American Prisoners of the Revolution

Danske Dandridge is the author of American Prisoners of the Revolution. The dedication names Lieutenant Daniel Bedinger, of Bedford, Virginia, as representative of all that was bravest and most honorable in the life and character of the patriots of 1776. The preface says that the writer has been interested for many years in the subject of the sufferings of the American prisoners of the Revolution, and that there is little that is original in the compilation.

A letter says that the men were placed on board two large transports in the North River as prison ships, where the Steam and breath of 150 men soon gave them Coughs, then fevers. A chapter headed Names of Some of the Prisoners of 1776 says that the account is designed as a memorial to those martyred privates, with many efforts made to obtain their names. An account in the text says that when the mate looked in the coal hole he espied something rather whiter than the coal, which he soon ascertained to be the Irishman’s shoulder.