“The officers on parole were most of them zealous, if possible, to afford the miserable soldiers relief, and often consulted with one another on the subject, but to no effect, being destitute of the means of subsistence which they needed, nor could they project any measure which they thought would alter their fate, or so much as be a mean of getting them out of those filthy places to the privilege of fresh air. Some projected that all the officers should go in procession to General Howe and plead the cause of the perishing soldiers, but this proposal was negatived for the following reasons: viz: because that General Howe must needs be well acquainted and have a thorough knowledge of the state and condition of the prisoners in every of their wretched apartments, and that much more particular and exact than any officer on parole could be supposed to have, as the General had a return of the circumstances of the prisoners by his own officers every morning, of the number who were alive, as also of the number who died every twenty-four hours: and consequently the bill of mortality, as collected from the daily returns, lay before him with all the material situations and circumstances of the prisoners, and provided the officers should go in procession to General Howe, according to the projection, it would give him the greatest affront, and that he would either retort upon them, that it was no part of their parole to instruct him in his conduct to prisoners; that they were mutinying against his authority, and, by affronting him, had forfeited their parole, or that, more probably, instead of saying one word to them, would order them all into as wretched a confinement as the soldiers whom they sought to relieve, for at that time the British, from the General to the private centinel, were in full confidence, nor did they so much as hesitate, but that they should conquer the country. “Thus the consultation of the officers was confounded and broken to pieces, in consequence of the dread which at the time lay on their minds of offending General Howe; for they conceived so murderous a tryant would not be too good to destroy even the officers on the least pretence of an affront, as they were equally in his power with the soldiers; and as General Howe perfectly understood the condition of the private soldiers, it was argued that it was exactly such as he and his council had devised, and as he meant to destroy them it would be to no purpose for them to try to dissuade him from it, as they were helpless and liable to the same fate, on giving the least affront. Indeed anxious apprehensions disturbed them in their then circumstances.