American Prisoners of the Revolution

t some of the Americans, seamen and soldiers, who were so unfortunate as to fall into the hands of the enemy during the period

ished by thousands in British prisons and prison ships of the Revolution; it is because we are in danger of forgetting the sacrifice they made of their fresh young lives in the service of their country; because the story has never been adequately told,

like dead dogs, by their heartless murderers, unknown, unwept, unhonored, and unreme

ches, sugar houses, and other places used as prisons in New York in the early years of the Revolution, can now be discovered. We know that they were, for the most part, dumped into ditches dug on the outskirts of the little city, the New York of 177

gnition that we are giving them, and one that is most imperfect, yet it is all that we can now do. The ditches where they were interred have long ago been filled up, built over, and intersected by streets. Who of

be made to tell to the generations that succeed them who they were, what they did, and why they suffered so terribly and d

the waters of New York. This is because such information as we have been able to obtain concern

ng, for the assault made upon him at the outbreak of the war, when he and a companion who had made themselves obnoxious to the republicans were mobbed and beaten in the streets of New York. He was rescued by some friends of law and order, and locked up in one of the jails which

hall fill this volume. Perhaps others, far better fitted for the task, will make the necessary researches, in order to lay before the American people a statement of what took place in the British prisons at Halifax, Charleston, Philadel