The Prisoners of New York
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LIHJ — Founded by Roger Wunderlich in 1988 published by the Center for Global & Local History a unit of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794-3380 ISSN 0898-7084 Editor in Chief Associate Editor Associate Editor Editor at Large Charles Backfish Noel Gish Joshua Ruff Wolf Schäfer HOME ABOUT LIHJ LIHJ BOARD AUTHORS RESOURCES SEARCH SUBSCRIBE Volume 22, Issue 2, Summer 2011 The Prisoners of New York Edwin G. Burrows Brooklyn College Abstract: New York City was occupied by the British for the duration of the Revolutionary War. Tens of thousands of American insurgents, civilian as well as military, were detained in and around Manhattan, the great majority under scandalously horrible conditions. As many as 18,000 may have perished--nearly three times as many as the number who died in battle. For a number of reasons, including the Anglo-American rapprochement that began around the turn of the 20th century, historians have generally downplayed the magnitude of the disaster. Keywords: American Revolution, prisoners of war, the Jersey, prison ships, Wallabout Bay, George Washington, William Howe, Ethan Allen Editor’s Note Professor Burrows presented this talk at a symposium, “The American Revolution on Long Island and in New York City,” held at Stony Brook University on October 4, 2010, and co-sponsored by the Three Village Historical Society, the LIHJ, and Stony Brook University. The LIHJ includes the talk as it was delivered by Professor Burrows so this format will not contain the citations usually accompanying articles in the journal. However, since his talk made significant use of two diaries written by Long Island residents, Professor Burrows offers the following references for readers who might find them of interest: [Anon.], Journal of Dr. Elias Cornelius, a revolutionary surgeon: Graphic description of his sufferings while a prisoner in Provost jail, New York, 1777 and 1778, with biographical sketch (Washington, D.C: Burrows, LIHJ 22(2011)2, page 1 C.M. Tompkins and C.T. Sherman, 1903). A transcription of the Vail journal, with a concise history of its somewhat complicated history, may be found in John O. Sands, “Christopher Vail, Soldier and Seaman in the American Revolution.” Winterthur Portfolio, vol. 11, (1976), pp. 53-73 I I want to begin with a little story. Some of you may have heard it before, but it’s a good story. Besides, all of you know by now that while history doesn’t repeat itself, historians do. So bear with me. The hero of the story is a young man named Elias Cornelius, a native of Suffolk County, Long Island. We know little of his background, except that when the Revolutionary War began he was studying medicine with Dr. Samuel Latham, a prominent physician in North Hempstead. In the autumn of 1776 – probably not long after Washington’s forces were driven off Long Island – Elias fled across Long Island Sound to New England. It was a decision made by thousands of Long Island residents, many of whom would not return to the Island for another six or seven years. Figure 1: Monument to Revolutionary War prisoners at Trinity Church, Manhattan. Photograph by Joshua Ruff. We know a good deal about what happened next because at some point before his death in 1823, he recounted his experiences in a “journal” that would be transcribed and published at the end of the 19th century by his grandson. The journal tells us that early in 1777, now barely twenty years of age, Elias was commissioned a Surgeon’s Mate in the American Army and attached to a regiment of Continentals from Rhode Island. The following August, while reconnoitering British positions near East Chester, he blundered into an enemy patrol and was taken prisoner. He and a dozen other American captives were stripped of their possessions and marched down to New York City under heavy guard, Burrows, LIHJ 22(2011)2, page 2 passing through a gauntlet of jeering, stone-throwing Tories as they reached the outskirts of town. Their destination was a sugar house on Crown (now Liberty) Street, just east of Broadway. This massive five- story stone building – one of the largest structures in the 18th-century city – had been commandeered as a prison for rebels rounded up after the disastrous Battle of Long Island and after the capitulation of Fort Washington that followed two months later. By the time Elias got there, it held around 800 men. Figure 2: Old Sugar House, Manhattan, 1830, in an illustration from 1858. The sugar house was filthy beyond description, Elias recalled. “The top of the House was open to the weather, so that when it rained the water ran along and through every floor and on that account it was impossible for us to keep dry.” The sergeant in charge was vicious and corrupt. He stole much of their food, leaving Elias and the men captured with him only “4 pounds of poor Irish Pork and 4 pounds of mouldy bread for 4 days.” When Elias asked for pen and paper to petition for parole, the sergeant gave him a beating instead. He then sent Elias to another prison, where he was sequestered in a basement dungeon with several other Americans. This was the equally notorious Provost, formerly the city’s New Gaol, which stood in the northeast corner of the municipal Common (now City Hall Park) – “a hideous place,” Elias called it. The only thing that kept him going, he said, was the knowledge “that many of my dear country men had previously suffered greater punishment than mine; and that many of them died and bled in their countrys [sic] cause, and defense.” A week or so later, he was moved upstairs to a large room packed with other prisoners, among them the famous Ethan Allen. It was an improvement, Elias wrote, but still onerous. “While I was in this place, we were not allowed to speak to any friend, not even out of the window,” he recalled. “I have frequently seen women beaten with canes and ram-rods who have come to the Prison windows to speak to their Husbands, Sons or Brothers, and officers taken and put in the dungeon just for asking for cold water.” But Elias got lucky: he developed a cough and fever in addition to the scurvy, which sooner or later afflicted every American prisoner. In mid January 1778 they him sent up to the infirmary that had been established in the Brick Presbyterian Church. One evening, he clambered over a fence and fled into the gathering darkness. Still so sick he could hardly stand, Elias headed west, to the other side of Broadway. He circled St. Paul’s Chapel, then turned uptown, past King’s College, dodging sentries and keeping to the shadows until he reached the Burrows, LIHJ 22(2011)2, page 3 Hudson River. His plan was to cross over to New Jersey, only he couldn’t find a boat. In desperation, he struck out for the East River, on the opposite side of Manhattan, where he hoped to find a way over to Brooklyn. “Soon the moon arose and made it very light,” he recalled, “and there being snow on the ground, crusted over, and no wind, therefore a person walking, could be heard a great distance.” He saw soldiers everywhere and often had to crawl along on his stomach to avoid being discovered. Dogs snarled and howled as he passed. Eventually, miles from where he began, he came to the East River – except he couldn’t find a boat there, either, and had to pass what remained of the night huddling miserably under some bushes. Next morning, exhausted, hungry, footsore, and numb with the cold, he was on his way back to town, perhaps to turn himself in, when some “friends of America” gave him food and put him up for a few days. They then helped him over to Long Island, where he hid out in the woods with two other escaped prisoners until they were able to steal a small boat and row across the Sound to Norwalk, Connecticut. From Norwalk, Cornelius and his companions set out on foot to rejoin the American army wintering at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. They arrived, finally, near the end of March – a full six weeks after he made his escape from the Brick Church. The story of Elias Cornelius is a reminder that from 1776 until 1783, New York City was the headquarters of British operations in North America. It was also the principal detention center for captured American insurgents—civilians as well as soldiers and sailors, officers and enlisted men alike. As young Elias’s story also tell us, captured American insurgents were detained in a variety of public and private buildings scattered around the city – the municipal almshouse and jail, a half-dozen churches, the classrooms of King’s College (now Columbia University), a couple of sugar houses, and one or two taverns. Broken-down warships were also pressed into service as prisons after they had been stripped of sails, masts, and other usable equipment. Eventually, these hulks would all be anchored in Wallabout Bay, a shallow inlet on the Brooklyn side of the East River (remembered today as the site of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard). These facilities, most of which remained in use for the duration of the war, were shockingly overcrowded – twenty men per cell in the city jail, eight hundred in one of the churches, over eleven hundred in the steaming hold of the Jersey, most notorious of the Wallabout hulks. Burrows, LIHJ 22(2011)2, page 4 Figure 3: Illustration of the interior of the Jersey prison ship.