On receiving information of this circumstance, congress directed
General Howe to be assured that Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, and five
Hessian field-officers, should be detained, and should experience
precisely the fate of General Lee. These officers were taken into
close custody, and informed that the resolution announced to General
Howe should be strictly enforced.

The sentiments of the Commander-in-chief on the subject of
retaliation, seem to have been less severe than those of congress. So
great was his abhorrence of the cruelties such a practice must
generate, that he was unwilling to adopt it in any case not of
absolute and apparent necessity. Not believing that of General Lee to
be such a case, he remonstrated strongly against these resolutions.
But congress remained inflexible; and the officers designated as the
objects of retaliation, were kept in rigorous confinement until
General Lee was declared to be a prisoner of war.[104]

[Footnote 104: See note No. XIII. at the end of the volume.]

The resolutions of congress respecting the prisoners taken at the
Cedars, were also the source of much embarrassment and chagrin to the
Commander-in-chief. Alleging that the capitulation had been violated
on the part of the enemy, and that the savages had been permitted to
murder some of the prisoners, and to plunder others, they withheld
their sanction from the agreement entered into by General Arnold with
Captain Forster, and refused to allow other prisoners to be returned
in exchange for those liberated under that agreement, until the
murderers should be given up, and compensation made for the baggage
said to have been plundered. As the fact alleged was not clearly
established, Sir William Howe continued to press General Washington on