January 12: a "bad and shameful" cause

In 1773, several newspapers in the thirteen North American colonies printed a passage from a letter dated January 12, from the British colony of Barbados in the Caribbean Sea. At the time, the British fought the Black Caribs of St. Vincent, a people comprised of Africans who escaped slavery and Carib Indians, for whom the Caribbean Sea is named.

Extract of a Letter from Barbados, dated Jan. 12.
"We have bad news from St. Vincent; our troops make but little way into the Indian quarter, and that with great bloodshed; in a word, we are worsted, and many more of the Christians than the Savages lost; indeed the cause we are fighting for is a bad and shameful one."


Papers reprinting the item included The Boston News-Letter (11 March 1773) and The New-Hampshire Gazette (19 March 1773).

11,644 Prisoners Dead

In his journal for May 8, 1783, American General William Heath wrote, "It was said that 11,644 American prisoners had died during the war, in the prisons and on board the prison ships at New York...." Heath thought it requisite for commander to ensure that provost personnel (those in charge of prisoners) are "considerate and humane" and that the commanders themselves "take care to know, and, if necessary, correct any abuses which may exist."

The source for Heath's figure was a newspapers article published in the April 17, 1783 issue of the Continental Journal (Boston, Massachusetts) and republished by several newspapers throughout the United States. Unlike Heath, however, the author of the article attributed these deaths exclusively to the most notorious British prison ship off occupied New York City, the Jersey:

To all Printers of Public News-Papers.
TELL it to the whole WORLD, and let it be published in every News-Paper throughout AMERICA, EUROPE, ASIA and AFRICA, to the everlasting disgrace and infamy of the British King's Commanders at New-York.
That during the late War, it is said ELEVEN THOUSAND SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR American Prisoners, have suffered death by...inhuman, cruel, savage and barbarous usage on board the filthy and malignant British Prison Ship called the Jersey, lying at New-York. Britons tremble lest the vengance of Heaven fall on your Isle, for the blood of these unfortunate victims!
An AMERICAN.

Historian Philip Ranlet observed that Heath was probably correct to assume that 11,644 represented all prisoner deaths in New York City during the British occupation (1776-1783). Ranlet offers corroborating evidence in support of the figure. (See Philip Ranlet, "Tory David Sproat of Pennsylvania and the Death of American Prisoners of War, Pennsylvania History, Volume 61, Number 2 (April 1994): 185-205, especially 198 to 200.

Ranlet is mistaken (page 197) in treating Heath's journal as the first source for the figure of 11,644 prisoner deaths. (See Edwin G. Burrows, Forgotten Prisoners: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War [New York: Basic Books, 2008], page 315, note 5, who observes Heath probably read the account as reprinted in the May 8 New York Packet.)

English Reverend Helps American Prisoners

On Sept. 29, 1783, Congress passed a resolution thanking Englishman Rev. Thomas Wren "for his humane and benevolent attention" to American prisoners detained at Portsmouth.

In his response, the Reverend observed, "All possible assistance to men suffering so deeply, and in such a cause, appeared to me to be, in the strictest sense, my duty."

The Rev. Dr. Thomas Wren to Elias Boudinot, 12 Feb. 1784, in Varnum Lansing Collins, The Continental Congress at Princeton (Princeton, NJ: The University Library, 1908), page 271.

No Religious Qualifications for Office

James Madison, from Virginia, on the Constitution's prohibition of religious tests for public office:

"Who are to be the objects of popular choice? Every citizen whose merit may recommend him to the esteem and confidence of his country. No qualification of wealth, of birth, of religious faith, or of civil profession is permitted to fetter the judgement or disappoint the inclination of the people."

--From Number 57 of The Federalist Papers

Ralph Ketcham includes Federalist 57 in Selected Writings of James Madison (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2006), but Yale's The Avalon Project concedes that either Madison or Nevis-born Alexander Hamilton wrote #57.

The Custom of All Civilized Nations

On May 11, 1776, George Washington wrote to John Hancock, the President of Congress, "Before I have done, with the utmost deference and respect I would beg leave to remind Congress of my former letters and applications respecting the appointment of proper persons to superintend and take direction of such prisoners as have already fallen and will fall into our hands in the course of the war, being fully convinced that if there were persons appointed for, and who would take the whole management of them under their care, that the Continent would save a considerable sum of money by it, and the prisoners be better treated and provided with real necessaries than what they now are...."

Washington considered the appointment of a commissary for prisoners a "matter of much importance," adding, "Such establishments are agreeable to the practice and usage of the English and other nations, and are founded on principles of necessity and publick utility."

George Washington hoped, among other concerns, to insure consistently good treatment of prisoners. "I shall only subjoin one more, and then have done on the subject; which is, that many of the towns where prisoners have been already sent, not having convenience for, or the means of keeping them, complain they are burdensome, and have become careless, inattentive, and altogether indifferent whether they escape or not; and those of them that are restricted to a closer confinement, (the limits of jail,) neglected, and not treated with that care and regard which Congress wish."

"Resolved, That it is the opinion of this Committee that it would be a great saving to the United Colonies...to have a Commissary for Prisoners appointed for each of three Departments to superintend and take the direction and supplying of such Prisoners as have already fallen, or may hereafter fall, into our hands during the course of the war, as nearly conformable as the circumstances of this country will admit of, to the custom of all other civilized nations."
--Report of the Congressional Committee on the Letter of Gen. Washington, of May 11