should not be at liberty to purchase blankets within their lines, and
containing a copy of an order I had issued that they should not
purchase provisions within ours, by way of retaliation, but he
represented it as if my order was first. I stated the facts to General
Robertson, who assured me that General Howe had been imposed upon, and
requested me to state the facts by way of letter, when he immediately
wrote to General Howe, urging the propriety of reversing his orders,
which afterwards he did in a very hypocritical manner as will appear
hereafter."

It does not seem that Cunningham was very seriously punished. It is
probable that he was sent away from New York to Philadelphia, then in
the hands of General Howe. Cunningham was Provost Marshal in that city
during the British occupancy, where his cruelties were, if possible,
more astrocious than ever before.

Dr. Albigense Waldo was a surgeon in the American army at Valley
Forge, and he declares in his Journal concerning the prisoners in
Philadelphia that "the British did not knock the prisoners in the
head, or burn them with torches, or flay them alive, or dismember them
as savages do, but they starved them slowly in a large and prosperous
city. One of these unhappy men, driven to the last extreme of hunger,
is said to have gnawed his own fingers to the first joint from the
hand, before he expired. Others ate the mortar and stone which they
chipped from the prison walls, while some were found with bits of wood
and clay in their mouths, which in their death agonies they had sucked
to find nourishment." [Footnote: This account is quoted by Mr. Bolton
in a recent book called "The Private Soldier under Washington," a
valuable contribution to American history.]