New York soon became known as the city of prisons, to the everlasting infamy of the Howes and their empire. By January, several hundred rebel officers would be paroled to Gravesend, Flatbush, and other Long Island villages, paying two dollars a week to room in Dutch farm attics and barns, fending off starvation with oysters and eels, and whiling away their captivity by wrestling, playing fives (a sort of hand tennis), and throwing long bullets (an Irish game that involved tossing heavy stones). “We thus lived in want and perfect idleness for years,” an officer captured at Fort Washington later
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