e royal captors was to
"break their spirit" by ill usage, and win them back to their loyalty by
no gentle means.

As the motley train of prisoners came down to the city after the capture
of Fort Washington, they were met by the royal officers with every mark
of contempt and hate. They were stripped of their arms and uniforms,
robbed of their money, insulted with rude taunts and even blows. War had
not yet been robbed of some of its brutality by the slow rise of
knowledge, and the British officers had not yet learned the politeness
of freemen. A savage Hessian made his way up to Graydon, the young
American officer, and threatened to kill him. "Young man," said to him a
Scotch officer of more humanity, "you should never rebel against your
king." The prisoners were taken before the British provost-marshal to be
examined. "What is your rank?" said the officer to a sturdy little
fellow from Connecticut, ragged and dirty, who seemed scarcely twenty.
"I am a _keppen_," said he, in a resolute tone; and the British
officers, clad in scarlet and gold, broke into shouts of laughter. It
was not long before they were flying before the "keppens" of New Jersey
and New York, glad to escape from the rabble they despised.

[Illustration: JAIL IN CITY HALL PARK.--[FROM MISS MARY L. BOOTH'S
"HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK."]]

When they had been examined, plundered, ridiculed, the unlucky prisoners
were divided into companies, and marched away to the different prisons
of New York, that were for so many weary months to be their homes or
their graves. Those who were confined in the Middle Dutch Church were
probably the most fortunate of all; they had air and light; but two of
the prisons are covered with some of the saddest memories of the war for
freedom. One of them was a common jail in the Park, now the Hall of
Records, and the other was the old Sugar-House in Liberty Street, next
to the Middle Dutch Church. The jail was so crowded with the captured
Americans that they had scarcely room to lie on the bare floor. The air
was stifling, the rooms pestilential, full of filth and fever.

[Illustration: OLD SUGAR-HOUSE IN LIBERTY STREET.--[FROM MISS MARY L.
BOOTH'S "HISTORY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK."]]

But the most painful circumstance of their lot was the character of the
keeper. His name was Cunningham; he seems to have been a monster. Many
years afterward he was executed in England for some hideous crime, and
boasted that he had put ar