Ethan Allen goes on to say: “Our little army was retreating in New Jersey and our young men murdered by hundreds in New York.” He then speaks of Washington’s success at Trenton in the following terms: “This success had a mighty effect on General Howe and his council, and roused them to a sense of their own weakness. * * * Their obduracy and death-designing malevolence in some measure abated or was suspended. The prisoners, who were condemned to the most wretched and cruellest of deaths, and who survived to this period, though most of them died before, were immediately ordered to be sent within General Washington’s lines, for an exchange, and in consequence of it were taken out of their filthy and poisonous places of confinement, and sent out of New York to their friends in haste. Several of them fell dead in the streets of New York, as they attempted to walk to the vessels in the harbor, for their intended embarkation. What number lived to reach the lines I cannot ascertain, but, from concurrent representations which I have since received from numbers of people who lived in and adjacent to such parts of the country, where they were received from the enemy, I apprehend that most of them died in consequence of the vile usage of the enemy. Some who were eye witnesses of the scene of mortality, more especially in that part which continued after the exchange took place, are of opinion that it was partly in consequence of a slow poison; but this I refer to the doctors who attended them, who are certainly the best judges.
“Upon the best calculation I have been able to make from personal knowledge, and the many evidences I have collected in support of the facts, I learn that, of the prisoners taken on Long Island and Fort Washington and some few others, at different times and places, about two thousand perished with hunger, cold, and sickness, occasioned by the filth of their prisons, at New York; and a number more on their passage to the continental lines; most of the residue who reached their friends having received their death wound, could not be restored by the assistance of their physicians and friends: but like their brother prisoners, fell a sacrifice to the relentless and scientific barbarity of the British. I took as much pains as the circumstances would admit of to inform myself not only of matters of fact, but likewise of the very design and aims of General Howe and his council, the latter of which I predicated on the former, and submit it to the candid public.”
CHAPTER VIII. — THE ACCOUNT OF ALEXANDER GRAYDON
One of the most interesting and best memoirs of revolutionary times is that written by Alexander Graydon, and as he was taken prisoner at Fort Washington, and closely connected with the events in New York during the winter of 1776-7, we will quote here his account of his captivity.
He describes the building of Fort Washington in July of 1776 by the men of Magaw’s and Hand’s regiments. General Putnam was the engineer. It was poorly built for defence, and not adapted for a siege.
Graydon was a captain in Colonel Shee’s Regiment, but, for some reason or other, Shee went home just before the battle was fought, and his troops were commanded by Cadwallader in his stead. Graydon puts the number of privates taken prisoner at 2706 and the officers at about 210. Bedinger, as we have already seen, states that there were 2673 privates and 210 officers. He was a man of painstaking accuracy, and it is quite probable that his account is the most trustworthy. As one of the privates was Bedinger’s own young brother, a boy of fifteen, whom he undoubtedly visited as often as possible, while Graydon only went once to the prisons, perhaps Bedinger had the best opportunities for computing the number of captives.
Graydon says that Colonel Rawlings was, some time late in the morning of the 16th of November, attacked by the Hessians, when he fought with great gallantry and effect as they were climbing the heights, until the arms of the riflemen became useless from the foulness they contracted from the frequent repetition of their fire.
Graydon, himself, becoming separated from his own men, mistook a party of Highlanders for them, and was obliged to surrender to them. He was put under charge of a Scotch sergeant, who said to him and his companion, Forrest: “Young men, ye should never fight against your King!”