I must remark, had Congress ever been inclined, they might have
contributed to relieve the distress of those whom we are under the
necessity of holding as prisoners, by sending in all in their
possession towards the payment of the large debt they owe us on that
head, which might have been an inducement towards liberating many now
in captivity. I have the honor to be, Sir, with due respect, etc,
Edmund Affleck
Much correspondence passed between the English and American
Commissaries of Prisoners, as well as between Washington and the
commanding officer at New York on the subject of the naval prisoners,
but little good seems to have been effected thereby until late in the
war, when negotiations for peace had almost progressed to a finish. We
have seen that, in the summer of 1782, the hard conditions on board
the prison ships were in some measure mitigated, and that the sick
were sent to Blackwell's Island, where they had a chance for life. We
might go on presenting much more of the correspondence on both sides,
and detail all the squabbles about the number of prisoners exchanged;
their treatment while in prison; and other subjects of dispute, but
the conclusion of the whole matter was eloquently written in the sands
of the Wallabout, where the corpses of thousands of victims to British
cruelty lay for so many years. We will therefore give only a few
further extracts from the correspondence and reports on the subject,
as so much of it was tedious and barren of any good result.
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