November 16, 1776: Battle of Fort Washington

After the Fall of Fort Washington (Nov. 16, 1776), almost 3,000 Americans became prisoners of the British in New York City. The British subjected the soldiers to disease-ridden squalor and moldy, maggot-eaten food. The British offered better treatment to any who joined the Redcoats, but most Fort Washington prisoners refused. By Christmas 1776, two-thirds of the prisoners were dead.

See Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 64.