Lincoln, who had several times hastened to Washington's assistance, was promoted over the heads of all the brigadiers, having risen from the ranks of the Massachusetts militia. Eighteen more brigadiers were appointed; amongst them, Clinton, Cadwallader, Hunt, and Reed, who had resigned his post as adjutant-general, and was succeeded in it by Timothy Pickering. Four regiments of horse were enlisted, and commanded by colonels Bland, Baylor, Sheldon, and Moylan. The quarter-master's and the commissary departments were reformed and strengthened.
There were many difficulties betwixt the Americans and English in respect to the exchange of prisoners. The British, during the war, had taken about five thousand,and the Americans three thousand, prisoners. At first, the English refused all exchange, on the ground that the Americans were rebels; and this determination was much strengthened by the refusal of congress to fulfil Arnold's agreement at The Cedars. A further obstacle arose from the capture of general Lee, who, having taken service in the American army before the resignation of his commission in the English service, was regarded as a deserter. The Americans offered six Hessian field-officers in exchange for him, but Howe did not feel at liberty to give up Lee, though he at length prevailed on his government to regard him as a prisoner of war. The Americans had declared, that, if Lee was shot as a deserter, they would treat the six Hessian officers the same. Whilst these matters were in discussion, not only the six Hessian officers, but colonel Campbell, an English officer, who had been taken at Boston, when he entered there unaware of the departure of Howe, were put into close prisons, and treated with singular severity. In fact, colonel Campbell, who had been left at Boston to the mercy of the fanatic New Englanders, had been treated in a manner contrary to all the laws of war, or the customs of civilised nations. Campbell, when taken, had three hundred men with him, and, consequently, several officers.
The council of Boston had stripped both officers and men of their property—of the very necessaries of life. They had taken their side-arms, and sold them, and confined them in most abominable prisons. Colonel Campbell's place of confinement was a loathsome dungeon in the common gaol at Concord. They drew on the walls of his apartment rude sketches of the gallows, as the object on which they meant him to terminate his life. On the 14th of February of this year (1777) he managed to get a letter to general Howe, in which he stated that he was lodged, in the depth of winter, with the frost and snow in the extreme, in a dirty, unglazed dungeon, of twelve or thirteen feet square, and shut out from the adjoining yard by two doors, with double looks and bolts; and mentioning other severities and privations to which he was subjected, too disgusting to be quoted. "The attendance," he wrote, "of a single servant is also denied me, and every visit from a friend positively refused; in short, sir, was a fire to happen in any chamber of the gaol, which is all wood, the chimney-stacks excepted, I might perish in the flames before the gaoler could go through the ceremony of unlocking the doors; although, to do him justice in his station, I really think him a man of humanity."
Howe dispatched this letter to Washington, who immediately interfered, as he had done before, on the representation of similar atrocities committed by his countrymen. Howe, on taking New York, had found a quantity of bullets in the military stores cut in half, and a nail driven through each, to make the most frightful wound possible. He sent some of them to Washington, protesting against the use of practices, in modern warfare, of so diabolical a character. Washington replied that, till then, such infernal inventions were unknown to him, and, denouncing them in the language of an honourable nature, he pledged himself to prevent further use of them. On the present occasion he at once wrote to the council at Boston, informing them that general Lee was merely confined by the English in a commodious house, with genteel accommodations, and requiring that colonel Campbell and the Hessian officers should have equally good treatment. The matter was one of sound policy as much as of humanity, for the British held at the time three hundred American officers, whilst they held only about fifty English ones. The Americans endeavoured to lessen the disgrace of
