As I supposed would be the case, I received an order dismissing me from the service as colonel.
My reply was that the governor could not dismiss me without the finding by a court martial that I was guilty of a military offence, and my disobedience of an illegal order, in time of peace, would not be such an offence. I stated that I was ready to try that question, if he would order a court martial. He dared not do it.
I immediately prepared papers to have him restrained from his illegal course. To carry his point, by the advice of his council, some of whom were members of the bar, he claimed that he had the power to reorganize the militia. This was by law organized in certain territorial districts, that is to say, each regiment was to be within a given territory, and the officers were to be residents in their proper districts.
Gardner issued an order to reorganize the militia, disbanding all the regiments and renumbering them differently. In this way matters were fixed so that my residence came in the territory of the Sixth Regiment, a regiment of which I was not colonel, and the Fifth Regiment was put somewhere else where I could not be colonel.
Because of this trick, there was nothing to be done but to submit to the injustice. I said nothing, but waited for a vacancy in the office of brigadier-general of the brigade of which I had been one of the colonels. Under our constitution the field officers of the brigade elected their brigadier, and if there was no objection, they usually elected the senior colonel. My fellow-officers were kind enough to treat me as if I had not been turned out, and elected me brigadier-general. I had the pleasure of receiving from Governor Gardner a commission as brigadier-general, signed by himself as chief executive of the Commonwealth. He could not withhold his signature, for if he did, he and his attorney-general very well knew that proceedings for a mandamus would be after him with celerity and vigor, if nothing more.
