How the English in 1777 Made Dungeons in the Livingston Sugar House and
Hall of Records.
Judge Charles M. Tompkins, who has been in the Department of the Interior
at Washington since Lincoln first appointed him, as well as his
Westchester County relatives, never tire of recounting the sufferings as a
Revolutionary patriot of their grandfather, Elias Cornelius, who as a
young M. D. in the early years of the war against King George, served as
surgeon's mate in the brigade of General Varnum, whose descendants yet
illustrate the political, loyal and social circles of New York City. When
the Britons of to-day wonder why there exists so bitter a feeling in the
United States against the English government the answer would be that such
stories as grandfather Cornelius had to relate to his posterity (which was
only a sample story of tales narrated by a thousand other Continental
prisoners) emphasized the naturally bullying propensity of all John Bulls
and their inclination toward oppression and cruelty. So long as American
children receive common school education, so long will their own native
logic teach them to hate a government guilty of oppressions toward their
ancestry such as characterized the era of George III., or countenanced the
felonious raid of British troops on the National Capitol during the naval
war in President Madison's time; or learn about the selfishness of the
English cabinet during our civil war time in aiding and abetting
secession. London newspapers have but to remember that Americans thereby
have a three-fold reason for disliking English governments; and a dislike
intensified by reflection upon the three hundred years of their
oppressions and cruelties toward Irishmen. This spirit of hatred and
dislike is probably more rampant in New York than elsewhere, because its
local revolutionary history especially teems with narratives of Tory
oppression in our Colonial city and of Tory cruelties in city prisons and
prison ships and at the Wallabout on the Brooklyn side, fostered by
vindictive provost marshals. The vindictive English spirit of our
Revolutionary era has subsequently existed for the Sepoys of India. In
1777 General Howe did not blow prisoners into fragments at the cannon's
mouth as was done in 1855 in Hindostan; but the story of Dr. Cornelius'
imprisonment in New York City that now passes into history for the first
time proves how English vindictiveness could intensify. When Dr. Elias
Cornelius surrendered his medical future in this city in order to respect
his patriotic instincts by volunteering in the army of Washington, it
occupied posts in the area which is now known as the annexed district of
this city. In the summer of 1777 the hospital stores of General Varnum's
brigade stationed in the city suburbs were sadly deficient; and the city
being held by red coats it was difficult for such stores to be procured.
Wherefore it occurred to Dr. Cornelius to suggest a raid for hospital
stores upon those within the enemy's lines that were as near to the
Continental lines as in 1862 were the two hostile armies along the
Potomac. The raid was undertaken by Surgeon General Tunison of
Washington's General Hospital and Captain Alden's company of fifty. It
proved successful as to capturing medicines, bandages, lint and surgical
instruments; but in returning one section with which was Dr. Cornelius
fell into an ambush at East Chester, where after a brief engagement it had
to yield to overwhelming numbers. The horse of Dr. Cornelius was seized
and also his pistol holsters by Hessian privates, who acted, says
Cornelius, more like brigands than soldiers. They took off his military
cloak and even wrenched the buckles from his shoes and obtained thirty
pounds in money and his handkerchief, and actually showed some symptoms of
grabbing his shirt and stockings. Now, Doctor Cornelius was a
non-combatant as a surgeon and to be respected as such by the rules of
war--rules that the generals of George III. by the aid of Aboriginal
Indian allies hunting for scalps and of Hessian allies bent upon plunder
seldom respected throughout the whole Revolutionary and naval wars. The
ambush had been planned for the red coats by a Tory civilian--for, sad to
relate, the city and its suburbs abounded with Tories and traitors, and
new converts are generally the most zealous. The captors stopped at the
tavern of a Tory named Hunt who taunted Cornelius, whom he well knew,
while at the same time he was dealing out to them liquor bought as he knew
with the stolen money. There the hapless surgeon was detained all night in
close confinement with a few fellow comrades, and watched by sentinels who
threatened to blow out the brains of the first one of the party who spoke
to another.
All this, and much more which now follows of narrative appears from an
original journal of his grandfather, a copy of which Judge Tompkins
piously preserves. On the following morning the doctor and companions
were escorted under Hessian guard to Kingsbridge, and delivered over to
the custody of the Provost Guard. During the day the prisoners suffered
with hunger and thirst, being given only mouldy bread and drink from a
bucket of water into which a pint of rum was poured, and some green apples
which "were thrown at me," says the journal, "as if I were a pig in a
pen." Soon they were marched under guard toward New York, and on the way,
on a point overlooking the Hudson that would seem to have been situated
about where now is Grant's tomb, they were brought into the headquarters
of a Hessian general for triumphant exhibition. It would seem to have
occasioned great sport to the red coat officers to find captured rebels
brought before them to be baited with rough jests and coarse aspersions
upon their disloyalty; and for an hour Dr. Cornelius and his comrades
afforded the fat old beer-drinking Hessian general great delight; and such
as Spaniards feel at a bull fight. Baiting and wounding with the tongue is
often to a man of fine feeling as exquisite pain as to the bull is baiting
with swords. After the Hessian general had enjoyed his fill of rebel
sport, Dr. Cornelius was marched entirely across the island until Bowery
was reached, which, said his journal, "is three-quarters of a mile from
the City of New York." Continues Dr. Cornelius' account: "As we marched
into town Hessians, negroes and children insulted, abused and stoned us in
every way they could think of. Two of our men had become so fatigued that
we were obliged to carry them. And in this way we were paraded as a show,
to be brought before General Jones, who ordered us as prisoners into
Livingston's sugar house." Dr. Cornelius arrived there under charge of
Sergeant Walley (now of historic infamy) of the 20th regiment (Irish,) who
began with apparent delight a course of barbarous treatment. This
generation should remember that young New York (N. B.--It is a mistake to
speak of "old New York" as belonging to a century ago, for only in 1897
exists an old New York) was then intensely tory. The city was really then
"English-quite English, you know;" and the early "sons of liberty," headed
by Alexander Hamilton, the Columbia College student, had enlisted under
Washington. The sugar house in question was full of holes in its roof, and
the prisoners kept in the upper stories were after every rain
intentionally exposed to chills and rheumatism.
"You are a rebel doctor, eh?" cried Jailer Walley to Cornelius; "then you
can dose yourself;" and he confiscated the doctor's commission, which was
signed by Surgeon General John Cochrane (grandfather of that namesake who
is known to this generation as Alderman, Police Justice, Congressman,
Union General and President of the Society of the Cincinnati.) The
commission was also signed by Washington's staff physician, Doctor Craig,
who it will be recalled medically ministered to the dying ex-President.
Dr. Cornelius' father was a tory living on the Sound shore of Long Island
and had resented the rebel proclivities of his son--at this time not yet
of age--and blamed his medical preceptor, the famous Doctor Samuel Latham
Mitchell, afterwards the first Federal Senator from New York, for
instilling rebel sentiments. Being without funds and clothing the captured
Cornelius begged for pen, ink and paper, so as to write to his father; but
Jailer Walley not only refused but struck him in the face with his cane
and reduced his allowance of mouldy bread and water. The father, however,
learned of his son's capture and imprisonment through the tory "Rivington
Gazette," and came to see him; but only to urge him to obey Lord Howe's
proclamation, which gave pardon to all rebels who should return to their
allegiance unto King George. Dr. Cornelius indignantly declined, and the
old tory father left his son to his fate; but after the war ended that son
was enabled to save his father's property from confiscation. New York
rebels were then situated toward Captain General Lord Howe much as Havana
rebels are by the forgiving proclamation of Captain General Weyler.
From the sugar house prison Dr. Cornelius was removed to the Provost
Marshal's prison on the site of the present Hall of Records, in which
still stands portions of the old prison wall. The doctor, because he had
refused the clemency of Lord Howe, was clapped into a basement dungeon
where he encountered a fellow prisoner--a ship captain of Philadelphia
named Chatham, who had as captive refused to pilot a Britsh troop ship up
the Delaware. Provost Marshal Cunningham--probably the most cruel and
inhuman jailer known to history, and because of his devilish proclivities
kept in office to enforce the early repressive measures that the British
adopted towards conquering the spirit of rebels--inflicted new indignities
upon Cornelius and the others, and not only refused the latter the offices
of the provost physician, but punished Dr. Cornelius for attempting to
medically succor them. "But they will die," remonstrated the doctor. "They
are sent here for that purpose," rejoined Cunningham; "and His Gracious
Majesty will forgivingly bury them in Potters Field." That pauper cemetery
was then the area now Washington Square. Here Dr. Cornelius was kept from
Aug. 25 to Sep. 12 without change of linen or clothing or water for
ablutions. Among the prisoners Dr. Cornelius found brave Ethan Allen, who
three years previously had become the hero of Ticonderoga, but had been
taken prisoner in the General Montgomery expedition against Montreal.
Ethan Allen narrated to the doctor, who copied the narrative into his
diary, how he had been put on board a man-of-war in the St. Lawrence,
chained flat on his back during six months in a corner of the hold, and
twice carried on shore in England to be hanged, once also on the coast of
Ireland, and a third time at Halifax. Allen's bravery was not then fully
known to the doctor, who quaintly writes in his diary, "there seemed to
have been much antipathy to Allen." He was not aware either that all those
cruelties and these of Cunningham were brought up in Parliament by friends
therein of the colonists and expressly by vote approved by Lord North's
bloodthirsty administration. And yet the London _Times_ continues to
wonder why so many Americans dislike the country of Queen Victoria's
grandfather, who countenanced the cruelties and oppressions of McKinley's
ancestral people. Adds the Cornelius journal: "I frequently saw beaten
with canes and ramrods women who came to the prison windows to speak to
their husbands, sons or brothers; some of whom would be put on bread and
water diet in dungeons merely for asking that cold water be passed to them
through the bars." When General Clinton and a British force captured Fort
Montgomery its officers were brought to Cunningham's care, some of them
wounded, whom Dr. Cornelius begged to attend surgically only to receive
refusals with curses. The London _Times_ criticizes Weyler for his
treatment of prisoners, and yet he is only in Havana adopting the English
precedents set by Lord Howe and Provost Marshal Cunningham in Colonial New
York City. Soon, however, news came that General Burgoyne had capitulated
to General Gates at Saratoga, when the Cunningham imprisonment modified
somewhat. "We are now even given each a little butter, and a gill of rice
to each, and our dried peas are allowed to be boiled," quaintly and
pathetically writes the doctor; and in January, 1778, he adds, "good bread
and beef and wood to burn." But soon Cornelius was taken back to the sugar
house, where he found "the Hessian guards stealing our clothes and bed
blankets and kicking and beating us." He became so ill, but had made
himself so useful, medically, to the British surgeon that when "the rebel
physician" became ill the former sent him "to the brick church hospital in
the street called Wall." From this hospital the doctor one night escaped,
and in a blizzard traversed the island up as high as opposite Hell Gate
with almost incredible exposure, suffering and romantic incidents; whence
he crossed by boat to Long Island and was cared for by secretive patriots.
There is a pathetic entry in the diary--"passed at night by the house in
which I was born and dared not go in lest my grandfather, a devoted
loyalist should return me to prison." He eventually escaped by boat into
Norwalk, Connecticut, and was enabled to rejoin the army, which was now at
Valley Forge in Pennsylvania. There he shared the terrors of that patient
and suffering waiting of Washington and his patriot soldiers that history
has made memorable, and in his surgical capacity Dr. Cornelius was of
great service to the Continental camps. Two years more he continued in
surgical army duty, but through illness was obliged to seek his honorable
discharge in the very year of Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. It was in
a village by that name in the north of Westchester County that he settled
as physician, but passed most of his declining years in the town of
Somers, dying there in 1823. And many now old men residing in it recall
hearing, when they were young, from the lips of old Dr. Cornelius the
stories of his sufferings in New York City English prisons. He had a
clerical son, who succeeded the father of William M. Evarts as Secretary
of the American Board of Missions, and who in his turn had a son whom he
named after the elder Evarts. The old army surgeon's grandchildren reside
in many parts of the United States, and one of them, Mrs. Hyatt, in this
city. His sword, a gift from Lafayette, whom he attended in an illness,
abides on British soil in the keeping of a clerical grandson, the Rev.
Tallman C. Perry, of LaPrairie, Canada. And summer residents at Mahopac
Falls can in its cemetery read the tombstone of the great patriotic
sufferer in the British prisons of this city, whose war journal in the
possession of the Rhode Island branch of the Cincinnati Society is the
basis of the foregoing narrative.