Benjamin Waterhouse

“ This was enough, we devoured it with our eyes, clinched it fast in our fists, laughed, capered, jumped, screamed, and kicked up the dirt like so many mad men; and away we started for Princetown, looking back as we ran, every minute, to see if our cerœbrus, with his bloody jaws, was not at our heels. At every step we took from the hateful prison, our enlarged souls expanded our lately cramped bodies. At length we attained a rising ground; and O, how our hearts did swell within us at the sight of the OCEAN! that ocean that washed the shores of our dear America, as well as those of England! ”

“ This war, and this harsh imprisonment, will add vigor to our arms, should the people of America again declare, by their representatives in congress, that individual oppression, or the nation's wrongs, render it expedient to sail, or march against a foe, whose tender mercies are cruelty. We can tell our countrymen, when we return home, what the Britons are, as their prisoners can tell the English what the Americans are.—"By their fruits shall ye know them." ”

“ If cruelty to prisoners, cruelty to their own soldiers, if kidnapping their mechanics, by press gangs, if shocking barbarity be exercised towards prisoners, and if open, shameless lewdness, mark and disgrace their sea-ports, their capital, and all their large cities, are the modest and correct people, inhabiting the towns and villages of the United States, to be affronted by being told publicly, that they have less religion, less morality than the people of England? How long shall we continue to be abused by folly and presumption? We, Americans, are yet a modest, clean, and moral people ”

“ Our Frenchmen always spoke in raptures of the emperor Napoleon, and with contempt of Louis. When we spoke in praise of Bonaparte, they would throw their arms around us, and cry out, one bon American! But these men are all passion and no principle; they are fit for any thing but liberty. I cannot judge of the whole nation; but those I have seen here, are an abandoned set of men. I dare not write down their incredible vices. There has been a great cry of French influence by the British party in New England. ”

“ Is it not a shame and a disgrace to a Christian nation, that, because a man has had the virtue to step forward in the cause of his country, in the cause of "free trade and sailors' rights," or from that glow of chivalry that fills a youthful bosom, or the sound of the warlike drum and trumpet, and the sight of the waving flag of his insulted country; is it not a shame that such a young man of pure morals and careful education, should be plunged into such an horrid prison as this? ”

“ Several of these impressed men have declared, that in looking back on their past sufferings, on board English men of war, and comparing it with their present confinement at Chatham, they feel themselves in a Paradise. The ocean, the mirror of heaven, is as much the element of an American as an Englishman. The great Creator has given it to us, as well as to them; and we will guard its honor accordingly, by chasing cruelty from its surface, whether it shall appear in the habit of a Briton or an Algerine. ”

“ We calculate that the ratification of the treaty by the President of the United States, will arrive in England by the 1st of April, at which period there will not be an American left in this place. The very thoughts of it keep us from sleeping. Amidst this joy for peace, and for the near prospect of our seeing, once more, our dear America, there is not a man among us but feels disposed to try again the tug of war with the Britons, should they impress and flog our seamen, or instigate the savages of the wilderness to scalp and tomahawk the inhabitants of our frontiers. ”

“ It is a solemn-faced-truth in this country of our superstitious ancestors, that every extensive and dreary moor, in England, is haunted by troubled ghosts, witches, and walking dead men, visiting, in a sociable way, each other's graves. It is really surprising, to an intelligent American, and incredible, that stout, hearty, and otherwise bold Englishmen, dare not walk alone over the dreary spot, or moor, where the prison now stands, in a dark and cloudy night, without trembling with horror, at a nothing! ”

“ It is not merely the bodily inconvenience of being transported here and there, that we dread, so much as the exposure to insult, and sarcasm of our unfeeling enemies. We have been, and still dread to be again placed in rows, on board of a ship, or in a prison yard, to be stared at by the British vulgar, just as if we were Guinea negroes, exposed to the examination of some scoundrel negro merchants, commissioned to re-stock a plantation with black cattle, capable of thinking, talking, laughing and weeping. ”

“ So long ago did mutual contempt begin between the natives of Old England and New.
I have already mentioned that all my family, as well as myself, were what they called "Federalists," or fault-finders, and opposers of Madison's administration; and that I, and all the rest of us, dropt every trait of federalism in the British prisons, where, to call a man a Federalist, was resented as the deepest insult. I appeal to all my companions in misery, for the accuracy of this opinion. ”

“ It was equally abhorrent to the principles of humanity, and only sanctioned by British governmental agents, and those petty Nations of Savages, whose known usages of warfare have hitherto kept them beyond the pale of national law. The history of modern European wars can furnish no parallel to this part of the history of Dartmoor. But when we arrive at the slaughter of prisoners on the 6th of April, the climax of barbarity is complete, and the mind is sated with the contemplation of principles as shocking to humanity as the consequences are degrading to the character of the English nation. ”

“ While we are suffering oppression, degradation and insult, from the external enemy, shall we redouble our misery, by wrongfully oppressing one another? I thought it my duty to exert myself in favor of an equality of rights among us. I could not bear to hear the domineering language, and see the overbearing conduct of the purse proud among us; of a set of cunning, tricking, slight-of-hand men, who were constantly stripping the unwary and artless American, of the small sums he had acquired, not by gaming, but by labor and good behaviour. ”

“ We cannot suppose that the British board of admiralty, or the transport board would justify the cruel system of starvation practised on the brave Americans who were taken in Canada, and conveyed in their floating dungeons down the river St. Lawrence to Halifax. Some of these captains of transports deserve to be hanged for their barbarity to our men; and for the eternal hatred they have occasioned towards their own government in the hearts of the surviving Americans. ”

“ There are among us Americans on board this prison ship, some men of sense and principle; but there are many more, especially among the soldiery, some of the lowest of the American community; the very dregs of the American people. They are lazy, dirty, lying, and profligate; and yet they are total strangers to some of the worst vices of these Frenchmen. But I forbear to enlarge, and shall quit this odious subject by wishing that all young Americans may stay at home, and if possible, never mix with these veterans in vice, who inhabit what is called the old world. ”

“ This imprudent, meddling old commander, of the Bellauxcean, was forever informing the officer of the deck of every little pickadillo of the American prisoners; and he, of course, got the hearty ill will of all the Americans in the ship Bahama. He once saw a marine connive at the passing a couple of bottles of liquor through the lower ports, and he hailed the commander, and informed him of it; and the marine was immediately punished for it. This roused the Americans to revenge; for the British soldier, or marine, is so much of a slave, that revenge never dare enter his head. ”

“ Beware, bloody nations of Britons and savage Indians, of the recoiling vengeance of a brave people. For shame—talk no more of your Christianity, of your bible and missionary societies, when your only aim is to direct the scalping knife, and give force to the arm of the savage. No longer express the smile of pleasure, on hearing a stupid Governor proclaim you to be 'The Bulwark of our Religion!' You have filled India with blood and ashes; you have murdered the Irish for contending for liberty of conscience ”

“ If this act of Charles raised an "universal horror," what should be the excitement produced by the cold blooded massacre of a number of unarmed and unoffending prisoners of war in confinement? Humanity shudders at the thought, and language furnishes no appropriate epithet with which to brand the infamous perpetrator of so foul, so hitherto unheard of a crime. Did that writer now live, he would no longer extol the humanity of the English nation, but in common with the friends of humanity, he would join in the "universal horror" which British cruelty has excited. ”

“ Several of them told me that life was a burthen; that pride of character kept them from whining, and forced a smile on their countenance, while their being penned up, like so many dirty hogs, had chilled their souls, and sunk them, at times, into despondency. Some said, that nothing but the hope of revenge kept them alive.
There are two extremes of the mind producing a disregard for life. The one is, the fever or delirium of battle, augmented and kept up by the cannon's roar, the sight of blood, and military music; here a man, being all soul, thinks nothing of his body. ”

“ The Episcopal church of England treads close upon the heels of the papal, and has formed a system all cut and dried, like the Catholic, for a man to believe and be saved. Both of them make religion a stationary point, and not a motive of principle, forever progressing to perfection. One never dares to think or speak beyond the bounds of that common prayer book, established by the king and his council: whereas an American reads or hears read the bible from his infancy, and thereby acquires a freedom of thinking unknown even to the generality of Englishmen. ”

“ To young men so brought up and nourished, a British captivity on board their horrid transports, and even on board their prison-ships, is worse than death. If we, Americans, treat British prisoners as they treat ours, let it be sounded through the world to our disgrace. Should the war continue many years, I predict that few Americans will be taken alive by the English.
After these poor fellows had received money and clothing from our government, they became cheerful, clean, and many of them neat, and were no bad specimens of American soldiery. ”

“ The horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta have been long celebrated, because Englishmen suffered and perished in it. Now the English have more than a thousand black holes into which they unfeelingly thrust their impressed men, and their prisoners of war. Their tenders that lay in the Thames, off Tower-wharf, are so many black holes into which they thrust their own people, whom their press gangs seize in the streets of London, and crowd into them like so many live rabbits or chickens carrying in a cart to market. ”