The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77

by Samuel Adams Drake

"We must then retire to Augusta County in Virginia," said Washington, with grave decision, "and if overpowered there, we must cross the Alleghanies."

A volume would fail to give half as good an idea of the critical condition of affairs as that brief dialogue.

Cruelties to prisoners.

First and foremost among the many causes of the army's disruption was its losses in prisoners. Not less than 5,000 men were at that moment dying by slow torture in the foul prisons or pestilential floating dungeons of New York. Turn from it as we may, there is no escaping the conviction that if not done with the actual sanction of Sir William Howe, these atrocities were at least committed with his guilty knowledge.[1] The calculated barbarities practised upon these poor prisoners, with no other purpose than to make them desert their cause, or if that failed, totally to unfit them for serving it more, are almost too shocking for belief. It was such acts as these that wrung from the indignant Napier the terrible admission that "the annals of civilized warfare furnish nothing more inhuman towards captives of war than the prison ships of England."

This method of disposing of prisoners was none the less potent that it was in some sort murder. Washington had not the prisoners to exchange for them, Howe would not liberate them on parole, and when exchanges were finally effected, the men thus released were too much enfeebled by disease ever to carry a musket again.

In brief, more of Washington's men were languishing in captivity in New York than he now had with him in the Jerseys. And he was not losing nearly so many by bullets as by starvation.

Affects recruiting.

We have emphasized this dark feature of the contest solely for the purpose of showing its material influence upon it at this particular time. The knowledge of how they would be treated, should they fall into the enemy's hands, undoubtedly deterred many from enlisting. In a broader sense, it added a new and more aggravated complication to the general question as to how the war was to be carried on by the two belligerents, whether under the restraints of civilized warfare, or as a war to the knife.

Thrown back upon his own resources, Washington must now bitterly have repented leaving Lee in an independent command. If there was any secret foreboding on his part that Lee would play him false, we do not discover it either in his orders or his correspondence. If there was secret antipathy, Washington showed himself possessed of almost superhuman patience and self-restraint, for certainly if ever man's patience was tried Washington's was by the shuffling conduct of his lieutenant at this time; but if aversion there was on Washington's part he resolutely put it away from him in the interest of the common cause, feeling, no doubt, that Lee was a good soldier who might yet do good service, and caring little himself as to whom the honor might fall, so the true end was reached. It was a great mind lowering itself to the level of a little one. But Lee could only see in it a struggle for personal favor and preferment.