Battle of Fort Washington (16 Nov. 1776)

On November 16, 1776, Hessian and British forces took 2,607 American soldiers prisoner after the Battle of Fort Washington, on Manhattan.  In his memoirs, American Major General William Heath recalled the shocking news of what befell so many of the prisoners taken at Fort Washington.  "The prisoners were marched to New York; where, being crowded in prisons and sugar houses...they fell sick, and daily died in a most shocking manner.  It was common, on a morning, for the car-men to come and take away the bodies for burial, by loads!"  

William Heath, Memoirs of the American War (Bedford, Mass.: Applewood Books, 2009 [originally published in 1798]), pages 97-98.  For Ethan Allen's description of the carts that carried the dead to mass graves, please consult the posts here and here.