American Prisoners of the RevolutionDandridge, Danske
History
American Prisoners of the Revolution
Dandridge, Danske
United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Prisoners and prisons
“To these circumstances we subjoin the manner in which they buried those
of our people who died. They dragged them out of the prison by one leg
or one arm, piled them up without doors, there let them lie until a
sufficient number were dead to make a cart load, then loaded them up in
a cart, drove the cart thus loaded out to the ditches made by our people
when fortifying New York; there they would tip the cart, tumble the
corpses together into the ditch, and afterwards slightly cover them
with earth. * * * While our poor prisoners have been thus treated by our
foes, the prisoners we have taken have enjoyed the liberty of walking
and riding about within large limits at their pleasure; have been freely
supplied with every necessary, and have even lived on the fat of the
land. None have been so well fed, so plump, and so merry as they; and
this generous treatment, it is said, they could not but remember.
For when they were returned in the exchange of prisoners, and saw the
miserable, famished, dying state of our prisoners, conscious of the
treatment they had received, they could not refrain from tears.”
_Connecticut Journal,_ Jan. 30th, 1777.
In April of the year 1777 a committee that was appointed by Congress
to inquire into the doings of the British on their different marches
through New York and New Jersey reported that “The prisoners, instead
of that humane treatment which those taken by the United States
experienced, were in general treated with the greatest barbarity. Many
of them were kept near four days without food altogether. * * * Freemen
and men of substance suffered all that generous minds could suffer from
the contempt and mockery of British and foreign mercenaries. Multitudes
died in prison. When they were sent out several died in being carried
from the boats on shore, or upon the road attempting to go home. The
committee, in the course of their inquiry, learned that sometimes
the common soldiers expressed sympathy with the prisoners, and the
foreigners (did this) more than the English. But this was seldom or
never the case with the officers, nor have they been able to hear of any
charitable assistance given them by the inhabitants who remained in,
or resorted to the city of New York, which neglect, if universal, they
believe was never known to happen in any similar case in a Christian
country.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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