Thus the lives, liberties, and properties of
the people were dependent solely on the pleasure of the British
officers, who deprived them of either or all on the most frivolous
pretenses. Indians, slaves, and a desperate banditti of the most
profligate characters were caressed and employed by the enemy to
execute their infamous purposes. Devastation and ruin marked their
progress and that of their adherents; nor were their violences
restrained by the charms or influence of beauty and innocence; even
the fair sex, whom it is the duty of all, and the pleasure and pride
of the brave to protect, they and their tender offspring, were victims
to the inveterate malice of an unrelenting foe. Neither the tears of
mothers, nor the cries of infants could excite pity or compassion. Not
only the peaceful habitation of the widow, the aged and the infirm,
but the holy temples of the Most High were consumed in flames, kindled
by their sacrilegious hands. They have tarnished the glory of the
British army, disgraced the profession of a British soldiery, and
fixed indelible stigmas of rapine, cruelty and peridy, and profaneness
on the British name.'"
When in 1808 the Tammany Society of New York laid the cornerstone of a
vault in which the bones of many of the prison ship martyrs were laid
Joseph D. Fay, Esq., made an oration in which he said:
"But the suffering of those unfortunate Americans whom the dreadful
chances of war had destined for the prison-ships, were far greater
than any which have been told.
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