Chapter IV: Part 4

Almost every draft of prisoners brought intelligence of new victories of the Americans by sea, and every British paper was filled with complaints of American privateers destroying British property in their own waters, and in sight of their cities. The prisoners, being animated with the success of the arms of their country, could not forbear expressing their joy in some pleasant feat. The following anecdote has something of the features of the attack of Don Quixotte on the wind-mill. The prisoners, the night after the news of the Wasp, took a jacket at twelve at night, lowered it down towards the ground along the rope of the prison; the soldiers saw it, and concluded it must be a man sliding down the rope to make his escape; the alarm was given, and Capt. Shortland and all the soldier-officers at the head of the picket, entered, and hailed the man on the rope, but no answer; they then drew themselves up in martial array, and every man sat his teeth and screwed his courage up to the sticking place, ready for battle; Capt. Shortland, an experienced officer, gave orders to fire, and instantly a volley of musketry was poured in upon the enemy, and down came the jacket; they rushed in upon it, and, to their astonishment, they had conquered a jacket.

The keepers who had been so insolent the day before, by wishing Mr. Madison in the prison, now showed great resentment, and gave themselves many airs upon the occasion. The soldiers discovered a candle burning in the prison, and called aloud, “put out that candle;” but the order not being instantly obeyed, they discharged a volley through the window; but a divine interposition of goodness seemed to direct the balls, for every one lodged in some part of the hammocks, which almost formed a solid column, and not a single man hurt or touched, though asleep in the hammocks. The next morning I thought the battle with the jacket and the attack on the sleeping prisoners deserved to be celebrated in some signal way, and sung like the deeds of the gallant Quixotte.

It had been remarked by the prisoners that, about the time of some reverse of the arms of the enemy, the keepers treated them with much greater severity, and seemed to wish to wreak their vengeance in retaliation on the prisoners.

On the eighteenth, orders, together with a list of names, came to discharge sixty-two of the crew of the late United States brig Frolic, who had been exchanged, and were to repair immediately to Dartmouth, thirty miles from the depot, to go on board the cartel Janey, then lying at that place with the greater part of her number, which consisted of prisoners late belonging to the United States navy and army.

Those sixty-two of the Frolic were obliged to carry the baggage themselves or leave it behind, for they were allowed no means to transport it. Twelve miles of the distance is water carriage; the other eighteen is land--this distance they had to march on foot; they received a shilling each man, and one day’s provision, at the commencement of the journey.

By letters from Plymouth, we received intelligence that another cartel, the St. Philip, was preparing to take on board part of her complement at that place, then to proceed to Dartmouth, and receive the crew of the late United States brig Argus, and her officers, and non-combatants from Ashburton. The same letters informed us that all the prisoners in England, then nearly five thousand, would shortly be removed to this prison; and, accordingly, at the latter end of this month they all were removed to this depot, and made, with some few lately from sea, five thousand and twenty. They were badly prepared to stand the inclemency of the approaching season; they were all miserably clothed, and the shoes they had received from Mr. Beasley lasted but a few weeks, and they were now quite destitute and very sickly, and the weather cold and stormy for several days together. On the third we received a letter from Mr. Beasley, informing us that his clerk, Mr. Williams, was on his way from London to this place with clothing, which he would distribute among the prisoners captured since the middle of last May, and to those captured before that date he would deliver one shirt and one pair of shoes and stockings, which should be their supply for nine months. The old prisoners stated their situation to Mr. Beasley, by letter, at the same date, and informed him that they were in need of clothing; that what they received in May was worn out, also their shoes, and that they were not supplied with sufficient bedding to make them any way comfortable through the approaching winter, especially as they were sickly, and had the small-pox in the prison, and that they should not be able to endure the hardships of their condition, though their two and a half pence a day was some relief; yet as all the workmen were turned into prison, and not permitted to go out any more on account of one man, whom we believe to be Capt. Swain, of New Bedford, Massachusetts, taking a very sudden move and leaving the whole establishment without giving notice; this left them unprovided with sufficient means to take care of themselves.

Now the surly blasts of chill November had made all surrounding nature wear the sad aspect of decay, and the barefooted prisoner stood shivering by the walls, in the pale and feeble ray of a winter sun, when Mr. Williams arrived with the clothing, as was expected, and on the third saw the crew of the Argus take their departure from this prison, to go on board the St. Philip, then lying at Dartmouth, bound for the United States. The draft of this crew consisted of one hundred, which was all that was taken from this place; she had previously taken in her complement, except this number, at Chatham. Shortly after her sailing from Dartmouth she was so unfortunate as to spring her mast, and obliged to return into port.

At this time the Phebe and the late United States frigate Essex arrived in England. The editors who published the arrival of these two ships, made no remark or observation whatever, only barely said they had arrived.

The reader will not have forgotten the circumstance of the four men, whom we mentioned were committed to close confinement during the war, on suspicion of an intention to blow up the ship. We, at this time, made application to the Board of Transport, to mitigate the punishment of these four men, late of the Surprise, and who had remained ever since in close confinement in the cachot, but our petition was not granted; the board said the sentence had passed and could not be recalled--they must suffer according to the sentence. These poor fellows had endured the three months imprisonment with a magnanimity becoming Americans. The prisoners seeing they could not get them relieved, agreed to allow them a halfpenny a month out of every man’s pay, which was cheerfully done by every man. They supplied them with such articles as the board would allow them to have.

Our hope now brightened amidst the clouds of sufferings and despair, by the reports from Ghent of a speedy peace, which swelled every London paper.

The guards, both officers and soldiers, stationed here, were much disaffected with the government of the country; and informed us that the military through the whole kingdom had the same disaffection, and that they had gone so far as to inform the government, in direct terms, that if a peace did not take place before the first of April, that they would lay down their arms.

The battle and destruction of Washington had now crossed the Atlantic, and was sounding with great applause to the British arms; every paper was swelled with the most pompous description of the great battle, and the unparalleled bravery and magnanimity of their officers and soldiers, that had defeated and drove the whole American army, headed by Mr. Madison in person, and that they were in so close pursuit of him that he had a severe race all the way from Bladensburgh to Washington, which they were disposed to ridicule by comparing to John Gilpin’s celebrated race.

They also gave a description of Washington, which they declared was one of the greatest cities in the known world; the grandeur and magnificence of it surpassed that of Paris or London; it contained thirteen hundred spacious squares. But they did not mention that those squares contained no houses or inhabitants.

These stories could not gain the belief of persons acquainted with the American nation and its capitol, but we were led to believe that the conduct on both sides deserved much censure, and that the burning of that capitol was a disgrace to both nations.

Nothing very material occurred among the prisoners this month; they received their monthly pay as usual, but were more sickly, and the weather cold and tedious, but could not be compared with the November before. The prisoners, though far from being as comfortable as they ought to be, suffered much less, and were in a better condition to endure the hardships of a prison than the year before, now they were supplied with one pair of shoes and stockings, and allowed two and a half pence per day. They did not shrink at the approaching season so much as before.

Mr. Williams returned to London at the end of the month; he had been with us all the month, distributing the several articles above mentioned.

As the season advanced the hard weather increased, and the snow fell in great abundance in the beginning of December, and the prisoners, much chilled with the cold, applied for permission to keep fire, as had been permitted to the French prisoners, but were peremptorily refused and absolutely forbid.

But to make the best of these evils of life, they applied themselves every man to some occupation; they endeavored to cherish and keep the mind alive if the body decayed, and to cultivate that nobler part of our being, they established a number of schools, and the young men and boys were instructed in them for nearly two years, and many of them, who were perfectly unacquainted with letters when they came to this prison, had acquired a tolerable education in the English branches of science.

There has, from the earliest ages of antiquity, been frequent instances of men who have been weary of life, and had not the courage and fortitude to bear those ills which are incident to it, and have, therefore, by a sort of false heroism, attempted to avoid them by destroying their own life. The Stoic philosophy, which seemed to be a cultivated degree of insensibility, encouraged it, and called it heroism; but the act is cowardly, and a great offence against the laws of God and man.

I have thought proper to premise these observations, before I related the melancholy instance of a young man, a native of the city of New York, by the name of John Taylor, who put an end to his life on the first of this month, by hanging himself, in prison No. 5.

By the position in which he was found in the morning, he must have been all intent on death; he had fastened himself to one of the stantions so that his toes could just touch the floor. We knew of no other cause than that despair had given him less courage to live than to die.

Thinking it might tend to deter others from following the example of this unhappy victim of despair, I procured a large slate, and engraved on it the following inscription, which I put at the head of his grave, where it remains on the moor:

Here lies

JOHN TAYLOR,

A native citizen of the city of New York,

Who committed suicide, by hanging himself

in prison No. 5, on the evening

of the first of December, 1814.

I then put over each prison, as a _caveat_, the following _memento_, as it was feared others would do the same act:

Whene’er you view this doleful tomb,
Remember what you are,
And put your trust in God alone:
Suppress that fiend, Despair.

Lo! there’s entomb’d a generous youth
Despair did doom to die;
By the hard act of suicide,
John Taylor there doth lie.

He hung himself within yon walls,--
A warning may it prove:
Tho’ man is wicked here below,
There’s a just God above.

Be patient, meek, and wait His call,
Endure these ills of strife:
For great’s the sin of mortal man,
That takes away his life.

One knows not how to account for the origin of that act which takes away one’s own life: self-love and self-preservation are so deeply rooted in the very nature of all living creatures, that it is the ultimate motive of all actions to endeavor to sustain and preserve life; fear of destroying it is so instinctive in all animals that they seem to flee from danger without any reasoning in the act, and almost without knowing when the volition begins.

But the suicide reverses everything; he does an act which is not natural, not rational, not desirable, and dangerous; he rushes into the presence of his God with all his former crimes, and this most heinous of all brings him there.

From the first to the twenty-sixth nothing material occurred, but a constant fall of snow every day; but the season was less severe than that of the year before.

In the interim, prisoners arrived from different quarters of the globe; some taken in Canada on the lakes, and others on the land; and amongst these arrivals was the crew of the privateer Leo, captured off the coast of Portugal.

On the twenty-ninth, we were most agreeably surprised with the joyful tidings of peace! The preliminaries were announced in the London paper which we received this day, and the news was confirmed by a letter from Mr. Beasley, received the same day, stating that the treaty had been signed by the Commissioners at Ghent, on the 24th, and that the sloop-of-war Favorite would sail with the treaty on the second of January, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, with all possible speed, for the United States, and that three months would release every man from confinement.

Language is too feeble to describe the transports of joy that so suddenly and unexpectedly filled every heart. Every man forgot the many tedious days and nights he had so often numbered over within these prison walls. The memory of his better days rose fresh in his mind, and he once more hoped to return to his native country, which he had so long despaired of ever revisiting; his liberty, the embraces of his friends, he knew better how to prize by being so long deprived of them. The delicious fruits of plenty he could by his imagination taste.

The prison was now in great confusion and bustle in preparing to celebrate the peace, which we were confident would be honorable to our country. We were confident that the ground-work of the treaty must be free trade and sailors’ rights, and made arrangements to celebrate it in a manner conformable to the rights of the ocean.

We obtained a quantity of powder of the soldiers, unknown to the keepers, and made large cartridges, wound them up in twine, so that when exploded would make a report as loud as a six-pounder; we then procured a large ensign, and a pendant for each prison; we prepared a white flag in the centre, painted in large capitals, “FREE TRADE AND SAILORS’ RIGHTS.”

The next morning, to the astonishment of the officers and guards, we displayed the flags on the top of each prison; and on No. 3, which was styled the Commodore, displayed the white flag with the above motto, and at the same time fired a salute of seventeen rounds.

Shortly after, Capt. Shortland entered the yard, and politely requested the white flag, containing the motto, to be taken down, as it would draw censure upon him from the government, by holding out inducements for the sailors to mutinise; he said the government of Great Britain took care to suppress all such inflammatory mottoes. But the prisoners were too full of spirits to comply with the request at that time. They continued it till towards evening, when he again entered and solicited us to take it down, or everything would be in confusion; he said if we would take the motto-flag down, he would hoist an American ensign on one end of his own house, and a British one on the other end; and if we were not contented with this he would order them all down; we then told him, out of respect for him, we would take them all down, and wait till the ratification of peace before we displayed them again.

On the thirty-first of this month arrived a draft of prisoners, among whom were many who had given themselves up as American citizens, and claimed their right to a citizenship, and refused to act on board his Majesty’s ships any longer; these the prisoners did not give a very welcome reception, for they had delayed till the act had become a wilful aiding and assisting the enemy, and the mischief now over. The constant cry among the sailors, who are great friends to Uncle Sam, was, “Damn my eyes if he han’t stood it like a man.”

Among those prisoners who had declared themselves citizens of the United States, were six who had been in the enemy’s service for many years, and were on board His Majesty’s ship Pelican when she engaged the United States brig Argus, and took a very active part in the action against the Argus; every man of them had been appointed to some petty office on board the Pelican. But, supposing a peace would shortly be concluded between the two nations, they had thought best to claim a citizenship, and obtain their release. This information soon spread among all the prisoners, and enraged them to the highest degree at their conduct; and being flushed with high spirits with the late news of peace, were about to proceed to extremities with them, and they, finding their lives were in danger, applied to Capt. Shortland for protection, who entered the prison yard with guards and took these traitorous villains along, and we believe they went back into his Majesty’s service, as the next day they were conveyed to Plymouth, and we heard no more of them.

The weather was now very severe, and the oldest prisoners had not received any clothing since May, and were much in need of jackets and trowers, of this fact the prisoners were a self-evident and naked truth. Many were sick in the hospital.

December thirty-first, 1814. Statement of prisoners in prison at this depot:

Prisoners delivered up from the British navy, 1978
United States’ and privateers’ men, those taken in
merchant vessels, 3348
----
Total, exclusive of those exchanged, 5326

Mr. Beasley, agent, had visited them once. They had received from him one jacket, one pair of trowsers, two shirts, two pair of shoes, and two pair of stockings, each man.

Received from the British government, one hammock, one blanket, one horse rug, one bed, one yellow jacket, one pair of trowers, one waistcoat, one pair of wooden shoes, and one cap.

Received in cash one and a half pence, to which was added one penny more after two months, each man per day, from the first of January, 1814.

The weather still continued cold, and the oldest prisoners had not as yet received any shoes or clothes, but were daily expecting them from Mr. Beasley.

We had been in this cold and dreary mansion twenty-one months, and the above items were all the assistance we had received from Beasley, the only person in this foreign land of our enemies to whom we could look for any assistance, or from whom we had any right to expect it.

Our ears had been constantly assailed with the groans of the sick and the dying; pestilence and disease had been our constant companions; our minds had become almost distracted betwixt the grief for our departed friends and fellow-prisoners and the hunger and want of our own body. From such a long series of incessant sufferings, it is natural to suppose that the bodies were emaciated and the mind debilitated; and much of the sameness that may appear in this narrative is owing to a uniform state of misery, which will not admit of a variety in the description.

Capt. Shortland had got information on the second of November, 1815, that the prisoners had counterfeited three shilling pieces, and passed them to the market people, for their country produce, and shortly after he detected two men attempting to pass bad money; he had them apprehended immediately, and sent to the cachot.

Nothing worthy of note occurred till the twentieth, when two men lately arrived were discovered to be the same who had entered the British service the winter before. After having received many insults, and much hard usage, on board the war ships, they had got tired of their situations, and claimed their citizenship and got themselves delivered up and sent to prison again, which they considered the least of the two evils.

Their conduct on board the ships, was no doubt as disgraceful as the act they committed to bring them there; they shifted from ship to ship, till the one wherein they claimed their citizenship was ignorant of the manner they had come into the service. The prisoners being highly enraged at such conduct, made strict inquiry into the matter, and found the facts as above mentioned.--After holding consultations, many were for putting them to immediate death, others were for flogging them as severely as they could bear, and every man for giving them some condign punishment; but at last it was unanimously concluded to put upon them a mark, which would be a lasting stigma, and an example for others. They seized and took the traitors into prison, and fastened them to a table, so that they could not resist, and then, with needles and India ink, pricked U. S. on one cheek, and T. on the other; which is United States Traitor. After we let them go, they were taken immediately to the hospital, and their faces blistered on both sides, to endeavor to extract the ink, but this only made it brighter and sink deeper in. The doctors reported the traitors to be in a very dangerous state, and that their lives were despaired of. If this had been the case, it must only proceed from the application they had made use of, for no harm could arise from marking.

The next day, Capt Shortland being offended at the treatment of his friends had received, sent and had three men taken, whom he suspected were concerned in the affair, and put them into the cachot, where they were examined not long after by the King’s solicitor, and there ordered to remain till the next Exeter assizes, then and there to be tried by the laws of this country. On the twenty-fifth arrived five hundred suits of clothes, which were distributed among those who had last arrived.

The weather being very severe, and great quantities of snow falling, the men were obliged to keep within doors. On the same day arrived a regiment of regular troops, who themselves had been prisoners in France for many years during the late war between that nation and England.--They were much disgusted with the treatment we received here, and exclaimed against the authors of it, whoever they might be, and declared they had not received such treatment in France.

At this time, the government not being so strict in their charge the military, and the keepers not so strict in putting them in execution, and these new guards being very friendly, gave us a fine opportunity to escape over the walls, and many made their escape in dark stormy nights. This continued for some time, till one man was taken on the wall, in the very act; then it was stopped, and strict orders given.

On the twenty-sixth a draft of prisoners arrived, among whom were the crew of the privateer Neuf-Chattel of New York, lately captured, and two navy officers captured on the lakes. On the twenty-eighth these officers received their parole, and proceeded on to Ashburton, where all the paroled officers were stationed.

_Nantucket Neutrality._

On the thirtieth, Sir Isaac Coffin arrived with another British admiral; Sir Isaac is a native of Massachusetts, and feeling some partiality to his native statesmen, requested Capt. Shortland to permit all the men who belonged to Nantucket to come alone into market square, which request was of course granted. He himself and the other admiral, whose name we did not learn, held a long conversation with the Nantucket men, and inquired the particulars of their birth, their friends and places of residence; they then told them, should the war continue, they would be released, on account of belonging to a neutral Country.--They then took an affectionate leave of the citizens of that neutral nation, and went away. Such are the advantages derived from being a neutral nation in the time of war.

February commences with much snow and cold; the prisoners in great anxiety for the ratification of the treaty.

On the fourth arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured in the privateer Brutus. At this time a new, and most dreadful calamity now alarmed and endangered the life of every man; the African pox had, by some unfortunate means, got among the prisoners, and threatened destruction to every living soul. The disorder was so violent that when it attacked a person, he had nothing to expect but immediate death; numbers died daily.

On the fifth, the London papers mentioned two American frigates cruising in the channel, which excited great alarm.

On the sixth, the pestilence had grown so mortal, that the chief surgeon in England visited the prison; he imagined the distemper to arise from a want of pure air; that so many people crowded together in one building must render the air very impure, and unfit for respiration. He tried the difference of temperature of the air in the prison, and outside, which he found to differ twenty-five degrees by Farenheit’s thermometer, the air being much warmer inside. This difference of heat arose entirely from the heat of the human body, as no fire was kept in the prisons; each prison now contained about 1200 persons on an average. It is highly probable the distemper had generated itself in the bad state of air, and had not been introduced from abroad, as was first supposed.

On the eighth arrived an order from the Board of Transport, for Capt. Shortland to ascertain the number and description of all prisoners belonging to the Island of Nantucket, for the purpose of giving them their discharge; like the citizens of Denmark and Sweden, they were neutral.

On the tenth arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured on their voyage to France; on the same day a number of prisoners were called on to give evidence on the part of the crown, concerning the marking the traitors in the cheek.

The king’s solictor was a long while busy in endeavouring to obtain information, but all the satisfaction he got was, that they had heard by report that the men that marked the traitors, were to be tried at Exeter the next assizes. At the same time a small quantity of clothing arrived from Mr. Beasley, who it seemed always took care to send clothing to those who last arrived, as in this instance, although they had not been prisoners but a few weeks; he seemed to have an idea that they always come into prison naked, and when they were there, one suit would last them all their life; for the oldest prisoners had not received any clothing since the last May, and it was now ten months, and every garment entirely worn out. He supposed, that during two years imprisonment, such as we had had, we must have got used to every species of hardship, and that going naked was so slight an evil that we did not mind it at all.

During the interval of time since the peace, another _slight_ evil, somewhat similar to the above, had befallen us, for the contractor, seeing we were shortly to go to a land of plenty, was determined to show us the difference in a man’s feelings between eating and going without; so he gave us no more than the simpleton gave his horse while learning him to live without eating.

On the thirteenth, one of the four prisoners, whom we mentioned before were sentenced last August to remain in the cachot during the war, watched an opportunity to get among the other prisoners in the yard, being let into the yard of that building for the benefit of the fresh air, and seeing the attention of the turnkeys and soldiers occupied by some other object, at this time jumped over the iron railing that separated this building from the yards of Nos. 1, 2, and 3, and got undiscovered amongst the other prisoners; the morning following he was missed by the keepers, and information given to Capt. Shortland, who demanded the man from among us immediately that he be returned to the cachot again.

The prisoners positively refused to give the man up, and declared that no force of arms should wrest him from their protection. He then ordered the market closed, and would not allow any communication with it, and refused the prisoners every privilege, and gave them only their allowance.

On the fourteenth, he entered the yard at the head of two hundred soldiers with fixed bayonets, and ordered every prisoner to retire within the prisons, that search might be made for the prisoner, and he again remanded to the cachot; but all the prisoners having previously agreed to stand by each other, and if they attempted to use any violence, to surround and disarm them; a signal was given to surround, and the soldiers were immediately surrounded, and the intention made known to the officers, and advised to retire, unless they were determined to risk the consequence. They then very prudently ordered the soldiers to fall back, and retire without the yard, and leave the man whom they sought.

The captain still harboring rancor in his breast, thought to compel us to give up the man by force of starvation, and kept the markets closed against us, and compelled us to subsist solely on our scant allowance; but we, to retaliate, forbid all prisoners going out of the yard to work, who at this time were about forty or fifty carpenters, masons, and other mechanics, who were a great profit to the government; this step put Shortland to great expense and inconvenience to procure others.

He at last concluded to make peace and restore tranquility, and let the man remain; and, on the twentieth, he again opened the markets to the prisoners, and we permitted the workmen to go out and work again. The other three men remained in the cachot, but a stronger guard was placed? there, otherwise we were determined to release them by force.

On the twenty-second, arrived a draft of prisoners, lately captured off the Cape of Good Hope, among whom were the crew of the late United States brig Syren; the treatment of these men before they arrived at this place will be mentioned in the supplements to this work. These, together with others taken in other parts, arrived since the last enumeration on the last day of one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, made in all at this depot five thousand eight hundred and fifty, which were all the prisoners in England, except officers on parole. The prisoners were barefooted, and very sickly.

On the twenty-sixth of this month, is gazetted in the London papers, the official account of the capture of the United States frigate President, Com. Decatur.

The editor says she was captured solely by the Endymion, of far inferior force; he says the engagement was in the old English style, yard-arm to yard-arm. Knowing this to be a falsehood, I addressed a letter to the editor, requesting him to read a short piece of poetry which I enclosed.

March commenced with cold and blustering weather, and the prison almost one continued scene of sick and dying, the small-pox was raging with a desolating aspect, and the greatest anxiety concerning the ratification of the treaty; afflictions, which seem never to come singly, were now pressing upon the back of one another; pestilence, famine and nakedness were not affliction enough, phrensy must be added.

On the fourth, a man in the hospital, in a sudden fit of insanity, seized a knife and stabbed two of the nurses very dangerously, of which wounds Jonathan Paul died on the tenth, the other survived.

On inquiry into the circumstances of the deceased, we found him to have been a married man, and his wife had lived a little distance from the prison since his confinement, who was in very narrow circumstances.

We all agreed to give her the day’s allowance of fish of that week, which we sold to the contractor and received the money, which amounted to nearly one hundred dollars; this sum she received, and returned to her residence on the day of the death of her husband.

On this day, also, the three men who were put into close confinement for marking the traitors on the face, were taken out of the custody of the agent of prisoners of war at this place, by a writ of _habeas corpus ad respodendum_, and removed to the criminal prison at Exeter, to be tried for the offence by the civil laws of this country. They were removed in irons. The prisoners then made a contribution for the support of these men while at Exeter.

On the tenth, we received London papers, which gave an account of Bonaparte’s having arrived in France at the head of about one thousand men, and that he was making the most rapid advances toward Paris, and thousands joining him; that the greatest confusion was taking place in the affairs of France.

This intelligence struck the greatest astonishment in all England, and created a very serious concern among all the military, who expected to be relieved on the arrival of the treaty ratified by the President, but now they must despair of that idea, as new wars must inevitably follow the steps of that gigantic monster.

On the fourteenth, a universal joy was diffused through the whole prison, and “a smile lighted up in the aspect of woe;” the Favorite, the welcome messenger of peace, arrived, and brought the treaty, ratified by the President of the United States.

I cannot better express the joy that diffused itself through the whole country, Englishmen as well as prisoners, than by giving the following lines from a great author:

“The dumb shall sing, the lame his crutch forego,
And leap exulting like the bounding roe.
No sigh nor murmur the wide world shall hear,
From ev’ry face he wipes off ev’ry tear.”

We raised the ensigns and pendant on each prison; presented to Capt. Shortland, and gentlemen under his command, an address in poetry.

On the seventeenth, we were informed by Capt. Shortland, that he had received orders from the Board of Transport to discharge the prisoners whenever Mr. Beasley was ready to receive them. To the great disappointment of all the prisoners we had received no information from Mr. Beasley for six weeks, and the prisoners now were in the greatest anxiety. They reasonably expected that on the arrival of this ratified treaty, Mr. Beasley would have everything in a state of readiness for their immediate conveyance to the United States, and that he would inform them in what manner they were to proceed there; but not a syllable was received from the agent of our country till the eighteenth, when a very cold and unpleasant letter was received from him, which read as follows:

_Fellow-citizens_,--

I am informed that great numbers of the prisoners refuse being inoculated with the small-pox, which I hear has been very mortal among you, I therefore acquaint you that it will be impossible for me to send home any prisoners unless they have gone through the same. Yours, &c.,

R. G. BEASLEY.

This strange letter rather increased the great anxiety every man was in, for we expected to have been informed something relative to our speedy departure, and that he had made arrangements to clothe the oldest prisoners, who were so naked that they were unfit to be discharged.

On the nineteenth, an order arrived, informing Capt. Shortland to discharge thirty men, as they had been applied for by American captains, to man ships in France and up the east country; the Transport Board had ordered them to be discharged.

On the twentieth, Capt. Shortland released those three men whom we have mentioned were committed to close confinement in the cachot last August, on suspicion of blowing up the vessel; the other, we have mentioned, made his escape.

These men made as ghastly an appearance as it is possible for human beings to make; they had been eight months confined within a damp stone room, twenty feet square, floored with stone, and no light except a dim ray that gleamed through the top of the gable end. They had lived on two-thirds of a scant allowance till their trembling limbs could scarce support their body.

On the same day, a writ came to remove the insane man who had occasioned the death of Jonathan Paul to Exeter, to have his trial; also one to bring forward about twenty persons as witnesses, in this and the trial of the three men whom we mentioned had been taken there for trial for marking the traitors.

The small-pox raged now in a most alarming manner; it being of the African kind, scarce a man recovered after once being attacked and conveyed to the hospital.

After the arrival of the ratification of the treaty, great numbers visited the prison, from all parts of the country, with almost every kind of article for sale in the markets, among whom were great numbers of Jews, who came here to sell old clothes.

One of these Jew merchants, on his way to the prison, met a farmer who lived about eight miles from the prison, and accused him of being an American prisoner, making his escape from the depot, as great numbers had lately made their escape; and, thinking to receive the reward, which was three pounds, given by the government for apprehending any prisoner making his escape from the prison, told the farmer he must go back to the prison with him; and the farmer, having been once a sailor, was willing to confirm him in his suspicions, and began the song of Yankee Doodle; this confirmed the Jew in his belief of his being an American, and he was sure he had got a prize worth three pounds to him; but his prisoner refused to walk, and thinking he could afford to hire a conveyance for him, gave half a guinea to a wagoner to take him to the prison, and treated him very liberally along the way with drink. About 11 o’clock the Jew arrived with his prisoner, and applied to the keepers to take charge of him, and pay the reward of three pounds; but to his astonishment, the clerks, turnkeys, and every officer, immediately knew the farmer, and knew him to be a respectable man residing on the edge of the moor. He now demanded of the Jew a compensation for being detained several hours a prisoner, and the demand being justified by Capt. Shortland, the Jew was obliged to pay five pounds to prevent a suit.

The affair was made known to the prisoners, and every man forbid purchasing anything of the Jew; he was therefore obliged to leave the market without disposing of a single article.

On the twenty-fourth, a letter was received from Mr. Beasley, informing those Americans who had been taken under the French flag, and had been considered French prisoners till they were discharged, and from that time till this, had been recognised by no government, that he was now authorized to acknowledge them as Americans, and sent to each man a suit of clothes. This was the first assistance these men had had from any government since the French prisoners were discharged, and had lived entirely on the charity of the other prisoners. They had been prisoners four or five years.

The same letter informed us that he had taken three ships at London for the conveyance of the prisoners to the United States.

The same day a passport for four prisoners, who were to be discharged, was received.

During this month many prisoners made their escape, the government appearing very careless; and it was supposed this negligence was intentional, that they might escape for the purpose of impressing, as the press was hot about this time; but some few were detected when passing the wall, and sentenced to the cachot for ten days, on two-thirds allowance, which stopped the escaping for that time.

On the twenty-fifth the prisoners began to be impatient of such delay in the American agent, as eleven days had elapsed since the arrival of the ratified treaty, and nothing in readiness to discharge them, no means provided, and such delay too much to be borne; their situation was such that they could not restrain their resentment against such criminal neglect as their agent was guilty of; they were determined to punish him as much as it lay in their power; they therefore caused his effigy to be hanged on the top of one of the prisons, after which it was taken down, and burnt in presence of all the officers and soldiers--But I must not forget to mention the sentence of the court, pronounced before his execution, and his dying confession, when under the gallows.

_Sentence._

At this trial, held at Dartmoor on the twenty-fifth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, you, Reuben G. Beasley in effigy, are found guilty, by an impartial and judicious jury of your countrymen, upon the testimony of five thousand seven hundred witnesses, of depriving many hundreds of your countrymen of their lives, by the most wanton and most cruel deaths, by nakedness, starvation, and exposure to pestilence. It therefore becomes the duty of this court, as ought to be the duty of every court of justice, to pronounce that sentence of the law, which your manifold and heinous crimes so richly deserve.--And it is with the deepest regret that I am compelled to say, our country has been imposed upon, by a man whose crimes must cut him off from among the living. You this day must be hanged by the neck on the top of the prison No. 7, until you are dead; your body is then to be taken down and fastened to a stake, and burned to ashes, which are to be distributed to the winds, that your name may be forgotten, and your crimes no longer disgrace our nation.

On hearing the above sentence, the compunction of his conscience now brought forth the following confession:

CONFESSION.

_Injured countrymen and fellow-citizens_:

I this day, by the verdict of a just and impartial jury, and by the sentence of an impartial court, am to be made a public example, and receive that punishment which is so justly due to my many odious offences against the laws of God and my country; and being in a very few moments to make my exit from this world, do confess, in the presence of Almighty God, that for the first twelve months of my consulship I did most criminally neglect the American prisoners, who were dying daily for the want of my assistance, which I withheld through mercenary motives: the cries and petitions of my unfortunate countrymen I have always treated with the utmost disregard and contempt, but being fully convinced of all my past errors, I make this public and candid confession, in hopes that I may find mercy in the presence of a just and merciful God. I further do acknowledge, that I have been the means of detaining you in your present situation by neglecting to send you home, as I might have done, while the exchange was open for prisoners, which was not closed till June, eighteen hundred and thirteen; I likewise confess, that I have deprived great numbers of you of your regular turns of exchange, by filling the cartels with paroled officers, who were not entitled to the same; I must confess that had I have made proper application to the British government, and had I used my influence, I might have obtained the release of all the men discharged from his majesty’s ships of war; but being selfish, and swayed by despicable motives, I made no exertions for their relief. I do likewise confess, that after the second year of my consulship, I could no longer withhold from my unfortunate countrymen, some little assistance in money and clothing, as the United States had given me positive orders to supply all the wants of her citizens, who were prisoners of war at that time in England; but to my shame, and to the disgrace of any American agent, I entered in a contract with a _Jew merchant_ of London, to supply the prisoners with the very meanest and coarsest clothing that could possibly be procured in all England. At the same time I made advances to you, prisoners, of two and a half cents per day, and then represented to your country, the Congress of the United States, that I had supplied all your wants by providing you a sufficient quantity of clothing, and making you a daily advance of money suitable to your wants; for I did think that by deceiving the United States, and depriving you of the necessaries of life, I should in a very few years accumulate to myself a very handsome fortune; but to my great disappointment and disgrace, the peace took place, and all my villany and deception was discovered; my crimes stood in open day. For these crimes now I am justly doomed to this ignominious death, and must very shortly make my appearance before the just and Almighty God, to answer for all my crimes; where I expect there will rise up in evidence against me, the souls of hundreds of my departed countrymen, who now lie buried behind the walls of this prison by my crimes; as the time is now expired, I must depart to the uncertainty of an hereafter.

The hat drops.

I depart among the damned.

After the ashes was scattered in the winds, the following dirge was then sung:

The image of disgrace we’ve hang’d,
And wish it was quite true
That Beasley had himself been there,
And the devil burnt his Jew:
For both contriv’d to wrong us much;
And they know it very well,
They’ll always have the prisoners’ prayer
To send them both to HELL.

On the twenty-sixth, the prisoners who had been taken to Exeter to give evidence against the insane man who stabbed Paul, and also those who were to give evidence against the three men who were accused of marking the traitors, returned to Dartmoor; as did also the defendants who had had their trial, and were acquitted.

On the twenty-eighth, we received our monthly pay as usual: the prison continued very sickly, and no preparation for our departure.

At this time the officers and soldiers of the garrison seemed greatly alarmed and much concerned at the news received from France. They had the greatest apprehensions of an immediate war with Bonaparte, as the Paris papers gave an account of his being at the head of three hundred thousand men in arms; and the British papers mentioned the great preparations they were making in this country to assist the allies. The very name of the Emperor, and the mention of the battle of New-Orleans, made every British officer and soldier turn pale, and shudder at the thought.

On the last day of March, I collected the exact number of all prisoners at this depot, and noted as follows:

In prison No. 1 1769
In do. No. 3 972
In do. No. 4 1051
In do. No. 5 958
In do. No. 7 1263
In different employments about the stores 51
Employed in the hospital 19
Patients in the hospital 130
Total at Dartmoor 5693

The following are the different descriptions of prisoners, and the number of each class.

There were of those discharged from British ships of war,
and also those taken in England, 2200
Colored people 1000
United States’ soldiers and sailors 250
Taken on board of privateers and merchant-ships, Including
those few mentioned, taken under the French flag. 2243

On the same day we received letters from London, informing us that the ships taken for our conveyance, lay wind bound in the Downs.

The month concluded with pleasant weather for Dartmoor; sickness and small pox had somewhat abated.

The prisoners made a contribution for the assistance of a prisoner, who had lost an arm in attempting to take possession of the cartel, which was conveying them from Halifax to England.

As this is intended to be a true and faithful account of all the occurrences and circumstances of the American captives in England, we cannot forbear mentioning some circumstances, which may appear trifling and uninteresting to those who have not felt as we have.

The weather now being mild, and the pleasant season for crossing the Atlantic fast approaching, the prisoners felt the most insufferable anxiety for their departure. The winds being favorable, and seventeen days having elapsed since the ratified treaty arrived, they could not but wait with impatience for the cartels.

On the first of March, Capt. Shortland received orders to discharge twenty-one prisoners, who had applied to be released in England. Previous to this time almost all the men who had been delivered from the British ships of war, had been paid at different times their prize money, and the wages due for their past services in the navy.

This day a man by the name of Bratt, who had belonged to the United States’ brig Argus returned to prison. This man, at the time we were attempting to make our escape by digging out, was accused of dropping some unguarded expression, which had led to a discovery of our first attempt; he was threatened to be put to death, by great numbers of prisoners, and the keepers fearing this might be the case, took him to the guard house, where he remained till the crew of the Argus were discharged from prison, when he was also discharged with them, and went along with the crew to Dartmouth, and entered the cartel; he was there accused of the same as before, and threatened, and fearing his life might be taken, he escaped from the cartel, went into the country and worked at his trade, which was that of a blacksmith, and had resided there the whole time.

On the second we had information that the ship Milo, of Boston, had arrived in England in eighteen days from that port; she was the first American vessel which had reached this place since the peace.

On the same day, we received a letter from Mr. Beasley, which read as follows:

_Fellow Citizens_,

From the numberless letters I receive daily, I find that the prisoners entertain an idea of my releasing any prisoners that are enabled with a sufficiency to provide for themselves; I therefore must give you fully my intention on that subject, which is, to grant passports only to such persons as have friends or connexions in this country, of responsibility.

I must also acquaint you that I am making every possible dispatch with the cartels for your conveyance to the United States, where you are much wanted, and the encouragement for seamen very great.

This letter again revived the drooping spirits of the prisoners, who for many days had been almost distracted with the tedium of suspense. We now felt that a few days would release us from this earthly hell, and like Ænas of old, pass by propitious gales from hell to heaven, and shortly repose on the Elysian fields, in the arms of the goddess of liberty.

The prisoners that had kept shops in the prisons for retailing small articles, such as tobacco, thread, soap, coffee, sugar, &c. now broke up, and every thing was in great confusion for want of these articles; these shops were a great advantage to those who kept them, and a great accommodation to all the prisoners. There had been from sixty to eighty in each prison; at these places all these small articles might easily be obtained, though at somewhat higher price than in the market.

Our salary would not go far in purchasing these articles, which were very high at this time all over England; we could buy for a penny sterling, only one small chew of tobacco, which was selling at Plymouth by the quantity at nine shillings and six pence per pound.