How
many of the wretched sufferers were in this manner done to death we
have no means of discovering, but it must have been easier to die in
that manner than to have endured the protracted agonies of death by
starvation.
John Pintard, who assisted his uncle, Lewis Pintard, Commissioner for
American prisoners in New York, thus wrote of their sufferings. It
must be remembered that the prisoners taken in 1776 died, for the most
part, before our struggling nation was able to protect them, before
Commissioners had been appointed, and when, in her feeble infancy, the
Republic was powerless to aid them.
"The prisoners taken on Long Island and at Fort Washington, sick,
wounded, and well, were all indiscriminately huddled together, by
hundreds and thousands, large numbers of whom died by disease, and
many undoubtedly poisoned by inhuman attendants, for the sake of their
watches or silver buckles."
It was on the 20th of January, 1777, that Washington proposed to
Mr. Lewis Pintard, a merchant of New York, that he should accept the
position as resident agent for American prisoners. In May of that year
General Parsons sent to Washington a plan for making a raid upon Long
Island, and bringing off the American officers, prisoners of war on
parole. Washington, however, disapproved of the plan, and it was not
executed.
No one sympathized with the unfortunate victims of British cruelty
more deeply than the Commander-in-chief.
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