The Revolutionary War Collection contains a variety of materials from and about the Revolutionary War in Lancaster County and Pennsylvania. The original records include correspondence, military pay certificates, court records, and an orderly book kept by Lt. Col. Adam Hubley, Jr. during the Sullivan Campaign of 1779. There are also research notes and secondary sources, including a list of prisoners of war, a list of males in Lancaster County in 1776, Continental Hospital Returns 1777-1780, articles, information on soldiers buried in Lancaster County, and an article about John Paul Jones.
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A Christmas reminder : being the names of about eight thousand persons, a small portion of the number confined on board the British prison ships during the war of the Revolution
Autographed by the author after his presentation of 25 September 2014.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents
Prologue : a community at war -- "A colony of aliens" : diversity, politics, and war in pre-revolutionary Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- "Divided we must inevitably fall" : war comes to Lancaster -- "A dangerous set of people" : British captives and the making of revolutionary identity -- "'Tis Britain alone that is our enemy" : German captives and the making of American identity -- "Enemies of our peace" : captives, the disaffected, and the refinement of American patriotism -- "The country is full of prisoners of war" : nationalism, resistance, and assimilation -- Epilogue : the empty barracks.
Summary
"As the Americans' principal site for incarcerating enemy prisoners of war, Lancaster stood at the nexus of two vastly different revolutionary worlds: one national, the other intensely local. Captives came under the control of local officials loosely supervised by state and national authorities. Concentrating the prisoners in the heart of their communities brought the revolutionaries' enemies to their doorstep, with residents now facing a daily war at home.Many prisoners openly defied their hosts, fleeing, plotting, and rebelling, often with the clandestine support of local loyalists... The challenge of creating an autonomous national identity in the newly emerging United States was nowhere more evident than in Lancaster, where the establishment of a detention camp served as a flashpoint for new conflict in a community already unsettled by stark ethnic, linguistic, and religious differences. Many Lancaster residents soon sympathized with the Hessians detained in their town while the loyalist population considered the British detainees to be the true patriots of the war. Miller demonstrates that in Lancaster, the notably local character of the war reinforced not only preoccupations with internal security but also novel commitments to cause and country." [from Amazon.com]
Includes bibliographical references (pages 335-359) and index.
Contents
German soldiers in British service -- Subsidy treaties -- Recruitment patterns -- Social composition -- Into captivity -- Prisoners of war in western warfare -- Capture and surrender -- Prisoners of war -- The first prisoners of war in revolutionary hands, 1775-1776 -- German prisoners of war, 1776-1778 -- Provisions and exchange, 1778 -- The Convention Army, 1777-1781 -- Continuity and change, 1779-1783 -- Release and return -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Common German soldiers taken prisoner.
Summary
"Some 37,000 soldiers from six German principalities, collectively remembered as Hessians, entered service as British auxiliaries in the American War of Independence. At times, they constituted a third of the British army in North America, and thousands of them were imprisoned by the Americans. Despite the importance of Germans in the British war effort, historians have largely overlooked these men. Drawing on research in German military records and common soldiers' letters and diaries, Daniel Krebs places the prisoners on center stage in A Generous and Merciful Enemy, portraying them as individuals rather than simply as numbers in casualty lists. Setting his account in the context of British and European politics and warfare, Krebs explains the motivations of the German states that provided contract soldiers for the British army. We think of the Hessians as mercenaries, but, as he shows, many were conscripts. Some were new recruits; others, veterans. Some wanted to stay in the New World after the war. Krebs further describes how the Germans were made prisoners, either through capture or surrender, and brings to life their experiences in captivity from New England to Havana, Cuba. Krebs discusses prison conditions in detail, addressing both the American approach to war prisoners and the prisoners' responses to their experience. He assesses American efforts as a "generous and merciful enemy" to use the prisoners as economic, military, and propagandistic assets. In the process, he never loses sight of the impact of imprisonment on the POWs themselves. Adding new dimensions to an important but often neglected topic in military history, Krebs probes the origins of the modern treatment of POWs. An epilogue describes an almost-forgotten 1785 treaty between the United States and Prussia, the first in western legal history to regulate the treatment of prisoners of war."--Publisher's website.
Introduction -- Background -- Captured at Trenton -- Imprisonment of the Hessians -- Employment of the prisoners -- Inducements to remain in America -- Location of employment sites -- Hessian prisoners associated with the Cornwall Iron Furnace -- The list of prisoners -- The list of employers -- Summary -- Prisoners belived to have stayed in America -- Endnotes -- Notes on prisoner documentation.
This essay provides contextual information concerning how the English actually hired the soldiers and why the German princes, and not other nations who were asked, were willing to sell their men to English. It also discusses how the English and German public reacted to the hiring of German soldiers.
"Reprinted from Notes and queries, Harrisburg daily telegraph."
"Rolls of prisoners": p. 14-20.
Bound with other pamphlets by the author: The Catholic Church at Lancaster, Penn'a (1894, 52 p.) -- Historical sketch of the ancient parish of St. Mary's, Lancaster, Pa. (n. d., 12 p) -- Additional historical notes in reference to St. Mary's at Lancaster (n. d., 5 p.) -- Some Lancaster Catholics, adn other historical notes (n.d ., 6 p.) -- Very Rev. Bernard Keenan, V. G. Sketch of one of the pioneer priest's [sic] of Pennsylvania (n. d. 10 p.) -- The Acadians in Lancaster County, Paper read before Lancaster County Historical Society, September 4, 1896 (1896, 8 p.) -- Simon S. Rathvon, Ph.D: Lancaster's oldest living devotee of science (n. d. 8 p.) -- Old time heroes of the War of the Revolution and War of 182-14 (1895, 11 p.) -- The Lancaster barracks where the British and Hesian prisoners were detained during the Revolution (1895, 20 p.
