On the third day after our surrender we were guarded to
New York, fourteen miles from Fort Washington, where in the evening we
received some barrels of raw pork and musty spoiled biscuit, being the
first Morsel of provision we had seen for more than three days. The
officers were then separated from the soldiers, had articles of parole
presented to us which we signed, placed into deserted houses without
Clothing, provisions, or fire. No officer was permitted to have a
servant, but we acted in rotation, carried our Cole and Provisions
about half a mile on our backs, Cooked as well as we could, and tried
to keep from Starving.
"Our poor Soldiers fared most wretchedly different. They were crowded
into sugar houses and Jails without blankets or covering; had Very
little given to them to eat, and that little of the Very worst
quality. So that in two months and four days about 1900 of the Fort
Washington troops had died. The survivors were sent out and receipted
for by General Washington, and we the officers were sent to Long
Island on parole, and billetted, two in a house, on the families
residing in the little townships of Flatbush, New Utrecht, Newlots,
and Gravesend, who were compelled to board and lodge us at the rate of
two dollars per week, a small compensation indeed in the exhausted
state of that section of country. The people were kind, being mostly
conquered Whigs, but sometimes hard run to provide sustenance for
their own families, with the addition, generally, of two men who must
have a share of what could be obtained.
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