malignant than the Tories. The provision dealt out to the prisoners was
not sufficient for the support of life, and was deficient in quantity,
and more so in quality. The bread was loathsome and not fit to be
eaten, and was thought to have been condemned. The allowance of meat
was trifling and of the worst sort. The integrity of these suffering
prisoners was hardly credible. Hundreds submitted to death rather than
enlist in the British service, which they were most generally pressed
to do. It was the opinion of the American officers that Howe perfectly
understood the condition of the private soldiers, and they from thence
argued that it was exactly such as he and his council intended. After
Washington's success in the Jerseys, the obduracy, and malevolence of
the Royalists subsided in some measure. The surviving prisoners were
ordered to be sent out as an exchange, but several of them fell down
dead in the streets while attempting to walk to the vessels.

Washington wrote to General Howe in the beginning of April: "It is a
fact not to be questioned that the usage of our prisoners while in your
possession, the privates at least, was such as could not be justified.
This was proclaimed by the concurrent testimony of all who came out.
Their appearance justified the assertion, and melancholy experience in
the speedy death of a large part of them, stamped it with infallible
certainty."

The cruel treatment of the prisoners being the subject of conversation
among some officers captured by Sir Guy Carleton, General Parsons, who
was of the company, said, "I am very glad of it." They expressed their
astonishment and desired him to explain himself. He thus addressed
them: "You have been taken by General Carleton, and he has used you
with great humanity, would you be inclined to fight against him?" The
answer was, "No." "So," added Parsons, "would it have been, had the