They
were aboard eleven days, and kept on coarse broken bread, and less
pork than before, and had no fire for sick or well; crowded between
decks, where twenty-eight died through ill-usage and cold." (This is
taken from the "History of Litchfield," page 39.)
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER DATED NEW YORK, DEC. 26, 1776
"The distress of the prisoners cannot be communicated in words. Twenty
or thirty die every day; they lie in heaps unburied; what numbers of
my countrymen have died by cold and hunger, perished for want of the
common necessaries of life! I have seen it! This, sir, is the boasted
British clemency! I myself had well nigh perished under it. The New
England people can have no idea of such barbarous policy. Nothing can
stop such treatment but retaliation. I ever despised private revenge,
but that of the public must be in this case, both just and necessary;
it is due to the manes of our murdered countrymen, and that alone can
protect the survivors in the like situation. Rather than experience
again their barbarity and insults, may I fall by the sword of the
Hessians."
Onderdonk, who quotes this fragment, gives us no clue to the writer. A
man named S. Young testifies that, "he was taken at Fort Washington
and, with 500 prisoners, was kept in a barn, and had no provisions
until Monday night, when the enemy threw into the stable, in a
confused manner, as if to so many hogs, a quantity of biscuits in
crumbs, mostly mouldy, and some crawling with maggots, which the
prisoners were obliged to scramble for without any division.
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