The first contest of England with America sprang from tyranny; she was the aggressor, the offending party: and it seems to have been a moral consequence, that a war, thus unrighteous, should have been characterized by a violation of every humane and honorable purpose. The extent to which British cruelty was carried in the memorable contest of the Revolution, is scarcely appreciated by us. Nothing equals the vindictive, bloodthirsty fury which characterized it in some quarters of the Union. It was almost a war of extermination in the South. There, lads were often shot down, that they might not live to be full-grown rebels, and mothers murdered, that they might bring forth no more enemies to the king. Among the people in villages, and in the open country, existed the greatest suffering, and often was manifested the loftiest patriotism and the grandest fortitude. With such ferocity were they pursued by the British soldiery, that their only retreat became the army. At no moment were they safe. Neither in their beds, nor by their firesides, nor on the highways. Daily and nightly murders frightened the time with their atrocities. Reckless marauders traversed the country in all directions, sparing neither sex, age, nor infancy. Nightly, the red flame glared on the horizon, and houseless children hung over the desecrated, butchered forms of their parents. But of all atrocities, those committed in the prisons and prison-ships of New York were most execrable; there is nothing in history to excel the barbarities there inflicted. It is stated that nearly twelve thousand American prisoners "suffered death by their inhuman, cruel and barbarous usage on board the filthy and malignant prison-ship, called the _Jersey_, lying in New York." The scenes enacted within the prisons almost exceed belief. There were several prisons in the city; but the most terrible of them all was the Provost (now the Hall of Records), which was under the charge of Cunningham, that wretch, the like of whom the world has not many times produced. He had a love for inflicting torture; it was his passion, his besotted appetite; he seemed to live upon the agony of human beings; their groans were his music, their sufferings his pastime. He took an eager delight in murder. He stopped the rations of the prisoners and sold them, to add to the luxuries of his own table, while his victims were starving to death. They were crowded into rooms where there was not space to lie down, with no blankets to protect them from the cold, to which the unglazed windows exposed them, while they were suffering from fevers, thirst, and hunger. In the summer, epidemics raged among them, while they were denied medicine or attendance, and compelled to breathe the damp and putrid air. But, hear what Cunningham himself says of his acts, in his dying speech and confession, when brought to the gallows, in London, for a forgery of which he was convicted: