Prisoners of war in the American Revolutionary War

Interior of the British prison ship Jersey

During the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) the management and treatment of prisoners of war (POWs) was very different from the standards of modern warfare. Modern standards, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions of later centuries, expect captives to be held and cared for by their captors. One primary difference in the 18th century was that care and supplies for captives were expected to be provided by their own [combatants] or private citizens.

American prisoners

The Jersey Prison Ship as moored at the Wallabout near Long Island, in the year 1782
The Middle Dutch Church is where the enlisted men captured at the Battle of Long Island were imprisoned. The Sugar House also became a prison as the Redcoats captured more of Washington's soldiers during the retreat from New York. The site today is the location of the Chase Manhattan Bank. (Image from about 1830.)[1][2]

King George III of Great Britain had declared American forces traitors in 1775, which denied them prisoner of war status. However, British strategy in the early conflict included pursuit of a negotiated settlement and therefore officials declined to try and/or hang them, the usual procedure for treason, to avoid unnecessarily risking any public sympathy the British might have enjoyed in the Americas.[3] Great Britain's neglect resulted in starvation and disease. Despite the lack of formal executions, neglect achieved the same results as hanging.[4][5]

The column of the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument, topped by a bronze urn, among trees, with a modern American and POW/MIA flagstaff adjoining.
Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument
Fort Greene Park

American prisoners of war tended to be accumulated at large sites that the British were able to occupy for long periods of time. New York City, Philadelphia in 1777, and Charleston, South Carolina, were all major cities used to detain American prisoners of war. Facilities at these places were limited. At times, the occupying army was actually larger than the total civilian population.

Prison Ships

The British solution to this problem was to use obsolete, captured, or damaged ships as prisons.[6] Conditions were appalling, and many more Americans died of neglect while imprisoned than were killed in battle.[7] While the Continental Army named a commissary to supply them, the task was almost impossible. Elias Boudinot, as one of these commissaries, was competing with other agents seeking to gather supplies for George Washington's army at Valley Forge. Historian Edward G. Burrows writes that, "by the end of 1776, disease and starvation had killed at least half of those taken on Long Island and perhaps two-thirds of those captured at Fort Washington – somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 men in the space of two months." [8]

During the war, at least 16 hulks, including the infamous HMS Jersey, were placed by British authorities in the waters of Wallabout Bay off the shores of Brooklyn, New York as a place of incarceration for many thousands of American soldiers and sailors during about 1776-1783. These prisoners of war were harassed and abused by guards who, with little success, offered release to those who agreed to serve in the British Navy.[9][10] Over 10,000 American prisoners of war died from neglect. Their corpses were often tossed overboard, though sometimes they were buried in shallow graves along the eroding shoreline.[11] Many of the remains became exposed or were washed up and recovered by local residents over the years and later interred nearby in the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument at Fort Greene Park, once the scene of a portion of the Battle of Long Island.[12] Survivors of the British Prison Ships include the poet Philip Freneau, and Congressman Robert Brown.

The American Revolution was an expensive war and it was lack of money and resources that led to the horrible conditions of British prison ships. The climate of the American south worsened the difficult conditions. The primary cause of death in prison ships were diseases as opposed to starvation. The British soldiers lacked medical decent and plentiful medical supplies for their own soldiers, and had even less reserved for prisoners. Offshore of the Northern states, conditions on prison ships caused many prisoners to enlist in the British military to save their lives. Most American POWs that survived incarceration were held until late 1779, in which they were exchanged for British POWs. Prisoners who were extremely ill were often moved to hospital ships, although poor supplies prevented any difference between prison and hospital ships.[13]

Continental Army prisoners of war from Cherry Valley were held by Loyalists at Fort Niagara near Niagara Falls, New York and at Fort Chambly near Montreal.[14][15]

America's Prisoners

See also: Convention Army

American Laws of War

During the time of the American Revolutionary War, George Washington and his Continental Army put the laws of war into practice regarding prisoners of war, unlike their opponents who did not. The Americans believed that all captives should be taken prisoner. On September 14, 1775, Washington, commander of the Northern Expeditionary Force, while at camp in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote to Colonel Benedict Arnold that: "Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require."[16][17] After winning the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day 1776, Washington found himself left with hundreds of Hessian troops who had surrendered to the Americans. Washington ordered his troops to take the prisoners in and "treat them with humanity," which they did. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands," Washington said.[18] The official stance in the capturing of enemy troops was one of mercy.

Grievances

Edward G. Burrows remarks that, although British and Hessian captives did "fare better on the whole than their American counterparts", there were nevertheless "instances of outrageous cruelty" against them,[19] that "certain state governments had particularly bad records of prisoner abuse".[20] and that there were "numerous…complaints over the years from enemy prisoners about bad food, squalor and physical abuse." [21] The treatment of prisoners of war varied from state to state. Provisions among the prisoners also varied, but in general became ranged from mediocre to bad in the last years of the war.

British and German Prisoners

The British and Germans shared similar and differing experiences as POWs. The Continental Congress' policies on the treatment of POWs remained the same for all enemy combatants, so the prisoner system was generally the same for the two nationalities. However, the British troops were valued more than the German mercenaries, so there are much more examples of British prisoner exchanges than German prisoner exchanges. Americans grew to hate the British prisoners more than the Germans. German prisoners were much less ill-behaved than the British. The British were more likely to cause disturbances, get into fights, and oppose the guards and the militia, and this was because they were more invested in the defeat of the Americans than the Germans were.[22]

Loyalists

Loyalists were the most hated POWs. The Continental Congress took the stance that prisoners of war were enemy combatants and not criminals, as such the treatment of POWs differed from criminals. However, depending on the state, Loyalists were often treated more like criminals than POWS. Debate waged throughout the colonies whether to treat Loyalists as enemy soldiers or treasonous citizens.[23]

Prison Towns

There were very few federal prisons during the thirteen colonies and Congress was not in a position to create new ones to imprison British and German soldiers. Instead, the Continental Congress sent the majority British and Hessian prisoners in American towns and ordered local officials to hold them under strict parole.

The Continental Congress had the sole authority to decide where the prisoners went, and the local towns had little forewarning and no say in the matter. Prison towns found themselves with the burden of providing for hundreds or thousands of prisoners at a time. In towns that could not afford to feed prisoners, the prisoners were put to work in order to feed themselves. British and German prisoners cultivated gardens and worked for farms, craftsmen, and other forms of unskilled labor. Local communities attempted to make prison towns as profitable as possible and often helped prisoners find jobs or sent them to other towns and states for work. How useful the prisoners of war were, the less of an economic burden they were on the town. Towns that were unable to erect barracks for the prisoners were forced to house them in community churches and even citizens' homes. The Continental Congress forcing Americans to quarter prisoners was a major source of contention among the people.[24]

Even when British and Hessian prisoners of war were not being held in individual houses, they were still in public view, and this caused evoked general fear, resentment, and anger among the townspeople. Prisoners were generally not confined to their quarters, and were able to remain in public for the duration of the day. Security proved to be a problem for prison towns. With no official police force, and the military being preoccupied with war, local militias and volunteers generally guarded of the prisoners of war. Protests in prison towns were common, and people that denied prisoners entry were punished for disobeying the Continental Congress in the form of fines, jail time, and even property expropriation.[25]

The reception prisoners received varied from place to place. Overall, the prisoners stay in Boston was one of relative peace. The prisoners remarked that the general population of Boston was civil and tolerant of the prisoners. In the state of Virginia and other southern states, Wealthy planters and plantation owners were happy to have prisoners in Ablemare County because they could count on an even greater abundance of free or cheap labor. In contrast to that, the general southern lower-class were much less tolerant to sharing residence with abundant prisoner populations. In Maryland, the state militia directly and aggressively challenged the US Continental Army when they attempted to escort the prisoners of war into their state. The south had a collective fear of insurrection that emerged because of the slave population.

The Convention Army

On October 17, 1777, nearly 6,000 British and Hessian soldiers, called the Convention Army, surrendered to the Americans.[26] This put the Continental Congress in the position of holding a massive amount of prisoners of war on American soil, something that hadn't happened on a grand scale up to that point. The Continental Congress were already having trouble providing for the Continental Army, and after Saratoga they also had to provide for enemy combatants.

Surrender of General Burgoyne by John Trumbull, 1822; This painting hangs in the United States Capitol Rotunda
A 1789 etching depicting the encampment of the Convention Army at Charlottesville, Virginia

Background

After British, German, and Canadian troops were defeated, General Burgoyne and General Gates were unable to come to a treaty in regard to the 5,900 prisoners. In the Convention of Saratoga, terms were made that the troops were going to be sent back to Europe and they would never wage war with North America again. Congress saw this condition as an abysmal treaty for one of their greatest victories in the American Revolution and delayed the ratification of this treaty multiple times. General Burgyone grew frustrated with Congress' conduct and openly condemned them for their actions with the convention. Congress used Burgoyne's words as evidence that he was planning to renounce the convention and suspended the convention until Great Britain recognized American independence.[27] The United States ended up holding the Convention Army until the duration of the war.

The Marches

"After spending the next year in camps near Cambridge and Rutland, Massachusetts, they were sent by Congress on an overland odyssey that, by the end of the war, took them down to Virginia, then up to Maryland, into Pennsylvania again, and finally back to Rutland. Almost every step of the way they contended with meagre rations, shortages of fuel, inadequate accommodations, and physical violence." [28]

Over the course of the American Revolution, the Convention Army was marched across the colonies. First they were marched to Massachusetts and remained there for a year, then in 1778 they were moved to Virginia where they remained for two years, and then in 1780 they were moved north and gradually dispersed to different states, cities, and towns until the remainder of the war. The marches themselves were brutal on the soldiers, but their lives generally improved once they got to their destinations. The main reasons why Congress forced the Convention Army to march across America was for security and for financial reasons. Once resources became scarce in the state of Massachusetts, Congress ordered them to be moved into the southern states. The war effort was very different in the north than it was in the south. In 1780, it had become difficult to provide the British and German prisoners of war and their guards with food in the south and their presence there had become a security risk. British had started their official campaigns in the south and this brought about the risk of insurrection among the POWS, and so the Convention army was ordered to be marched back among the northern states and dispersed.[29]

Freedom

There were three ways for a prisoner of war to achieve freedom after being captured. Desertion, exchange, or parole. A majority of the time, a small militia-hired guard was tasked to supervise the imprisonment of captured British and German soldiers. The United States ability to efficiently watch over their prisoners was constantly tested. The Convention Army initially took their POW status gracefully, but this was because they were under the assumption that they would be sent home within a year. When it became clear that the Americans had no intention of allowing the British to return to Great Britain until the war ended tensions between the soldiers and the guard escalated and desertions rose rapidly. Propaganda was used by Americans and by high-ranking captured British officials to dissuade troops from deserting, but it largely failed.[30] Many of the prisoners who escaped captivity took American women with them and reared families. A large number of Hessians remained in the US after the war was over because they married American women.[31] Between the time of the Battle of Yorktown (1781) and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), many of the convention troops, by then mostly Germans, escaped and took up permanent residence in the United States. The American government did not have the means to prevent this.[32]

The two other official forms of reaching freedom, parole and exchange, was common among high-ranking officers. Parole specifically dealt with individual prisoners of war and so the process of being removed from imprisonment or house arrest, and instead placed on parole, was a very simple and speedy process. This was what most British and German prisoners of war sought after. The degree of liberty when on parole varied and the breaking of parole was common, as many used it just to make desertion easier. Some British and Hessian prisoners of war were paroled to American farmers. Their labor made up for shortages caused by the number of men serving in the Continental Army. Exchange, however, was a very complex and slow process because it involved negotiation and diplomacy between a new and inexperienced nation and a state that absolutely refused to recognize American independence. A major hindrance to exchange was the reluctance of the British to concede non-rebel status to her adversaries. The British's perception of the Americans being rebels prevented exchange. A degree of mutual acceptance between Congress and the States, of the principle of exchange and procedure in its implementing must have been attained by the end of March, 1777. Exchange handled primarily by Congress instead of state powers.[33] While state and local government had considerable power over parole, the federal government had power of negotiating exchanges.

Reaction and Impact

The capture of thousands of British prisoners of war in the hands of the Americans had the effect of further dissuading British officials from hanging Colonial prisoners, despite the abandoned hopes of a settlement by this stage, as they feared reprisals on prisoners being held by the Americans.[34] After the Convention Army was captured, the rate of prisoner exchanges increased dramatically as a result.

During the first years of the revolution prisoners of war, the Continental Congress tried to give prisoners of war the same amount of provisions as the soldiers guarding them. However, after the capture of the Convention Army resources turned scarce and the federal government had to rely on state governments to provide for POWs. From 1777-1778, General Clinton was providing food and subsidence on the Convention Army, but he eventually decided to end his assistance. Clinton placed the full economic burden of providing for the prisoners on the American government. In order to compensate for the lack of resources Congress could give to the British and German prisoners they moved them from state to state. The marches were largely a result of diminishing provisions.[35]

Aside from the official marching of the Convention Army, captured prisoners were paraded through cities after military victories as a form of celebration for the Americans and humiliation for their enemies. These parades were done to boost morale among Americans. The Revolutionary War had devastating effects on communities, and to see clear examples of US progress and victory helped gain support for the war effort.[36]

References

  1. ↑ Hanford, William H. (January 15, 1852). "Incidents of the Revolution: Recollections of the Old Sugar House Prison". The New York Times. Retrieved February 11, 2011.
  2. ↑ Lewis, Charles H. (2009). Cut Off: Colonel Jedediah Huntington's 17th Continental (Conn.) Regiment at the Battle of Long Island August 27, 1776. Westminster, MD: Heritage Books. p. 206. ISBN 978-0-7884-4924-6.
  3. ↑ West, Charles E.. "Horrors of the prison ships: Dr. West's description of the wallabout floating dungeons, how captive patriots fared." Eagle Book Printing Department, 1895.
  4. ↑ Andros, Thomas. "The old Jersey captive: Or, A narrative of the captivity of Thomas Andros...on board the old Jersey prison ship at New York, 1781. In a series of letters to a friend." W. Peirce. 1833.
  5. ↑ Lang, Patrick J.. "The horrors of the English prison ships, 1776 to 1783, and the barbarous treatment of the American patriots imprisoned on them." Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick, 1939.
  6. ↑ Dring, Thomas and Greene, Albert. "Recollections of the Jersey Prison Ship" (American Experience Series, No 8). Applewood Books. November 1, 1986. ISBN 978-0-918222-92-3
  7. ↑ Banks, James Lenox. "Prison ships in the Revolution: New facts in regard to their management." 1903.
  8. ↑ Burrows, Edward G. (2008). Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War. Basic Books, New York. ISBN 978-0-465-00835-3. p. 64.
  9. ↑ Taylor, George. "Martyrs To The Revolution In The British Prison-Ships In The Wallabout Bay." (originally printed 1855) Kessinger Publishing, LLC. October 2, 2007. ISBN 978-0-548-59217-5.
  10. ↑ Hawkins, Christopher. "The life and adventures of Christopher Hawkins, a prisoner on board the 'Old Jersey' prison ship during the War of the Revolution." Holland Club. 1858.
  11. ↑ Stiles, Henry Reed (1865). Letters from the Prisons and Prison-ships of the Revolution. Thomson Gale (reprint). ISBN 978-1-4328-1222-5.
  12. ↑ Onderdonk. Henry. "Revolutionary Incidents of Suffolk and Kings Counties; With an Account of the Battle of Long Island and the British Prisons and Prison-Ships at New York." Associated Faculty Press, Inc. June, 1970. ISBN 978-0-8046-8075-2.
  13. ↑ Ranlet, Philip.Ranlet, Philip (2000). "In the Hands of the British: The Treatment of American POWs during the War of Independence".
  14. ↑ Campbell, William W.: Annals of Tyron County; or, the Border Warfare of New-York during the Revolution, J. & J. Harper, New York (1831) pp. 110–11, 182, regarding prisoners (i.e., Lt. Col. William Stacy) held at Fort Niagara.
  15. ↑ McHenry, Chris: Rebel Prisoners at Quebec 1778-1783, Being a List of American Colonists were Held by the British during the Revolutionary War, Lawrenceburg, Indiana (1981).
  16. ↑ The torture report represents a heartbreaking decline in America's values
  17. ↑ George Washington and Jared Sparks (1847). The writings of George Washington: Being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private. Benchmark Books. p. 90. ISBN 978-1286400098.
  18. ↑ Ron Fridell (September 2007). Prisoners of War. Harper & Bros. p. 19. ISBN 9780870139406.
  19. ↑ Burrows, Edward G. (2008). Forgotten Patriots, p. 190.
  20. ↑ Burrows, Edward G. (2008). Forgotten Patriots, p. 188.
  21. ↑ Burrows, Edward G. (2008). Forgotten Patriots, p. 187.
  22. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga: The Story of the Convention Army. The University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque. OCLC 3486843 p. 39-46.
  23. ↑ Metzger, Charles H. (1962). The Prisoner in the American Revolution. Loyola University Press, Chicago. ISBN 0-8294-0175-X. p. 31-63.
  24. ↑ Becker, Laura L (1982). "Prisoners of War in the American Revolution: A Community Perspective". Military Affairs 46, no. 4. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  25. ↑ Marsteller, P (1894). "Extracts from the Records of the Moravian Congregation at Hebron, Pennsylvania, 1775-1781". The Pennsylvanian Magazine of History and Biography 18, no. 4. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  26. ↑ Craig, Scott. "Prisoners of War". Prisoners of War. Mount Vernon's Ladie's Associaton. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  27. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p. 7-26.
  28. ↑ Burrows, Edward G. (2008). Forgotten Patriots, p. 188.
  29. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p. 27-78.
  30. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p. 39-40.
  31. ↑ Daniel Krebs (1974). A Generous and Merciful Enemy: Life for German Prisoners of War during the American Revolution. University of Oklahoma Press: Norman . ISBN 9780806143569.
  32. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p.77.
  33. ↑ Metzger, Charles H. (1962). The Prisoner in the American Revolution, p. 191-232.
  34. ↑ West, Charles E. Horrors of the Prison Ships.
  35. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p. 27-78.
  36. ↑ Dabney, William M. (1954). After Saratoga, p. 29-30.

Further reading

External links

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