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Also pinging the original 13 colonies...Happy Fourth to all you Freeping Patriots!
Posted on 07/03/2006 5:43:05 AM PDT by Pharmboy
NEW YORKERS are a famously restless, impatient sort of people, focused more on where they're going than where they've been. That's a real pity where the American Revolution is concerned, because the city played a key role in the resistance to King George III that led up to the Declaration of Independence. It's also the place where thousands of men died during the Revolutionary War that followed — not in combat, but in British prisons.
From 1775 to 1783, some 200,000 colonials took up arms against the crown. While the statistics are rough, it has been estimated that more than 6,800 died in battle. An additional 10,000 perished from wounds or disease. At least 18,200 became prisoners of war, most of whom were confined in New York City — along with perhaps as many as 1,500 civilian prisoners.
New York's little-known role as the jailhouse of the Revolution stemmed from a decision by the British to use the city as the nerve center of military operations in North America. An invasion in the summer of 1776 brushed aside General Washington's hastily arranged defenses and left the British with a bumper crop of American captives — and no place to put them.
The solution was to squeeze the men into an assortment of public and private buildings — including the new municipal almshouse and jail, a half-dozen churches, and two or three "sugar houses," or refineries. Broken-down warships and transports, stripped of masts and rigging, were soon pressed into service as well. Anchored in Wallabout Bay (now the site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard), they became one of the most widely recognized and terrifying symbols of the British occupation.
These makeshift prisons, most of which remained in use throughout the Revolutionary War, were shockingly overcrowded —
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Finally a decent piece appears on the Op-Ed page of the Times. The author, Edwin G. Burrows, is "a history professor at Brooklyn College and the co-author of Gotham: A History of New York to 1898, and is the author of the forthcoming The Prisoners of New York."
For Later.
Pinging the RevWar/Colonial History/General Washington list
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Also pinging the original 13 colonies...Happy Fourth to all you Freeping Patriots!
NY Times means Tinfoil to me. Is there a chance they published this to show inhumane war prisons are, such as Gitmo?
I doubt that, although I share your distrust and likely hatred of the Times. Actually, one could make the opposite point: if you want to speak of atrocious prison conditions, HERE'S an example of that. Abu Ghraib and Gitmo were country clubs compared to this.
Or all the Palies in prison in Israel....
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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1111944/posts
Also, country clubs compared to the prisons and torture cells for the countries these prisoners originate from. But don't forget, you read with a critical eye. Most Rats are too busy nodding there heads to focus on the words.
BTW, it is a very interesting article, nonetheless. I don't want to hyjack your thread.
I'll bet these schmucks think they're original.
I worked on an archaeology project on Chambers Street at City Hall Park years ago.
During the historic research phase a document was uncovered that contained the death bed confession of a British provost in New York in which he confessed that he had American prisoners secretly executed along what is now Chambers Street. This was part of a scam by the provost in which the executed prisoners were never stricken from the prisoner rolls and the provost was able to pocket the money assigned for their rations.
Bit of an exaggeration. Not nearly as important as Boston or Philadelphia.
I have no access to the article, but I wonder if it brings up the fact that NYC was the most Loyalist of all American cities. To a very considerable extent, New Yorkers were on the other side during the Revolution.
You forget Charleston, South Carolina. The back country was Patriot; the planters tended to be Tory.
The most important reason for this was the fact that NYC was the center of the British Command during the French and Indian War, and when a good deal of them left in 1763 at war's end, NYC suffered an economic depression. Idle street people and sailors formed groups who battled the Brits after 1765. Google "The Battle of Golden Hill" for example.
But you are certainly correct in what you say about Loyalists in NYC--there was likely a higher percentage of them here, but Loyalists were spread throughout the colony. Further, most of the Dutch farmers in Brooklyn and Queens (who, BTW, still mostly spoke Dutch and not English at this time) were not Loayalists or Patriots but neutral. They just wanted to farm and be left alone. However, there were Dutch Patriots who helped the army during the Battle of Brooklyn (Long Island).
The Sons of Liberty often met at Fraunces Tavern and the prominent among them were Isaac Sears, John Scott and John Lamb. It almost became a game between the Patiots and the Brits: the Patriots would put up a Liberty Pole, the Brits would take it down in the middle of the night, and there would be a street brawl the next day.
Happy Fourth!
Your Obdt. Svt.
P______y
Whoa! Never knew about THAT one...thanks for posting that info. The way the Brits thought of the Patriots, I am afraid I am not surprised.
My understanding is that in SC (and NC) the big planters tended to be Patriots, the small farmers in the Piedmont (many of whom were recent immigrants) were largely Loyalist, and the real back country boys were almost all rebels. (Mostly because the Brits made the mistake of trying to use the Indians against them.)
I believe that the author is trying to make us think that these prisons are somehow analogous to our imprisonment of Al Quada terrorists.
The difference is that, in 1776 New York, the war was being fought after the Declaration of Independence and there was a recognizable, although nascent, United States government.
On the other hand, the prisoners in Guatanamo do not claim to be fighting out loyalty to any single nation. Instead, they are fighting to destroy our Nation and subjugate us all to Islam.
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