USA > New York > A history of New York, for schools. Vol. II > Part 14
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Wm. Where was General Schuyler, sir, when Burgoyne surrendered ?
Un. Although he had no command, he had nev- er ceased his services, and was with the American army. Read that extract from the Parliamentary Register. Let General Burgoyne tell where Schuy- ler was.
Wm. " I positively assert that there was no fire by order or countenance of myself or any other officer, except at Saratoga. That district is the property of General Schuyler. There were large barracks built by him : they took fire by accident, when filled with my sick and wounded soldiers. General Schuyler had likewise a very good dwelling-house, exceeding large storehouses, great saw-mills, and other out- buildings, to the value, perhaps, of ten thousand pounds. A few days before the negotiation with General Gates, the enemy were approaching to pass a small river preparatory to a general action, and were covered from the fire of my artillery by those buildings. I gave the order to set them on fire : that whole property I have described was consumed. One of the first persons I saw after the convention was signed, was General Schuyler. I expressed my regret at the event which had happened, and the reasons which had occasioned it. He desired me to think no more of it; said that the occasion justified it, according to the rules and principles of war, and he should have done the same. He did more-he sent an aid-de-camp to conduct me to Al- bany, in order, as he expressed, to procure me bet- ter quarters than a stranger might be able to find. This gentleman conducted me to a very elegant house, and, to my great surprise, introduced me to Mrs. Schuyler and her family; and in this general's house I remained during my whole stay at. Albany, with a table of more than twenty covers for me and
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my friends, and every other demonstration of hospi- tality."
John. This was noble, sir! Was it not ?
Un. It was returning good for evil. Now hear what the Baroness de Reidesel says of her recep- tion at the American encampment. Read these ex- tracts from her letters and memoirs.
Wm. " When I drew near the tent, a good-look- ing man advanced towards me, and helped the child- ren from the calash, and kissed and caressed them ; he then offered me his arın, and tears trembled in his eyes. ' You tremble,' said he; ' do not be alarmed, I pray you.' 'Sir,' cried I, 'a countenance so ex- pressive of benevolence, and the kindness which you have evinced towards my children, are sufficient to dispel all apprehension.' Hle then ushered me into the tent of General Gates. The gentleman who had received me with so much kindness, came and said to me, ' You may find it embarrassing to be the only lady in such a large company of gentlemen ; will you come with your children to my tent, and par- take of a frugal dinner offered with the best will ?' ' By the kindness you show to me,' returned I, 'you : induce me to believe that you have a wife and child- dren.' He informed me that he was General Schuy- ler. Never did a dinner give me so much pleasure as this."
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John. As polite as he was benevolent !
Un. The truly benevolent are always polite : gen- vine politeness is from the heart. It neither whee- dles nor flatters. The unfortunate are the first to receive its attentions. This lady and her children were invited to the house of the superseded general. She says, "the reception which we met with from General Schuyler, his wife, and daughters, was not like the reception of enemies, but of the most inti- mate friends ; they behaved in the same manner to-
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wards General Burgoyne, though he had ordered their splendid establishment to be burnt. But all their actions proved that at the sight of the misfor. tunes of others, they quickly forgot their own." Why, boys! what are you crying for ?
WVm. I can't help it, sir.
John. And this is the man accused of stopping letters and commissions ; and of being willing that Montgomery should be "knocked on the head," provided the money chest remained in his possession !
Un. Wipe your eyes, and we will go out for fresh air and exercise.
Wm. But, Uncle, where were Arnold and Morgan ?
Un. Arnold was at this time disabled by the wound received when he carried the works of Burgoyne; Morgan was justly displeased that he was not men- tioned in the despatches which Gates sent to congress.
John. Perhaps he commended him to the com- mander-in-chief.
Un. To him he did not send any advices of his success ; but was carrying on a correspondence with his Irish friend Conway, in which Washington was treated with contempt. This slight put upon Washington was premeditated, as is proved by a let. ter from Wilkinson to Gates, of November 4th, say- ing that he is often asked the cause of this omission. It is farther related, respecting Morgan, that when the conqueror entertained the British officers who were prisoners, and invited his own to meet them. Morgan was omitted; but accidentally coming into the general's quarters on business, when he depart- ed, his name was mentioned, and all the Britons eagerly rose and followed to see the man to whom they attributed, in a great measure, their defeat.
John. From such conduct towards the command- er-in-chief and others, I should suppose General Gates was intoxicated by his success.
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Un. The flatteries that poured in upon him were such as his mind could not bear. His cabal openly declared that he alone was fit for the supreme com- mand. As a step towards it, on the 27th of Novem- ber, he was appointed president of the board of war, and his friend Mifflin was one of his council. The board appointed Conway inspector-general, with the rank of major-general, and powers, "in effect," says Marshall, " paramount to those of the commander- in-chief." A majority of congress confirmed this appointment, although this man had been recently detected in an infamous correspondence with Gates, and was denounced by Washington as a " dangerous incendiary." Happily, General Greene and a num- bor of field officers would not submit to the indig- nity of seeing this upstart foreign officer placed in such an office in defiance of the commander-in-chief. They remonstrated ; Conway was obliged to retire; and the cabal was defeated in this part of their in- trigue. Of General Gates as president of the board of war, I will only observe, that none of his plans were successful, nor any of his measures efficacious.
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CHAPTER XVI.
Un. Aswe returned from our walk yesterday and passed the Record Office, I promised you some ac- count of that building when it was the jail and " pro- vost," and a few words respecting our unfortunate prisoners. The early part of the contest made the balance of captives so much against us, that, added to difficulties respecting exchanges, our unfortu- nate countrymen were left in crowds to suffer by close confinement. disease, and hard treatment, in a manner unexampled in modern warfare. Ethan VOL. 11 .- 17
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Allen was long treated as a traitor, and Charles Lee as a deserter, until the firmness of Washington, and the successes at Trenton and Princeton, convinced the English that such treatment would not be suf- fered to pass without retaliation. Lee was finally exchanged for General Prescot, (borne off from his quarters by a coup de main;) and by slow degrees the English were obliged to treat Americans as men having the rights of a civilized nation. Here
ME
I present you with a picture of the jail, which was built in the fields during the years 1757-8. This is the place in which Captain Me Dougall was con- fined by the general assembly for what they called a libel, and here he was visited by the patriotick gen- tlemen and ladies of the time, daily, for months. And here, when called the provost or " provo," hundreds of American gentlemen suffered under the tyranny of the noted Cunningham, who had the office of provost.marshal to the British army given him, as a
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reward for his services when a leader of the tory bul- lies and others who assailed the popular meetings in the neighbourhood of the liberty pole; which stood to the west of this building, until cut down by the English as their first triumph on entering the town in the summer of 1776. As Cunningham had been forced to kneel at its foot, he probably wielded the axe among the foremost in its demolition. -
John. This does not look like the beautiful build- ing now occupying the spot.
Un. Yet it is the same. The walls of the Record Ofice are the same, neither added to, nor diminish- ed. But by the magick of the architect it is trans- formed from an ugly cage-like nuisance, to a Grecian temple on the model of the Parthenon. It is not only the most perfect building our city contains, in its appearance, but the most perfect in reality-for it is in all parts fire-proof, as all our buildings should be, if men consulted either their safety or their in- terest.
Wm. Were all the American prisoners kept here ?
Un. O no! Unhappily they were too numerous to be incarcerated in many such jails. The prison- ers taken on Long Island and at Fort Washington, were at first shut up in the College, and in' the "new; or middle Dutch church, in Nassau and Cedar streets." An old gentleman now living, (1837,) who was one of Captain Vandyke's grena- diers, and made prisoner on the 27th of August, says he saw the " great fire" from the College win- dows. Another gentleman. Mr. John Pintard, who is still with us, and who as a young man was an as- sistant to his uncle, Mr. Lewis Pintard, appointed by congress to supply necessary clothing for the American prisoners during a part of the war, gives us some particulars which are very valuable, as he was in New York, and had an opportunity for ac-
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quiring knowledge respecting his suffering country- men. He tells us, in a published document, that in the church above-mentioned, "the sick, the wound- ed, and well, were all indiscriminately huddled to- gether by hundreds and thousands, large numbers of whom died by disease; and many undoubtedly poisoned by inhuman surgeons for the sake of their watches or silver buckles."
John. Could this be, sir ?
Un. If, instead of " surgeons," the writer had said "assistants" or "attendants," it would probably be more correct. However, his testimony must be re- ceived, and we must remember that he speaks of the time immediately following the battle of Brooklyn, the recent occupancy of the city by the victors, the conflagration of a great portion of it, and the cap- ture of the brave men at Fort Washington; all tending to create disorder in every department of the then conquering army. The writer proceeds to mention circumstances witnessed and remember- ed by myself. He says, " This church (the middle Dutch) was afterward converted into a riding school for training dragoons. The extensive sugar- house in Liberty street, and the north Dutch church, were also used as prisons. The new Quaker meet- ing-house, formerly in Pearl street, was appropri- ated as a hospital. The seamen were confined on board the prison-ships, where they suffered every hardship to compel them to enter into the British service, and were consigned to disease and death by hundreds. Many officers were parolled on Long Island, at Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Gravesend." Here follows a description of the interiour of the " provost," that is. the building whose picture we have before us, which none but an eye-witness could have given. Read it, William.
Wm. " The provost was destined for the more
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notorious rebels, civil, naval, and military. An adınission into this modern bastile was enough to appal the stoutest heart. On the right hand of the main door was Captain Cunningham's quarters, op- posite to which was the guard-room. Within the first barricade was Sergeant Keefe's apartment. At the entrance-door two sentinels were always posted by day and night ; two more at the first and second barricades, which were grated, barred, and chained ; also at the rear-door, and on the platform at the grated door at the foot of the second flight of steps, leading to the rooms and cells in the second and third stories. When a prisoner, escorted by sol- diers, was led into the hall, the whole guard was paraded, and he was delivered over, with all formal- ity, to Captain Cunningham or his deputy, and questioned as to his name, rank, size, age, &c., all of which were entered in a record book. What with the bristling of arms, unbolting of bars and locks, clanking of enormous iron chains, and a vestibule as dark as Erebus, the unfortunate captive might well shrink under this infernal sight and pa- rade of tyrannical power, as he crossed the threshold of that door which possibly closed on him for life. But it is not our wish to revive the horrours attend- ant on our revolutionary war; grateful to Divine Providence for its propitious issue, we would only remark to the existing and rising generation, that the independence of the United States, and the civil and religions privileges they now enjoy, were achieved and purchased by the blood and sufferings of their patriotick forefathers. May they guard and transinit the boon to their latest posterity.
"The northeast chamber, turning to the left, on the second floor, was appropriated to officers, and characters of superiour rank and distinction, and was called Congress-hall. So closely were they 17+
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packed, that when they lay down at night to rest, when their bones ached on the hard oak planks, and they wished to turn, it was altogether by word of command, "right-left," being so wedged and compact as to form almost a solid mass of human bodies. In the daytime the packs and blankets of the prisoners were suspended around the walls, every precaution being used to keep the rooms ven- tilated, and the walls and floors clean, to prevent jail ' fever; and, as the provost was generally crowded with American prisoners, or British culprits of every description, it is really wonderful that infection never broke out within its walls.
" In this gloomy terrifick abode were incarcerated at different periods many American officers and citizens of distinction, awaiting with sickening hope and tantalizing expectation the protracted period of their exchange and liberation. Could these dumb walls speak, what scenes of anguish, what tales of agonizing wo, might they disclose !
" Among other characters, there were, at the same time, the famous Colonel Ethan Allen, and Judge Fell, of Bergen county, New Jersey. When Cap- tain Cunningham entertained the young British officers, accustomed to command the provost guard, by dint of curtailing the prisoners' rations, exchang- ing good for bad provisions, and other embezzle- ments practised on John Bull, the captain, his depu- ty, and indeed the commissaries generally, were enabled to fare sumptuously. In the drunken orgies that usually terminated his dinners, the captain would order the rebel prisoners to turn out and pa- rade, for the amusement of his guests ; pointing them out, 'this is the damned rebel, Colonel Ethan Allen-that a rebel judge, an Englishman,' &c, &c."
John. During the period in which you have been
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kind enough to speak of the transactions of the north, what was doing this way ?
Un. I must limit myself to events in our state, or those immediately adjoining, and refer you to Mar- shall's history, to Washington's letters, and other works, for the movements more to the south. Great was the necessity in which the commander-in-chief stood for re-enforcements, and urgent his call for the troops which the convention of Saratoga left available. But Gates seemed disposed to withhold them as much as possible. Intoxicated by the applauses of Congress and the country, he felt that the supreme command of the armies of the Continent was with- in his grasp. You will read in the life of Alexan- der IJamilton, written by his son, of the difficulties that officer met with in bringing on the troops, (no longer wanted at the north,) to the aid of the com- mander-in-chief. Morgan, the gallant Morgan, was soon with his favourite general : but the other regi- ments seemed kept back for sinister ends.
Wm. Morgan was Washington's friend ! '
Un. It is said that the slight he received from Gates was in consequence of a declaration made in his blunt way, that no other man but Washington could save the country, nor would he serve if that great man was displaced.
John. The plan of the campaign of 1777 by the English was a great one, I think, sir.
Un. It was. While Howe with the main army proceeded to Philadelphia by the Chesapeake, and . occupied General Washington, Burgoyne was to push for Albany, and Clinton to ascend the Hudson and meet him. Now let us attend again to our own city and the transactions in our neighbourhood; leaving the persecuted commander-in-chief to place his army in such winter quarters as they could form
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for themselves by building huts in the woods at Valley Forge on the Schuylkill.
WVm. What do you mean by the commander-in- chief being persecuted ?
Un. The hints and insinuations of Lee, the ca- lumnies of Gates, and his adherents, had produced a party in Congress that amounted to a majority. The Irish officer who had been in the French ser- vice, Conway, soon became one of the Gates' faction, and violently opposed to Washington and his friends, particularly to the Baron de Kalb and the Marquis de Lafayette. This Conway became disagreeable to Washington, first by presumption, and then in con- sequence of a disclosure made of a paragraph in a let- ter from him to Crates, in which he says, " Hearen has been determined to save your country, or a weak general and bad counsellors would have ruined it."
John. This is like Charles Lee's letter the day he was taken prisoner.
Un. It shows the vanity and self-conceit of these British officers, and their blind adiniration of Gates. The expressions of Conway were repeated to Wash- ington, and (as Mifflin informed Gates by letter) were enclosed by the general to Conway without remarks, who, says Mifflin, supported the opinion he had given, "the sentiment was not apologized for." Gates, on receiving this information from Mifilin, wrote to Conway, entreating to know which of the letters was copied off, and to Mifflin, expressing his uneasiness and anxiety to discover the villain who had " played him this treacherous trick." He like- wise immediately wrote a letter to General Wash- ington, conjuring him to assist, as he says, in " trac- ing out the author of the infidelity which put extracts from General Conway's letters to me into your hands." He says, the letters have been "steal- ingly copied." This, instead of being sent direct
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to the general, was enclosed to congress. Upon hearing of this discovery, Lafayette wrote to Wash- ington, informing him of Conway's endeavours by flattery to gain his confidence, and to make a breach between him and the general, so as to in- duce Lafayette to leave the country.
John. Why, sir, this man must have been very bad.
Un. There are documents extant in which, at this very time, he expresses his enmity to Lafayette. But you can only form a just estimate of this attempt upon General Washington by reading all the letters published by Mr. Sparks. I will only say further, that as Gates had enclosed his letter to the comman- der-in-chief in one to congress, he sent his answer in the same manner. Washington tells Gates that he had viewed Conway as a stranger to him, and had no thought that they were correspondents, "much less did I suspect that I was the subject of your confidential letters." He says, that on receiving this extract, he considered it as a friendly warning from Gates to forearm him " against a secret enemy, or in other words, a dangerous incendiary ; in which character, sooner or later, this country will know General Conway: but in this, as in other matters of late, I have found myself mistaken." Gates then endeavoured to persuade the general that the extract was a forgery. The answer of Washington exposed the falsehood of the assertion, and showed thecontradiction in which this weak man's own state- ments had involved him. Gates replied by a mean apology on the 19th of February, 1778, filled with such falsehoods as these: " As to the gentleman," Conway, " I have no personal connexion with him, ner ladd I any correspondence previous to his writing the letter which has given offence. I solemnly de- clare I am of no faction." He disavows any intention
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of giving offence to his "Excellency," and con- cludes humbly "with great respect." I make use of the word falsehood, because in the papers left by Gates, and now in a public library, are the proofs that these assertions are void of truth.
John. How was this apology answered ?
Un. Very coldly, thus: " Your repeatedly and solemnly disclaiming any offensive views, in those matters which have been the subject of our past cor- respondence, makes me willing to- close with the desire you express, of burying them hereafter in silence, and, as far as future events will permit, ob- livion. I am, sir, your most obedient servant."
Wn. This was cutting, sir.
Un. In the meantime General Washington re- ceived information, from various quarters, of the efforts made to overthrow him, and a most positive indication of their success, by the appointment of this Conway, notwithstanding the known opinions of Washington and Lafayette, to the office of in- spector-general and the rank of major-general, to the excessive disgust of the American brigadiers. The whole of this infamous proceeding on the part of the faction in congress, of Gates, Conway, and others, can only be appreciated by reading all the documents published, and some yet unpublished, and in the library of the Historical Society.
John. This is a mortifying picture, uncle.
Un. It is. Let us turn from it with pity for the frailty of our fellow-creatures; and walk out of town among scenes of unsophisticated nature.
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CHAPTER XVII.
John. You have given some account of the suf- ferings of our military men when prisoners here in New York, but how was it with the naval captives ?
Un. Even worse. I well remember, though I was but a boy at the time, the comments made upon the treatment of the prisoners confined in the old Jersey prison ship, a hulk anchored in the Walla- bout, and in the hospital hulks near her. The prin- cipal commissary of prisoners was a man of the name of Loring, a refugee or loyalist from Boston, whose wife lived in open concubinage with Sir William Howe, and the infamous husband was paid by a lucrative post, of which it was said that he made the most. The commissary for the naval prisoners was a Scotchman named David Sprout, a fellow whose face put his scarlet coat out of counte- nance. He had two assistants, one Scotch, and the other a refugee from New Jersey. The general char- acter of the first was harshness, of the second, kind- ness. Here is an extract from a publication made by an aged clergyman, the Rev. Thomas Andros, who when a youth shipped himself as a privateersman from New London. He was taken, and confined in this sepulchre, where the living, the dying, and the dead, formed one mass, of which the latter descrip- tion was the most enviable. I am far from charg- ing upon the deputy commissaries the misery which my countrymen suffered in the prison ships: but I must think that there was culpable neglect or de- signed cruelty on the part of the commander-in- chief of the British army, or a criminal thirst for riches on the part of Sprout. Read what Mr. An- dros says.
John. " We were captured on the 27th August
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by the Solebay frigate, and safely stowed away in the old Jersey prison ship, at New York.
" "This was an old sixty-four gun ship, which through age had become unfit for further actual ser- vice. She was stripped of every spar and all her rigging. After a battle with the French fleet, her lion figure-head was taken away to repair an- other ship; no appearance of ornament was left, and nothing remained but an old, unsightly, rotten hulk. Her dark and filthy external appearance perfectly corresponded with the death and despair that reigned within, and nothing could be more for- eign from truth than to paint her with colours fly- ing, or any circumstance or appendage to please the eye. She was moored about three quarters of a mile to the eastward of Brooklyn ferry, near a tide- mill, on the Long Island shore. The nearest dis- tance to land was about twenty rods. And doubtless no other ship in the British navy ever proved the means of the destruction of so many human beings. It is computed that not less than eleven thousand American scamen perished in her. But after it was known that it was next to certain death to con- fine a prisoner here, the inhumanity and wicked- ness of doing it was about the same as if he had been taken into the city and deliberately shot on some publick square. But as if mercy had fled from the earth, here we were doomed to dwell. And never while I was on board did any Howard or angel of pity appear to inquire into, or alleviate our woes. Once or twice, by the order of a stran- ger on the quarter deck, a bag of apples were hurl- ed promiscuously into the midst of hundreds of prisoners crowded together as thick as they could stand, and life and limbs were endangered by the scramble. This, instead of compassion, was a cruel
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