1. For Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson’s 1815 court-martial, see Henry Dearborn to JM, 26 Jan. 1815, PJM-PS description begins Robert A. Rutland et al., eds., The Papers of James Madison: Presidential Series (9 vols. to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1984–). description ends 8:527–28 and n. 1; for JM’s comments on the enclosed transcript of the proceedings, see JM to Dallas, 14 Apr. 1815. JM endorsed the transcript (682 pp.) on 18 Apr. 1815: “The sentence of the Court is approved” (DNA: RG 153, Records relating to the 1811 and 1815 Courts-Martial of Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson). On 26 Apr. 1815 the Daily National Intelligencer printed the charges and specifications, the verdict, JM’s note of approval, and a general order releasing Wilkinson from arrest, restoring his sword, and dissolving the court. Wilkinson published the entire proceedings of the court-martial in his 1816 Memoirs of My Own Times (3:2–496).

2. The enclosed proceedings (16 pp.; DNA: RG 153, General Court Martial Case Files, G–12) showed that Capt. Thomas Hanson of the Forty-Second Regiment of Infantry had been tried by a court-martial convened in New York on 28 Mar. 1815, on charges of disrespect to his commanding officer, disobedience of orders, and a third charge of which the description has been lost but had to do with the burning of public property. Hanson was found guilty of the first and second charges and sentenced to be dismissed from the army, but the court requested mercy on his behalf “in consideration of the peculiar circumstances of the case,” and because he had “previously to the trial made satisfactory explanations and apologies to the prosecutor Lt, Col, James G. Forbes, with which he expressed himself satisfied, and would have withdrawn the charges had the rules of the court permitted it.” On 18 Apr. 1815 JM wrote and signed the following note at the bottom of the last page of the proceedings: “The sentence of the Court is approved, & the execution of it remitted.”