The July meeting, of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond, was held on July 15, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.
The evening’s presentation “Prisoner Administration During the Revolutionary War” was made by Susan Brynne Long, Ph.D. Susan is an instructor of history whose research and teaching focus on early America and military history. Her current research is about the American administration of British allied prisoners of war in the Revolution. She is interested in how prisoner management offers a window into the contested development of federalism in revolutionary America.
She is in the process of revising her dissertation into a book, tentatively titled The Disagreeable Situation: American Prisoner Administration in the Revolutionary War. She is co-author of forthcoming monograph, The Frontier War, 1775–1783, which will be published by the Center of Military History in winter 2026. She has taught at numerous institutions, including the University of Delaware and the University of the Cumberlands. Her scholarly writings have appeared in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History and Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. A prolific public historian, her op-eds connecting early America with modern domestic and foreign policy issues have appeared in the Washington Post and Real Clear Defense. Dr. Long has spoken for audiences on topics related to the American founding for the American Revolution Institute at the Society of the Cincinnati, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, the Society of the First Families of New York, and more.[1]
During the American Revolution, authority over British-allied prisoners became a hotly contested issue. This contest reflected clashes between early Americans and their governments to secure political and military authority in the new nation. At the start of the conflict, provisional wartime governments including Committees of Safety assumed responsibility for the first prisoners of the war. The radical democratic spirit of the Revolution afforded early Americans significant power over prisoner allowances and restrictions through their revolutionary governments. In 1777, Congress established the Department of Prisoners to better pursue its interests regarding captive populations. Inhabitants in and around detention centers resisted this increase in Continental authority at the peril of their own. This resistance reflected the endurance of the early war’s radical democracy, notwithstanding the recent dissolution of the revolutionary governments that provided a legal avenue for it. The nation’s first Commissary General of Prisoners, Elias Boudinot, had to contend with popular opposition to his supremacy in prisoner affairs, as well as with the jealous pursuit of state interests regarding both American and enemy prisoners. Reacting alongside Congress to the democratic impulse of the early revolutionary years, conservative lawmakers endowed state governments with coercive governing authorities that enabled them to pursue interests distinct from those of their constituents. The pursuit of state interests respecting prisoners manifested in various activities that conflicted with the efforts of the Department of Prisoners to standardize prisoner administration under its auspices, including, most obtrusively, state-initiated prisoner exchanges. As Commander-in-Chief, George Washington acted alongside the American public, the states, and Congress during the war to establish the contours of his authority. Boudinot’s tenure coincided with a cautionary phase of Washington’s negotiations, forestalling the general’s intervention to protect the Department of Prisoners against the intrusive actions of the states. This hesitance, combined with Congress’s failure to assert Boudinot’s authority, compounded the difficulties of his administration. The irresolution of Congress to assert the superintendency of the Department of Prisoners over prisoner affairs, born of a dual fear of standing armies and centralized authority, poorly equipped Boudinot to advocate for Continental interests with prisoners. By the time Washington, and to a lesser extent Congress, shifted to curtail state-initiated prisoner exchanges, they had hardened into assumed authorities of the new state governments. The confusion and overlapping authorities that characterized America’s first sprawling system of prisoner management represented a contested negotiation over the distribution of authorities in the new nation. But even as early Americans and their governments variously justified their claims to power based on traditional and emerging ideological imperatives, they also acted in self-interest. Prisoners of war offered personal and economic benefits to early Americans and financial and reputational benefits to Congress and state governments. Selfish jealousies and ideological motivations would continue to shape the contours of the American political system after the war, informing the imperatives of the Constitutional Convention and beyond.[2]
Dr. Long’s presentation included:
·
The Revolutionary War was not a war between
nations but was a civil war.
·
The British military did not treat Americans
well. Patriots were viewed by the British as traitors which was different than
how the British viewed and treated French prisoners who were considered
combatants subject to the rule of war.
·
An example is the HMS Jersey
and other British abandoned and decommissioned warships that were used as
floating prisons where captured Continental Army soldiers were imprisoned and received
the cruelest maltreatments.
·
There were no British prisoners of war until July
4,1776, as there had been no declaration of war.
· Prisoners captured at Fort Ticonderoga were not
treated as POWs but “were sent to households in the countryside near Hartford,
Connecticut. The prisoners labored for farmers or artisans there; in return,
the people they worked for provided lodging, clothing, food, and wages.
Prisoners who refused to work were housed in Hartford jails. This system, which
had been used in America in prior wars, saved the colony money and helped alleviate
a labor shortage. However, the practice of coercing prisoners into a labor
resource broke European norms for treatment of prisoners of war which deeply disturbed
the British.” [3]
· After the Battle of Trenton, George Washington ordered
his troops to take the prisoners in and "treat them with humanity,"
which they did. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the
brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate
brethren who have fallen into their hands." [4]
· The British were unwilling to negotiate with
Americans over prisoner exchanges and paroles, to do so would recognize the independence
of the United States.
· Larger groups of British, and related prisoners,
were incarcerated at Lancaster, York, Reading and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Cambridge
and Rutland, Massachusetts, Albemarle
Barracks and Winchester, Virginia, and Fort Frederick, Maryland.
· The Continental Congress in due course claimed
the sole authority to decide where the prisoners went, and the local towns had
little forewarning and no say in the matter. Prison towns found themselves with
the burden of providing for hundreds or thousands of prisoners at a time. In
towns that could not afford to feed prisoners, the prisoners were put to work
to feed themselves. British and German prisoners cultivated gardens; worked on
farms and for craftsmen; and found other forms of unskilled labor.
· In his letters Joshua Mersereau, Deputy
Commissary General of Prisoners for the Continental Army, complained of the
difficult circumstances created by the threats of locals against prisoners. The
Quartermaster of the Rutland barracks in his letters described his difficulties
with local populations in the deliberately slow manner in which construction
materials were provided and other hostile acts calling the locals “Sharks” and
“Devils” for steeply inflating materials pricing.[5]
· Local committees of safety and provisional
governments had more legitimacy to hold prisoners than the Continental Congress
because they were the first to address the disagreeable situation.
· British
Major Christopher French's correspondence, with George Washington, during
his captivity demonstrates the contemptuous and privileged attitude held by a
British army officer towards Americans. French was unwittingly taken prisoner.
It seems that French ran afoul with all Americans by taking out advertisements
instructing British troops to not cooperate with American authorities,
insisting he be allowed to possess weapons, insulting his local committee’s
powers to hold him and Washington’s instructions to do so, and escaping his
captivity multiple times and causing many other trifling distractions.
· Rutland’s
Rebellion was a series of struggles that pitted long-established local town
meeting government authorities and newly created federal authorities over
contested authority.
· The Continental Congress’ wanted to standardize
how British prisoners were kept and American prisoners were supplied. Elias
Boudinot IV was appointed Commissary General of Prisoners and served for 14
months before resigning to take a seat in the Continental Congress for New
Jersey.
Decentralized Beginnings: Early prisoner care was an ad hoc process overseen by local communities, state governments, and town meetings (such as Rutland, Massachusetts) rather than a unified national policy.
Crisis of Authority: As the Continental Army tried to formalize control—prompted by leaders like George Washington—local towns often clashed with military authorities over who held ultimate power and responsibility for the captives.
Militarization and Civic Alienation: the war effort centralized and militarized prisoner management, ordinary citizens lost their direct role in local defense and community-based captivity management.
Humane Standards vs. Retaliation: While American leadership initially tried to follow European martial traditions of humane treatment, harsh realities, and reports of suffering on British prison ships frequently strained these standards.
Fred Sorrell
Secretary
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