Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/500

 and systematic plan to destroy the youths of the land, and thereby ruin the country. The integrity of these suffering prisoners was hardly credible. Hundreds submitted to death, rather than enlist in the British service, which they were most generally pressed to do. It was the opinion of the American officers that General Howe perfectly understood the condition of the private soldiers; and they from thence argued, that it was exactly such as he and his council had devised. After General Washington's success in the Jerseys, the obduracy and malevolence of the royalists subsided in some measure. The surviving prisoners were ordered to be sent out for an exchange; but several of them fell down dead in the streets, while attempting to walk to the vessels.

General Washington wrote to General Howe in the beginning of April,—"It is a fact not to be questioned, that the usage of our prisoners while in your possession, the privates at least, was such as could not be justified. This was proclaimed by the concurrent testimony of all who came out. Their appearance sanctified the assertion, and melancholy experience in the speedy death of a large part of them, stamped it with infallible certainty."

We turn from these painful details of the miseries of war to the consideration of other matters in this year of trial and suffering.

Washington, at the beginning of 1777, determined to have the army inoculated for the small-pox, which had made fearful ravages in the ranks. It was carried forward as secretly and carefully as possible, and the hospital physicians in Philadelphia were ordered at the same time to inoculate all the soldiers who passed through that city on their way to join the army. The same precautions were taken in the other military stations, and thus the army was relieved from an evil, which would have materially interfered with the success of the ensuing campaign. The example of the soldiery proved a signal benefit to the entire population: the practice of inoculation became general; and, by little and little, this fatal malady disappeared almost entirely.

In the hope that something might be effected at New York, Washington ordered General Heath, who was in command in the Highlands, to move down towards the city with a consider able force. Heath did so, and in a rather grandiloquent summons called upon Fort Independence to surrender. The enemy, however, stood their ground, and Heath, after a few days, retreated, having done nothing, and exposed himself to ridicule for not having followed up his words with suitable deeds.

Washington, in view of the probable plans of Howe for the next campaign, was full of anxious thought as to how he should be prepared to meet him with any hope of success. His force was reduced to the lowest point; the pernicious system of short enlistments was producing disastrous effects; and the attempts to raise the army contemplated by the late resolves of Congress