NEW YORK a PRISON-HOUSE
The winter passed, and when the spring came the British army moved
from Philadelphia to New York City, but not without great trouble, for
Washington's army fought them every step of the way across New Jersey.
The city was now quite different from the flourishing town it had been
before the war. Held possession of by the British, it was a military
camp. No improvements were made. Many of the citizens who were loyal to
the American cause had fled. Those who were too poor to leave pretended
to favor the British, but as little business could be done, they could
find no work, and their condition became worse daily. Thousands of
American prisoners were brought here, making it a British prison-house,
and every building of any size was a guard-house, every cellar a
dungeon.
[Illustration: Old Sugar-House in Liberty Street, the Prison-House of
the Revolution.]
One of the gloomiest of these prisons was an old sugar-house close by
the Middle Dutch Church. It was built in the days of Jacob Leisler,
with thick stone walls five stories high, pierced with small windows.
The ceilings were so low and the windows so small that the air could
scarcely find entrance. Underneath was a black and dismal cellar. The
pale and shrunken faces of prisoners filled the openings at the windows
by day and by night, seeking a breath of air. They were so jammed
together that there was by no means room at the windows for all. So
these wretched men divided themselves into groups, each group crowding
close to the windows for ten minutes, then giving place to another
group. They slept on straw that was never changed, and the food given
them was scarcely enough to keep them alive. Those who suffered this
living death might have been free at any time had they been willing to
go over to the British, but few of the patriots, even in this dread
hour, deserted their cause. To while away the hours of their captivity,
they carved their names upon the walls with rusty nails. Fevers raged
constantly and they died by scores, leaving their half-finished initials
on the walls as their only relics. Their bodies were thrown out of
doors, and every morning gathered up in carts and carried to the
outskirts of the city to be buried in a trench without ceremony.
This was only one of a dozen such prison-houses. There was one other
that, if anything, was worse. It was the New Jail, and it still
stands in City Hall Park and is now the Hall of Records. During the
war it was known as The Provost, because it was the head quarters of a
provost-marshal named Cunningham. It was his custom at the conclusion
of his drunken revels to parade his weak, ill, half-fed prisoners
before his guests, as fine specimens of the rebel army. It is said
of him, too, that he poisoned those who died too slowly of cold and
starvation, and then went right on drawing money to feed them. This gave
rise to the saying that he starved the living and fed the dead. He took
a great delight in being as cruel and merciless as he could, and very
often boasted that he had caused the death of more rebels than had been
killed by all of the King's forces.
Many American sailors were also captured (for the Revolution was
fought on the sea as well as on land) and all these were placed aboard
prison-ships--useless hulks, worn-out freight-boats, and abandoned
men-of-war. For a time these hulks were anchored close by the Battery,
but afterward they were taken to the Brooklyn shore. There was misery
and suffering on all of them, but the worst was called the "Jersey,"
where captives were crowded into the hold, the sick and the well, poorly
fed and scarcely clothed, so many of them as hardly to permit space to
lie down, watched over by a guard of merciless soldiers. Disease in a
dozen forms was always present, and every morning the living were forced
to carry out those who had died over night.
During this year 1778, and for several years after, the war was carried
on for the most part in the South, in Georgia and South Carolina, while
the British soldiers in the city made trips into the surrounding country
and laid it waste. Washington and his army in New Jersey could do little
more than watch.
In the year 1780 the American cause came very near receiving a serious
check, when an officer high in rank turned traitor. This man was
Benedict Arnold, and had been a vigorous fighter. But now he bargained
with the British to turn over to them West Point, where he was chief in
command. Major John André, a brilliant young officer under the British
General Clinton, was sent to make the final arrangements. André was
returning to New York when he was captured with the plans of West Point
concealed in his boots. He was hanged as a spy, and Arnold, escaping to
the British in New York, fought with them, despised by the Americans and
mistrusted by the English; for a traitor can never be truly liked or
respected even by those who benefit by his treachery.
The War of the Revolution went on until the fall of the year 1781, when
General Washington made a sudden move that drew his men away from the
vicinity of New York before the British army could foresee it. Then he
hurried to the South. There, at Yorktown, in Virginia, the combined
American army hemmed in, and after a battle forced to surrender, Lord
Cornwallis, the British commander in the South, and all his men.
This victory was so great that it really ended the war. Great Britain
gave up the struggle, and a treaty of peace was signed.
And now you will see how the British army left the city of New York.