The High Chancery of Heaven

The August 1, 1778 Pennsylvania Packet (Philadelphia), carried an open letter to Sir Henry Clinton, the commander of British military forces operating in America, and Britain's Peace Commissioners, William Eden, George Johnstone and Frederick Howard, the 5th Earl of Carlisle.  The author was the pseudonymous "Civis."

Civis reminded the Carlisle Peace Commission of the grievances Americans had against British leadership.  In particular, Civis called attention to the mistreatment of prisoners:  "Prisoners of war, who used to be treated with some degree of clemency, have not been entitled to the common rights of humanity....  Hunger, nakedness, cold, cudgels...have been the instruments of destruction."

Civis warned the British, "The cries of these unhappy men, are yet ascending to that throne, where they will most certainly be heard, and when heard, recorded with indelible characters in the high chancery of Heaven."

The essay by Civis was dated July 28, 1778, about a month after British forces withdrew from Philadelphia on June 18.  

Provost Marshal Cunningham

   Captain William Cunningham was notorious for the mistreatment and neglect of American prisoners.  The Irish-born Loyalist served the British as Provost Marshal. 
   On November 25, 1783, the British military withdrew from New York City.  Anticipating the arrival of General George Washington and New York Governor George Clinton, the residents of a home near Chappel Street raised the flag of the United States.  British personnel still occupied the city in the early part of the day.  To Cunningham, the raising of the American colors was premature. 
   Cunningham led a party to confront the residents and pull down the flag.  A contemporary account, dripping with sarcasm, referred to “the humane and polite” Cunningham shouting at the flag wavers “with his usual politeness,” cursing them with “scores of double headed Damns…in the true Milesian Cadence….”  Connecticut Journal (New Haven), 3 December 1783.
   “Milesian” refers to the legendary Celtic settlers of Ireland who arrived from Spain.  For an account of Cunningham's neglect of wounded officers captured at the Battle of Bunker Hill (June 17, 1775), please consult the post here.  For a fraudulent account of Cunningham's execution for forgery, please visit the post here.
     For Francis Hopkinson's denunciation of Cunningham for the starving American prisoners to death during the 1777-78 British occupation of Philadelphia, please visit this post.   In November 1776, American officer Colonel Samuel Atlee referred to William Cunningham as "the most infamous of mankind" for his cruelty and rudeness to prisoners.  

Philip Jones, Irish-American

Philip Jones, an Irishman in the Continental Army, testified that the British colonel who took him prisoner asked “what we did to the Irishmen that made them rebel, I answered I knew no reason excepting they lived better here than at home, upon which he struck me with his sword….” Affidavit of Philip Jones, sworn before Major General Israel Putnam, 6 March 1777, in The Pennsylvania Evening Post (Philadelphia), 3 May 1777.

February 29: Boston Neck

   Under the dateline, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 29, 1776, The New-England Chronicle: Or, The Essex Gazette of February 22-29, 1776 reported, “Last Thursday night [February 29] a party of our men took a Corporal and two privates prisoners, as they were going to relieve the centries on Boston Neck.”
   Brandies Historian David Hackett Fischer wrote of Boston, Massachusetts in the 1700s, “From the mainland it could be entered only through a narrow gate across the slender isthmus called Boston Neck, or by ferry from Charlestown.”  David Hackett Fischer, Paul Revere’s Ride (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 10.  The year 1776 was a leap year.  

February 28

   On February 28, 1776, the Continental Congress
   Resolved, That the committee of inspection and observation for the county of Berks, in Pennsylvania, be requested and authorized to contract, upon reasonable terms, for the subsistence of such prisoners now in Reading as are not supplied by Mr. Franks, together with the women and children belonging to all the prisoners there, and for supplying them with fire wood, and other things absolutely necessary for their support:
   That the committees of inspection and observation for the counties, districts, or towns, assigned for the residence of prisoners, be empowered to superintend their conduct, and, in cases of gross misbehavior, to confine them, and report to the Congress the proceedings had on such occasions.
   Ordered, That the foregoing resolve be published.
   Resolved, That committee of safety for Pensylvania, agreeably to the offer made by them of their service, of which the Congress have a sense, be authorized to distribute the officers, prisoners in Lancaster, in such places within the province of Pensylvania, as to that committee shall seem most proper, taking their parole, which, if they refuse to give, the said committee are empowered and directed to confine them; And that, in executing this resolve, the said committee have a regard to the resolutions heretofore made by the Congress, with respect to prisoners and their residence.
     Worthington Chauncey Ford, editor, Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, 34 volumes (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904-1937), 4:175-176, 164.  For American worries about prisoners in Reading, Pennsylvania, please see the posts for February 4 and February 6, 1776.  For concerns about Lancaster as a home for prisoners, please consult the posts for February 20 and February 21.  For the British and Americans in early 1776 permitting captured officers to have their servants attending them while prisoners, please consult the here, about a prisoner leaving Lancaster, PA for Frederick County, Maryland.