The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (The Revolution Trilogy Book 1)

by Rick Atkinson

The prisoners would be marched in shuffling columns to New York, heckled by loyalists and soldiers’ trulls, who screeched, “Which is Washington? Which is Washington?” American officers who signed paroles were permitted to rent rooms in town or on Long Island; enlisted men were crammed into Dutch churches and unheated sugar houses used as penitentiaries. Redcoat recruiters offered pardons to turncoats willing to enlist in the king’s service. Provost marshals also scrutinized the rebel ranks for British deserters, like Thomas Cairns and Edward Crosby, both accused of absconding from the 18th Foot, and Thomas Cox, who had deserted while on guard duty in Boston in April 1775; all three were found guilty of “bearing arms in the rebel service” and condemned to death. Some loyalists believed that everyone captured should be put to the sword. “The most rigid severity at the first would have been the greatest mercy and lenity in the end,” wrote Thomas Jones, a former New York supreme court judge and Yale graduate. But Captain Mackenzie told his diary on November 17, “I am of opinion it is right to treat our enemies as if they might one day become our friends.” Few friends would emerge from the ordeal ahead, given the barbaric treatment of American prisoners. Within eighteen months, roughly two-thirds of those captured at Fort Washington would be dead from disease, exposure, or malnutrition. No American defeat in the first five years of war would be more catastrophic, wrenching, or ...