Prisoners in the American Revolutionary War
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During the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) the management and treatment of prisoners of war was very different from the standards of modern warfare. Modern standards, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions, expect captives to be held and cared for by their captors. One primary difference in the eighteenth century was that care and supplies for captives were expected to be provided by their own army, their government, or private resources.
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[edit] Background
Throughout the war, there were exchanges of prisoners. These were made in the field or at higher levels of organization. Usually high ranking officer exchanges were negotiated for specific named people. There were some exchanges based on numbers for lower ranking people, but these were limited.
Three other aspects were different from those normally seen in modern warfare. The first is that letters were permitted and sometimes even encouraged. Prisoners could buy or exchange for food and clothing, including any money sent by their families. The second was the use of 'Parole' by both sides. This would allow prisoners some freedom, in exchange for their promise not to resume the war. The last is that prisoners were encouraged to enlist in the army of the other side. Over the course of the war, as much as a quarter of each army had actually seen service on the other side.
[edit] American prisoners
The British forces held relatively few places in strength for long periods. American prisoners tended to be accumulated at these sites. New York City was the major site; Philadelphia in 1777 and later Charleston, South Carolina, were also important. Facilities at these places were limited. At times the occupying army was actually larger than the total civilian population.
The British solution to this problem was to use obsolete, captured, or damaged ships as prisons. Conditions were appalling, and many more Americans died of neglect while imprisoned than were killed in the war. While the Continental Army named a commissary to supply them, the task was almost impossible. Elias Boudinot, as one of these commissaries, was competing with other agents seeking to gather supplies for George Washington's army at Valley Forge.
During the war, at least 16 hulks, including the infamous HMS Jersey, were placed by British authorities in the waters of Wallabout Bay off the shores of Brooklyn, New York as a place of incarceration for many thousands of American soldiers and sailors during about 1776–83. Over 10,000 of these prisoners died from intentional neglect. Their corpses were often tossed overboard, though sometimes they were buried in shallow graves along the eroding shoreline. Many of the remains became exposed or washed up and were recovered by local women over the course of following years, later to be interred nearby in the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument at Fort Greene Park, once the scene of a portion of the Battle of Long Island.
[edit] British prisoners
- See also: Convention Army
Some British and Hessian prisoners were paroled to American farmers. Their labor made up for shortages caused by the number of men serving in the American army. Usually their return was room and board, supplied by the contractor.
[edit] Further reading
- Joseph Lee Boyle (editor); Their Distress is Almost Intolerable: The Elias Boudinot Letterbook, 1777-1778; 2002, Heritage Books (paperback), ISBN 0-7884-2210-3.
