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Forgotten Patriots : : the Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War

Burrows, Edwin G., 1943- Book - 2008 973.371 Bu None on shelf No requests on this item Community Rating: 4 out of 5

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Downtown 2nd Floor
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Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown, and just over 6,800 died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons--more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. New York City was the principal base of the Crown's military operations. Beginning with the American captives taken during the 1776 invasion of New York, captured Americans were stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships. The prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed--those who escaped alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own clothes and shoes. This book is the first-ever account of these hell-holes, a sobering commentary on how much we have forgotten about our struggle for independence.--From publisher description.

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Read this book and learn! submitted by m steve on June 14, 2020, 10:24am Untold indeed. This book reveals the history of NYC during the Revolution and how the town was essentially a death camp for prisoners of war. This is an important contribution to the written history of the ear.