A landmark history of New York; also the origin of street names and a bibliography . and pestilence thatcharacterized the Jersey, or tell you the sufferings ofthose poor, wan patriots who were once strong, hale,and happy men. Philip Freneau, the poet of theRevolution, has left behind a story of the prison shipsin verse, of which I will read you a few lines: Here doomd to starve, like famislied dogs we toreThe scant allowance that our tyrants bore. Three hundred wretches here denyd all liglit,In crowded mansions pass th infernal for a bed their tattered A^estments join,And some on ch
A landmark history of New York; also the origin of street names and a bibliography . and pestilence thatcharacterized the Jersey, or tell you the sufferings ofthose poor, wan patriots who were once strong, hale,and happy men. Philip Freneau, the poet of theRevolution, has left behind a story of the prison shipsin verse, of which I will read you a few lines: Here doomd to starve, like famislied dogs we toreThe scant allowance that our tyrants bore. Three hundred wretches here denyd all liglit,In crowded mansions pass th infernal for a bed their tattered A^estments join,And some on chests and some on floors recline;Shut from tlie blessings of the evening air,Pensive we laj with mingled corpses there;Meager and wan, and scorchd with heat below,We looked like ghosts ere death had made us so. Every morning the prisoners were awakenedwith the cry, Rchels, turn out your dead Thesesufferers, relieved from misery, were hastily throwninto a pit near the shore, where the washing of thenext tide often uncovered their bodies. Heaven alone knows the suffering, the hard-. A LANDMARK HISTORY OF NEW YORK 139 ships, and sacrifices of the patriots that fought for theindejDendence we enjoj. They are all worthy of ourunceasing reverence, and none more so than the tor-tured wretches in New Yorks sugar houses andprison ships. It is said that their fearful treatmentwas a deliberate plan to make them desert the rebel cause and join the forces of the king, tempt-ing j)romises being held out to them. If so, thescheme failed, for almost to a man tliev resisted allattempts to win them from the cause of a day of reckoning came for years after the war he was convicted of for-gery in London and executed. While the poor prisoners thus suffered, thekings officers found amusement in acting farces ata theater in Xassau Street, in attending bull fights,playing tennis, and in riotous living at the also wantonly destroyed a library that had beenestab
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjecthistori, bookyear1901
