It is a terrible story that we are about to narrate, and we warn the lover of pleasant books to lay down our volume at the first page. We shall see Cunningham, that burly, red-faced ruffian, the Provost Marshal, wreaking his vengeance upon the defenceless prisoners in his keeping, for the assault made upon him at the outbreak of the war, when he and a companion who had made themselves obnoxious to the republicans were mobbed and beaten in the streets of New York. He was rescued by some friends of law and order, and locked up in one of the jails which was soon to be the theatre of his revenge. We shall narrate the sufferings of the American prisoners taken at the time of the battle of Long Island, and after the surrender of Fort Washington, which events occurred, the first in August, the second in November of the year 1776.
What we have been able to glean from many sources, none of which contradict each other in any important point, about the prisons and prison ships in New York, with a few narratives written by those who were imprisoned in other places, shall fill this volume. Perhaps others, far better fitted for the task, will make the necessary researches, in order to lay before the American people a statement of what took place in the British prisons at Halifax, Charleston, Philadelphia, the waters off the coast of Florida, and other places, during the eight years of the war. It is a solemn and affecting duty that we owe to the dead, and it is in no light spirit that we, for our part, begin our portion of the task.
CHAPTER II. — THE RIFLEMEN OF THE REVOLUTION
We will first endeavor to give the reader some idea of the men who were imprisoned in New York in the fall and winter of 1776, It was in the summer of that year that Congress ordered a regiment of riflemen to be raised in Maryland and Virginia. These, with the so-called “Flying Camp” of Pennsylvania, made the bulk of the soldiers taken prisoners at Fort Washington on the fatal 16th of November. Washington had already proved to his own satisfaction the value of such soldiers; not only by his experience with them in the French and Indian wars, but also during the siege of Boston in 1775-6.
These hardy young riflemen were at first called by the British “regulars,” “a rabble in calico petticoats,” as a term of contempt. Their uniform consisted of tow linen or homespun hunting shirts, buckskin breeches, leggings and moccasins. They wore round felt hats, looped on one side and ornamented with a buck tail. They carried long rifles, shot pouches, tomahawks, and scalping knives.
They soon proved themselves of great value for their superior marksmanship, and the British, who began by scoffing at them, ended by fearing and hating them as they feared and hated no other troops. The many accounts of the skill of these riflemen are interesting, and some of them shall be given here.
One of the first companies that marched to the aid of Washington when he was at Cambridge in 1775 was that of Captain Michael Cresap, which was raised partly in Maryland and partly in the western part of Virginia. This gallant young officer died in New York in the fall of 1775, a year before the surrender of Fort Washington, yet his company may be taken as a fair sample of what the riflemen of the frontiers of our country were, and of what they could do. We will therefore give the words of an eyewitness of their performances. This account is taken from the Pennsylvania Journal of August 23rd, 1775.
“On Friday evening last arrived at Lancaster, Pa., on their way to the American camp, Captain Cresap’s Company of Riflemen, consisting of one hundred and thirty active, brave young fellows, many of whom have been in the late expedition under Lord Dunmore against the Indians. They bear in their bodies visible marks of their prowess, and show scars and wounds which would do honour to Homer’s Iliad. They show you, to use the poet’s words: