Certificate on Rank Dispute, 7 January 1781
Certificate on Rank Dispute
[New Windsor, 7 Jan. 1781]
I certify that, in the dispute of Rank between Majors Hull and Cogswell, which was ultimately determined in favor of the former, there was no personal preference to Major Hull, but that his succession to the vacant Lieutenant Colonelcy depended solely upon the established principles of promotion, he having been considered as an elder Major than Major Cogswell from the time of the new arrangement of the Army in 1777. And I do further certify that Major Cogswell has been always represented to me as an intelligent, brave and active Officer.1 Given at Head Quarters at New Windsor the 7th of January 1781.
Go: Washington
DS, in Tench Tilghman’s writing, in private hands.
On “sunday Morning,” most likely this date, GW’s aide-de-camp Tench Tilghman wrote Q.M. Gen. Timothy Pickering a letter that reads in part: “Inclosed you have Majr Cogswells certificate” (DNA: RG 93, manuscript file no. 26006).
1. For the rank dispute between then Maj. William Hull and Maj. Thomas Cogswell, see William Heath to GW, 7 and 21 Dec. 1779; GW to Heath, 13–17 Dec. 1779; and GW to Cogswell, 26 Jan. 1780; see also Cogswell to GW, 7 March 1780.