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    Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War
    Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War
    Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War
    Audiobook10 hours

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

    Written by Edwin G. Burrows

    Narrated by Norman Dietz

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown. Just over 6,800 of those men 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. It was in New York, not Boston or Philadelphia, where most Americans gave their lives for the cause of independence.

    New York City became the jailhouse of the American Revolution because it was the principal base of the Crown's military operations. Beginning with the bumper crop of 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.

    Despite the extraordinary number of lives lost, Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hellholes. The result is a unique perspective on the Revolutionary War as well as a sobering commentary on how Americans have remembered our struggle for independence-and how much we have forgotten.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateNov 24, 2008
    ISBN9781400179794
    Forgotten Patriots: The Untold Story of American Prisoners During the Revolutionary War

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    Reviews for Forgotten Patriots

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Excellent book. A few places dragged but overall this was a wonderful book, explaining the (sometimes horrific) conditions in the early jails and what life was like as a prisoner in early america. The author made a great effort to not sensationalize but, instead, tell us what the exact conditions were. Highly recommend this book to history buffs. Made me want to cry that we've demolished some of the few places that would have so benefited our understanding of a young America.
    • 5/5
      Forgotten Patriots embarks on the dark topic of prisoners-of-war and their inevitable maltreatment. Most never think of the Revolutionary War as a civil war, but it was just that! British Loyalists living as colonists fought "rebels" with vigor of how anyone would treat a traitor. Centered around New York, but also lightly discussing prisons around Philadelphia, PA, Edwin G. Burrows covers in depth, the poorly recorded world of prisoners - not all of which were captured on the battlefield, nor were they all combatants! Occupied New York was turned into a prison town. Sugar houses were converted haphazardly into prisons. When space ran out, churches not affiliated with the Church of England were desecrated by becoming prisons. Eventually, prison populations and disease forced the British to employ men-of-war ships to be moored in the near-by bays. These ultimately became floating death mills. Tens of thousands of American rebels were run through these buildings and ships; an estimated fifty percent perished from starvation, disease or insanity.The first 200 pages are devoted to detailing what scant information is available. Most of the records to ascertain the best accounts of the horror and numbers of prisoners (left to estimation) are autobiographical narratives, newspaper accounts and other propagandist material. He finishes up the history with some perspective, by comparing the events and toll British imprisonment took on Americans with other wars; only the Civil War surpasses the amount of deaths, battlefield and otherwise. The final chapter (before the epilogue) could be mistaken for current political activity. Both parties in the trailing decades used bones and skulls littering the shoreline of Wallabout Bay for their partisan benefit. It is reminiscent of the aftermath of the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks.As many books as I have read on this period, and more specifically Benjamin Franklin, Forgotten Patriots did a wonderful job discussing William Franklin's campaign of war ad terrorem. Plundering activity took place over a several year period, designed to harass Americans, it was carried out under the group of Tories known as The Refugee Club. The British government put an end to the sanctioned group after they took a prisoner and hanged him.
    • 5/5
      An amazing book that re-introduces us to the forgotten patriots of the American Revolution; American and American sympathetic prisoners taken during the war against Great Britain for our independence. Written by Edwin G. Burrows, this exhaustively researched and documented look at early America provides a fascinating window into a time long forgotten by most Americans and swept under the rug of history by our own government!War provides heroes and villains, but it also gives us a look into ourselves, our character, our true nature as human beings. Both sides in the Revolutionary War dealt with the horrific toll of war. Death, injury, and the prisoners taken captive in the struggle. Great Britain refused to consider Americans captured as prisoners of war, instead calling them 'rebels', criminals against the Crown rule. Many thousands were incarcerated in early New York City. In prison ships, converted sugar houses and almost every sizable building, prisoners were crammed into areas so small that they could not lie down to rest or sleep. Food was in small quantity and quality. Looking at just caloric intake, the diet that Great Britain claimed was provided to the captives was small enough to have induced the mostly sedentary prisoners to lose almost a pound of body weight weekly! Vermin and disease were rampant. Prisoners died horribly daily and were tossed in piles naked until they could be buried in shallow pits near by the prisons. Complaints were lodged by prisoners, their families, clergy, visitors and our government. All went unheeded or at best given cursory answers that reflected little of the truth. They were promised release if they would renounce the American struggle for independence and sign up in service to Britain! Humiliation,torture and even murder were routine treatments. So why aren't these patriots remembered and revered as Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others? Shortly after winning our independence we found ourselves as British allies against Napoleonic France. To present a divided front and/or alienate Great Britain would expose a young America to further warfare which could prove disastrous. So the Revolutionary prisoners and their stories were allowed to fade from public display. It later became a crime to stir up any anti British sentiment. No monuments or any public remembrance continued. It was not until the mid twentieth century that these men and women received some semblance of their worth to America's history. It was an honor too long overdue.