During the
war it was known as The Provost, because it was the head quarters of a
provost-marshal named Cunningham. It was his custom at the conclusion
of his drunken revels to parade his weak, ill, half-fed prisoners
before his guests, as fine specimens of the rebel army. It is said
of him, too, that he poisoned those who died too slowly of cold and
starvation, and then went right on drawing money to feed them. This gave
rise to the saying that he starved the living and fed the dead. He took
a great delight in being as cruel and merciless as he could, and very
often boasted that he had caused the death of more rebels than had been
killed by all of the King's forces.
Many American sailors were also captured (for the Revolution was
fought on the sea as well as on land) and all these were placed aboard
prison-ships--useless hulks, worn-out freight-boats, and abandoned
men-of-war. For a time these hulks were anchored close by the Battery,
but afterward they were taken to the Brooklyn shore. There was misery
and suffering on all of them, but the worst was called the "Jersey,"
where captives were crowded into the hold, the sick and the well, poorly
fed and scarcely clothed, so many of them as hardly to permit space to
lie down, watched over by a guard of merciless soldiers.
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