A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre ofWaterhouse, Benjamin
History
A journal, of a young man of Massachusetts, late a surgeon on board an American privateer, who was captured at sea by the British in May, eighteen hundred and thirteen and was confined first, at Melville Island, Halifax, then at Chatham, in England, and last at Dartmoor prison : $b Interspersed with observations, anecdotes and remarks, tending to illustrate the moral and political characters of three nations. To which is added, a correct engraving of Dartmoor prison, representing the massacre of
Waterhouse, Benjamin
Dartmoor Prison; United States -- History -- War of 1812 -- Prisoners and prisons
In presenting to the world the record of a transaction, probably
the most barbarous which the history of modern warfare can
furnish, we cannot refrain from remarks.--Whatever our feelings
may be, upon a subject so amply calculated to excite the
indignation and abhorrence of every friend to humanity, and every
one who has respect for the laws of civilized and mitigated
warfare, we will, nevertheless, refrain, so far as the
circumstances of outraged humanity will permit, from the violence
of invective, and wholly from unwarranted crimination. Those, into
whose hands these documents may fall, will, however, preserve them
as a monument erected to the memory of their slaughtered
countrymen, and a memento of the unfeeling cruelty of our late
enemy.
Though we are far from believing that there are not persons of
noble and humane minds in the English nation, yet, a uniformity of
conduct, on the part of the Government and its agents, has taught
us to believe that they, at least, are blood thirsty and cruel.
The incarceration of Americans in the Jersey Prison Ship at
New-York, and Mill Prison, in England, in the Revolutionary war,
raised in the minds of the sainted heroes of those times, the most
exalted feelings of indignation and abhorrence. The history of
those prisoners, where hundreds were compelled to wear out an
existence, rendered miserable by the cruelty of an enemy,
professing a reverence for the sublime principles of Christianity,
is already familiarized to the minds of the American people. If
the feelings of Americans were then indignant, what should they
be, on beholding those cruelties renewed with more than ten fold
severity? The conduct of Thomas George Shortland, the agent at
Dartmoor Prison, is such as should "damn him to everlasting fame."
Upon what principles the conduct of this man, precedent to the
ever memorable 6th of April, 1815, can be justified, we cannot
determine. The indiscriminate confinement of both officers and men
in the same prisons, and those the most unfit, decayed, and
loathsome of any which the Government could furnish, was an
infraction of the established laws of civilized nations for the
treatment of prisoners of war. It was equally abhorrent to the
principles of humanity, and only sanctioned by British
governmental agents, and those petty Nations of Savages, whose
known usages of warfare have hitherto kept them beyond the pale of
national law. The history of modern European wars can furnish no
parallel to this part of the history of Dartmoor. But when we
arrive at the slaughter of prisoners on the 6th of April, the
climax of barbarity is complete, and the mind is sated with the
contemplation of principles as shocking to humanity as the
consequences are degrading to the character of the English nation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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