By the middle of the 18th century the European powers had developed regular procedures to deal with prisoners of war. Since European armies were professional in nature, soldiers were treated relatively well as prisoners captured during a campaign. Men who fought against each other in one war might be fighting with each other as mercenaries or recruits in the next war. European nations usually signed conventions for an exchange of prisoners during a conflict so each nation would want to treat its prisoners in the same manner as it would want its own prisoners treated when captured. These exchange conventions ordinarily allowed for a one-to-one exchange for enlisted men. Officers, who were given better treatment and often paroled or allowed to live outside of prisoner compounds, were generally exchanged for individuals of equal rank or for a number of lesser officers or regular soldiers at a predetermined ratio.
The North American situation, however, created a different set of conditions that made the European system more complicated to implement. Native Americans had their own ideas about what to do with prisoners of war. If Europeans fought wars over dynasties, boundaries, or trade, Indians fought wars for personal prestige and to capture prisoners. Moreover, Native Americans seized both combatants and noncombatants in violation of European practices. These prisoners might then be tortured to death following set rituals, adopted into the tribe, or held for ransom. Only the third option could be fit into European practices. The results of these differences became glaringly evident during the French and Indian War (1754-63), when Indians raided ERontier settlements for prisoners of all ages and both sexes. Many of these prisoners, especially the younger ones, were adopted into the Indian societies and were surrendered to the British-American authorities only under the threat of coercion at the end of the war. Several remained with their new Indian families the rest of their lives. The different approach to prisoners of war also appeared during military operations. The French were helpless in the face of their Indian allies’ “massacre” of surrendered Anglo-American outposts at Oswego and Fort William Henry. British officers were so outraged by these attacks that they refused to treat with the “honors of war” French soldiers who subsequently surrendered.
Difficulties with Native American war practices in treating prisoners of war remained throughout the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th century. In fact, European Americans in the United States used the Indian practice of torture as an excuse for a take no-prisoners attitude when fighting Native Americans.
The Revolutionary War (1775-83), which eventually assumed more of the pattern of traditional 18th-century European warfare, added new problems concerning the treatment of prisoners of war since the British at first viewed the revolutionaries as little more than treasonous rebels and not professional soldiers and sailors fighting for a legitimate nation. Compounding these difficulties was the interference of the Second Continental Congress, which wanted to use any prisoner exchange as a lever to compel Great Britain into a de facto acknowledgment of the independence in the United States and feared the additional cost of an exchange in provisions and back pay.
The numbers of prisoners held by both sides ran into the tens of thousands. During the early phases, both sides dealt with prisoners on an ad hoc basis. However, once the British captured New York City and drove General George Washington across New Jersey, they gained thousands of prisoners of war, which they housed in poor conditions in New York City and elsewhere. Washington seized almost 1,000 Hessians at the Battles oe Trenton and Princeton (December 26, 1775, and January 3, 1776) but it was not until the surrender at Saratoga (October 17, 1777) that the United States had more prisoners than the British. The initial surrender terms offered to General John Burgoyne had been generous and offered to allow his army to return to Great Britain under the promise that the soldiers would not fight again in North America. Since this provision meant that the British could replace the men in the “Convention Army” with soldiers from Europe, while stationing the captured troops in the posts vacated by the reinforcements, Congress reneged on the deal. Most of the men captured at Saratoga remained prisoners for the duration of the war. Although there were some men captured on both sides during the war, the British did not reap a large number of prisoners (about 5,000) until the fall of Charleston on May 12, 1780 (see also siege of Charleston), while the revolutionaries did not capture another large British army until the surrender at Yor-ktown (October 19, 1781).
Washington hoped to negotiate an exchange in early 1778. However, Congress stepped in and set conditions impossible for the British to meet. This congressional interference persisted until almost the end of the war. Fortunately for prisoners on both sides, ad hoc agreements were reached by individual army officers and state and local officials. In the South—distant from Philadelphia—three large exchanges were negotiated by generals in the field on May 3, 1781; October 23, 1782; and November 26, 1782, that covered thousands of troops. Both sides would often parole prisoners, especially if they were members of a militia, who pledged not to fight again. At times, however, the bitterness of the conflict led to excesses on the battlefield as both sides refused quarter and some soldiers who violated their parole, and were later recaptured, were executed.
Naval prisoners of war faced other problems. With a huge navy, the British captured many more men than did the revolutionaries. Revolutionary sailors held by the British in prison ships in New York Harbor, such as the HMS Jersey, suffered under atrocious conditions of overcrowding and poor hygiene, and as many as 8,000 prisoners may have died aboard prison hulks in the harbor. Hundreds more were held in prisons in England and elsewhere in the British Empire. For most of the war the British considered naval prisoners as little more than captured pirates. In England, this created an odd situation in which large rewards were offered to recapture any escaped prisoner, and collusion between the prisoners and guards to split rewards led to many “foiled” escape attempts. Exchange agreements—cartels—were also handicapped in both Europe and North America by the fact that both sides treated men serving in the navy differently from those serving aboard privateers (see also privateering). The result was that naval exchanges were few and far between.
On land and at sea, both sides recruited prisoners of war into their armed services. Many Hessian and British soldiers served in the Continental army, and many Continental soldiers joined the British forces once captured. Moreover, any sailor taken aboard a merchant ship from the United States was impressed into the British navy. Many privateersmen and naval sailors were recruited into the British navy. Several men changed sides a number of times depending upon the conditions under which they were captured. At the end of the war, most prisoners were returned to their respective countries, but more than 3,000 German mercenaries remained in the United States.
Algiers and Tripoli captured several hundred sailors on U. S. ships beginning with 21 seamen taken in 1785 and more than 100 in 1793. Algiers held on to these prisoners, treating most of them as slaves, to force some sort of payment from the United States for a treaty of peace. By the time a deal was finally worked out with Algiers, most of the original captives had died. Fortune favored Tripoli when the Philadelphia ran aground in 1803 at the beginning of its war with the United States, providing the bashaw with more than 300 naval seamen as prisoners for which the United States eventually paid $60,000 at the end of the conflict.
Further reading: Paul A. Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Betsy Knight, “Prisoner Exchange and Parole in the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser., 48 (April 1991): 101-122; Charles H. Metzger, The Prisoner in the American Revolution (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1971).
World History
