’ favor, while at the same time he gave private assurances to Col: Preston’s friends that he should be promoted over Col: Coles’ head,* thereby rendering his public and official declaration a mere mockery.3
2dly. Because the Dept have failed to sustain him in the legitimate exercise of his authority as an officer, by countenancing & rewarding those under his command, who by their intrigues have excited jealousies, hatreds & feuds among the officers of his Regt., and who have in other ways been guilty of the greatest degree of violence & insubordination.
When I. A. Coles became entitled to a Col. Comd. he was arranged by the Dept. to the 12th. Regt. of Infantry the officers of which were desirous of serving under Col: Preston. These young men a majority of whom had never seen Col: Coles, in order to serve their friend and former Commander, sent a memorial to the Secretary of war highly disrespectful to Col: Coles,4 and their ringleader, the particular & intimate associate of Col: Preston, addressed to him also a letter as abusive of the Commandt. as could be penned by man5—& yet the head of the war Dept. suffered this communication to lay on his Table, without noticing either the officers, the Surgeon, or the Commandt., tho’ a court of inquiry was earnestly requested by the latter.6 Thus encouraged his officers became emboldened in their resistance—the Comdt. was challenged to fight by the surgeon of his Regt., and when this officer was afterwards cashiered by the sentence of a court martial, he was not only pardoned but promoted—the war Dept. thereby holding out rewards to those of the officers who remained, to persevere in their course of violence and outrage.7
It is further worthy of remark that on the trial of the surgeon this abusive letter of his to the Secretary of War was suffered to be filed in evidence in as much as its contents had been tacitly sanctioned by the war Dept.
Thus after two years of service, during which time his fidelity, his activity & zeal, in the discharge of his duty has not been questioned, Col: Coles finds himself overlooked in favor of one, his junior in rank, not distinguished by any particular service, & who by his intrigues & improper interference in the concerns of his (Col: Coles’) Regiment, has strewed division & dissension thro’ the ranks of the army; and he finds too the turbulent, the riotous and insubordinate officers of his own corps, not only sheltered from well merited punished [sic], but countenanced & even rewarded by the war Dept.
Under these circumstances Col: Coles has felt himself compelled—reluctantly compelled to quit the service of his Country.8
* I have a letter from Mr. Giles stating this fact.
RC (ICHi: Edward Coles Papers). Docketed by JM. Filed in the same collection are Coles’s 8 May 1814 letter to the adjutant general (1 p.; docketed in an unidentified hand: “Answered 14 May”), forwarding his resignation of the same date addressed to Armstrong (1 p.); and a copy of Coles to the adjutant general, 31 May 1814 (1 p.; docketed by JM), acknowledging receipt of the latter’s 14 May reply, promising to forward his accounts, reporting that recruits for the Twelfth Regiment of Infantry were “on their march to Plattsburg,” and stating that he would “await the further Orders of the Govt.” in Albemarle County, Virginia.
1. For Eleazer Wheelock Ripley’s promotion to the rank of brigadier general, see John Armstrong to JM, 5 Dec. 1813, n. 5. He had been appointed a lieutenant colonel in the Twenty-first Regiment of Infantry on 12 Mar. 1812, while Coles was appointed to the same rank in the Twentieth Regiment of Infantry on 6 July 1812, the last day of the first session of the Twelfth Congress ( 1:316, 832; 12th Cong., 1st sess., 319, 322). For the argument by which Coles nevertheless deduced that he had seniority over Ripley, see 6:562 n. 1.
2. Coles referred to the Battle of Chrysler’s Farm, 11 Nov. 1813. No record of James P. Preston’s promotion to brigadier general has been found; he was honorably discharged at the rank of colonel on 15 June 1815 (Quimby, U.S. Army in the War of 1812, 1:340–41; 1:806).
4. The document, dated 21 Aug. 1813 and signed by eighteen officers of the Twelfth Regiment, stated that the memorialists did not respect Coles or even think him qualified to be an officer, and requested that he be assigned to another regiment and that Preston be restored to the command of the Twelfth (Isaac A. Coles, To the Public [Washington, 1814; 30990], 5–6). Much of the outrage over Preston’s displacement stemmed from the fact that Coles was Dolley Madison’s cousin; his promotion was viewed by many as an instance of “pettycoat government” (Ketcham, James Madison, 553; John Campbell to David Campbell, 18 June 1813, NcD: Campbell Family Papers).
5. Coles referred to a 23 Aug. 1813 letter to Armstrong from James C. Bronaugh, surgeon in the Twelfth Regiment of Infantry and one of the signers of the memorial from its officers (see n. 4 above). Bronaugh published an extract of his individual letter in an untitled pamphlet dated 5 July 1814 (DLC: Jefferson Papers). In the letter Bronaugh accused Coles of having induced Capt. John Stanard to sign “disgraceful charges” against Bronaugh that Coles did not wish to make himself and that had resulted in Bronaugh’s court-martial. The court convened, Bronaugh wrote, but adjourned frequently to allow its members to perform more important duties, and heard only part of the prosecution’s evidence. Eventually Stanard withdrew the charges, which Bronaugh regarded as a vindication. He asserted that Coles was guilty of “insincerity and deception,” deserved to lose his commission and to suffer “obloquy,” had evidenced a “meanness of … disposition” that “would leave nothing undone to injure” Bronaugh, and was, moreover, a “dastardly coward.”
On 20 Nov. 1813 Coles wrote Armstrong giving his version of these events. He stated that during the winter of 1812–13 on the Niagara frontier, while commanding the consolidated regiment in which Bronaugh served, he had received “many complaints” about the surgeon. Bronaugh himself, after being put in charge of a brigade hospital, indignantly informed Coles that men from his regiment had “died from neglect,” whereupon Coles investigated and concluded that Bronaugh himself was at fault. He helped Stanard, “who had been most loud and frequent in his complaints,” to write up charges against Bronaugh, then privately informed Bronaugh of them, “that he might have an opportunity to give to the transaction whatever shape he pleased.” Bronaugh’s answer was “menacing,” Coles felt he had no alternative but to arrest the surgeon, and Stanard, after some second thoughts, signed and submitted the charges. Coles enclosed to Armstrong a copy of the court-martial proceedings, which showed that Bronaugh was tried on two charges, to which he pled not guilty: conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, for “openly cohabiting with Fanny, a camp woman, the wife of P. Cumberford, a soldier in captain Page’s company 12th regiment”; and neglect of duty, for “failing to visit the sick” both in their tents and in the hospital, “refusing to lend his professional aid when called on,” and exhibiting “a general remissness in the discharge of his duty” along with “petulance and ill humour.” The court first met on 16 Jan. 1813, adjourned indefinitely on 18 Feb., and was finally dismissed by Maj. Gen. Morgan Lewis on 25 Apr. 1813 (Coles, To the Public [ 30990], 9–13, 35–36).
6. Coles’s letter to Armstrong requesting a court of inquiry was dated August 1813. Coles later commented that Armstrong never took “the least notice … of this application” (Coles, To the Public [ 30990], 6–7).
7. On 25 Oct. 1813 Bronaugh sent Coles a copy of Bronaugh’s 23 Aug. 1813 letter to Armstrong (see n. 5 above), challenged him to a duel, and posted him as “a base liar, infamous scoundrel, and coward” when he declined to fight. Bronaugh was thereupon court-martialed for attempted dueling, and received the mandatory sentence of dismissal from the service; however, Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson, who had received a petition in Bronaugh’s favor signed by seventeen high-ranking officers including Preston, remitted the punishment in accord with the court’s recommendation due to “the unusual source from whence the accusations originated” and Bronaugh’s “personal and professional merits” (Bronaugh, untitled pamphlet, 5 July 1813, DLC: Jefferson Papers). Bronaugh received an appointment as hospital surgeon on 15 Apr. 1814 ( 1:247). Coles explained his refusal of Bronaugh’s challenge in his 20 Nov. 1813 letter to Armstrong, stating that fighting a duel with an officer under his command “would have led to the destruction of every thing like discipline or obedience” (Coles, To the Public [ 30990], 11).
8. On 7 July 1814 Coles requested that Armstrong grant him a court-martial to clear his name of Bronaugh’s accusations. Bronaugh thereupon formally submitted charges of cowardice and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The court, which met in New York in December 1814 and January 1815, found the charges “unsupported by even a shadow of testimony.” Coles was fully acquitted and ordered to “resume his sword, and report himself for duty” (Coles, To the Public [ 30990], 47–48; Daily National Intelligencer, 19 July 1814; Isaac A. Coles, Forced before the Public by Doctor Bronaugh, the Following Notes Place Us as We Ought to Stand [n.p., 1815; 34710]). On 15 June 1815 he received an honorable discharge from the army ( 1:316).