American Revolution - Military Hostilities Begin - Prisoners

Prisoners

In August 1775, George III declared Americans in arms against royal authority to be traitors to the Crown. Although Lord Germain took a hard line the British generals on the scene never held treason trials; they treated captured soldiers as prisoners of war. The dilemma was that tens of thousands of Loyalists were under American control and American retaliation would have been easy. The British built much of their strategy around using these Loyalists.

After the surrender at Saratoga in October 1777, furthermore, there were thousands of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands. Therefore no Americans were put on trial for treason. The British maltreated the prisoners they held, resulting in more deaths to American sailors and soldiers than combat operations. At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners.

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Famous quotes containing the word prisoners:

    We are prisoners of the world’s demented sink.
    The soft enchantments of our years of innocence
    Are harvested by accredited experience
    Our fondest memories soon turn to poison
    And only oblivion remains in season.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    When posterity judges our actions here it will perhaps see us not as unwilling prisoners but as men who for whatever reason preferred to remain non-contributing individuals on the edge of society.
    George Lucas (b. 1944)

    Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.
    Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)