Too long have they lain in the ditches where they were thrown, a
cart-full at a time, like dead dogs, by their heartless murderers,
unknown, unwept, unhonored, and unremembered. Who can tell us their
names? What monument has been raised to their memories?
It is true that a beautiful shaft has lately been erected to the
martyrs of the Jersey prison ship, about whom we will have very much
to say. But it is improbable that even the place of interment of the
hundreds of prisoners who perished in the churches, 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 1776. These ditches were dug by American
soldiers, as part of the entrenchments, during Washington's occupation
of Manhattan in the spring of 1776. Little did these young men think
that they were, in some cases, literally digging a grave for
themselves.
More than a hundred and thirty years have passed since the victims of
Cunningham's cruelty and rapacity were starved to death in churches
consecrated to the praise and worship of a God of love. It is a tardy
recognition 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.
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