f as good an idea of the critical
condition of affairs as that brief dialogue.

[Sidenote: Cruelties to prisoners.]

First and foremost among the many causes of the army's disruption was
its losses in prisoners. Not less than 5,000 men were at that moment
dying by slow torture in the foul prisons or pestilential floating
dungeons of New York. Turn from it as we may, there is no escaping the
conviction that if not done with the actual sanction of Sir William
Howe, these atrocities were at least committed with his guilty
knowledge.[1] The calculated barbarities practised upon these poor
prisoners, with no other purpose than to make them desert their cause,
or if that failed, totally to unfit them for serving it more, are almost
too shocking for belief. It was such acts as these that wrung from the
indignant Napier the terrible admission that "the annals of civilized
warfare furnish nothing more inhuman towards captives of war than the
prison ships of England."

This method of disposing of prisoners was none the less potent that it
was in some sort murder. Washington had not the prisoners to exchange
for them, Howe would not liberate them on parole, and when exchanges
were finally effected, the men thus released were too much enfeebled by
disease ever to carry a musket again.

In brief, more of Washington's men were languishing in captivity in New
York than he now had with him in the Jerseys. And he was not losing
nearly so many by bullets as by starvation.

[Sidenote: Affects recruiting.]

We have emphasized this dark feature of the contest solely for the
purpose of showing its material influence upon it at this particular
time. The knowledge of how they would be treated, should they fall into
the enemy's hands, undoubtedly deterred many from enlisting. In a
broader sense, it added a new and more aggravated complication to the
general question as to how the war was to be carried on by the two
belligerents, whether under the restraints of civilized warfare, or as a
war to the knife.

Thrown back upon his own resources, Washington must now bitterly have
repented leaving Lee in an independent command. If there was any secret
foreboding on his part that Lee would play him false, we do not discover
it either in his orders or his correspondence. If there was secret
antipathy, Washington showed himself possessed of almost superhuman
patience and self-restraint, for certainly if ever man's patience was
tried Washington's