"They further threatened to send them all into the East Indies, and
sell them there for slaves.
"In these and numberless other ways did the British officers seem to
rack their inventions to insult, terrify, and vex the poor
prisoners. The meanest, upstart officers among them would insult and
abuse our colonels and chief officers.
"In this situation, without clothes, without victuals or drink, or
even water, or with those which were base and unwholesome; without
fire, a number of them sick, first with a contagious and nauseous
distemper; these, with others, crowded by hundreds into close
confinement, at the most unwholesome season of the year, and continued
there for four months without blankets, bedding, or straw; without
linen to shift or clothes to cover their bodies;--No wonder they all
became sickly, and having at the same time no medicine, no help of
physicians, nothing to refresh or support nature, died by scores in a
night, and those who were so far gone as to be unable to help
themselves lay uncared for, till death, more kind than Britons, put an
end to their misery.
"By these means, and in this way, 1,500 brave Americans, who had nobly
gone forth in defence of their injured, oppressed country, but whom
the chance at war had cast into the hands of our enemies, died in New
York, many of whom were very amiable, promising youths, of good
families, the very flower of our land; and of those who lived to come
out of prison, the greater part, as far as I can learn, are dead or
dying.
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