Part 9

On the seventeenth, we were informed by Capt. Shortland, that he had received orders from the Board of Transport to discharge the prisoners whenever Mr. Beasley was ready to receive them. To the great disappointment of all the prisoners we had received no information from Mr. Beasley for six weeks, and the prisoners now were in the greatest anxiety. They reasonably expected that on the arrival of this ratified treaty, Mr. Beasley would have everything in a state of readiness for their immediate conveyance to the United States, and that he would inform them in what manner they were to proceed there; but not a syllable was received from the agent of our country till the eighteenth, when a very cold and unpleasant letter was received from him, which read as follows:

_Fellow-citizens_,--

I am informed that great numbers of the prisoners refuse being inoculated with the small-pox, which I hear has been very mortal among you, I therefore acquaint you that it will be impossible for me to send home any prisoners unless they have gone through the same. Yours, &c.,

R. G. BEASLEY.

This strange letter rather increased the great anxiety every man was in, for we expected to have been informed something relative to our speedy departure, and that he had made arrangements to clothe the oldest prisoners, who were so naked that they were unfit to be discharged.

On the nineteenth, an order arrived, informing Capt. Shortland to discharge thirty men, as they had been applied for by American captains, to man ships in France and up the east country; the Transport Board had ordered them to be discharged.

On the twentieth, Capt. Shortland released those three men whom we have mentioned were committed to close confinement in the cachot last August, on suspicion of blowing up the vessel; the other, we have mentioned, made his escape.

These men made as ghastly an appearance as it is possible for human beings to make; they had been eight months confined within a damp stone room, twenty feet square, floored with stone, and no light except a dim ray that gleamed through the top of the gable end. They had lived on two-thirds of a scant allowance till their trembling limbs could scarce support their body.

On the same day, a writ came to remove the insane man who had occasioned the death of Jonathan Paul to Exeter, to have his trial; also one to bring forward about twenty persons as witnesses, in this and the trial of the three men whom we mentioned had been taken there for trial for marking the traitors.

The small-pox raged now in a most alarming manner; it being of the African kind, scarce a man recovered after once being attacked and conveyed to the hospital.

After the arrival of the ratification of the treaty, great numbers visited the prison, from all parts of the country, with almost every kind of article for sale in the markets, among whom were great numbers of Jews, who came here to sell old clothes.

One of these Jew merchants, on his way to the prison, met a farmer who lived about eight miles from the prison, and accused him of being an American prisoner, making his escape from the depot, as great numbers had lately made their escape; and, thinking to receive the reward, which was three pounds, given by the government for apprehending any prisoner making his escape from the prison, told the farmer he must go back to the prison with him; and the farmer, having been once a sailor, was willing to confirm him in his suspicions, and began the song of Yankee Doodle; this confirmed the Jew in his belief of his being an American, and he was sure he had got a prize worth three pounds to him; but his prisoner refused to walk, and thinking he could afford to hire a conveyance for him, gave half a guinea to a wagoner to take him to the prison, and treated him very liberally along the way with drink. About 11 o’clock the Jew arrived with his prisoner, and applied to the keepers to take charge of him, and pay the reward of three pounds; but to his astonishment, the clerks, turnkeys, and every officer, immediately knew the farmer, and knew him to be a respectable man residing on the edge of the moor. He now demanded of the Jew a compensation for being detained several hours a prisoner, and the demand being justified by Capt. Shortland, the Jew was obliged to pay five pounds to prevent a suit.

The affair was made known to the prisoners, and every man forbid purchasing anything of the Jew; he was therefore obliged to leave the market without disposing of a single article.

On the twenty-fourth, a letter was received from Mr. Beasley, informing those Americans who had been taken under the French flag, and had been considered French prisoners till they were discharged, and from that time till this, had been recognised by no government, that he was now authorized to acknowledge them as Americans, and sent to each man a suit of clothes. This was the first assistance these men had had from any government since the French prisoners were discharged, and had lived entirely on the charity of the other prisoners. They had been prisoners four or five years.

The same letter informed us that he had taken three ships at London for the conveyance of the prisoners to the United States.

The same day a passport for four prisoners, who were to be discharged, was received.

During this month many prisoners made their escape, the government appearing very careless; and it was supposed this negligence was intentional, that they might escape for the purpose of impressing, as the press was hot about this time; but some few were detected when passing the wall, and sentenced to the cachot for ten days, on two-thirds allowance, which stopped the escaping for that time.

On the twenty-fifth the prisoners began to be impatient of such delay in the American agent, as eleven days had elapsed since the arrival of the ratified treaty, and nothing in readiness to discharge them, no means provided, and such delay too much to be borne; their situation was such that they could not restrain their resentment against such criminal neglect as their agent was guilty of; they were determined to punish him as much as it lay in their power; they therefore caused his effigy to be hanged on the top of one of the prisons, after which it was taken down, and burnt in presence of all the officers and soldiers--But I must not forget to mention the sentence of the court, pronounced before his execution, and his dying confession, when under the gallows.

_Sentence._

At this trial, held at Dartmoor on the twenty-fifth day of March, one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, you, Reuben G. Beasley in effigy, are found guilty, by an impartial and judicious jury of your countrymen, upon the testimony of five thousand seven hundred witnesses, of depriving many hundreds of your countrymen of their lives, by the most wanton and most cruel deaths, by nakedness, starvation, and exposure to pestilence. It therefore becomes the duty of this court, as ought to be the duty of every court of justice, to pronounce that sentence of the law, which your manifold and heinous crimes so richly deserve.--And it is with the deepest regret that I am compelled to say, our country has been imposed upon, by a man whose crimes must cut him off from among the living. You this day must be hanged by the neck on the top of the prison No. 7, until you are dead; your body is then to be taken down and fastened to a stake, and burned to ashes, which are to be distributed to the winds, that your name may be forgotten, and your crimes no longer disgrace our nation.

On hearing the above sentence, the compunction of his conscience now brought forth the following confession:

CONFESSION.

_Injured countrymen and fellow-citizens_:

I this day, by the verdict of a just and impartial jury, and by the sentence of an impartial court, am to be made a public example, and receive that punishment which is so justly due to my many odious offences against the laws of God and my country; and being in a very few moments to make my exit from this world, do confess, in the presence of Almighty God, that for the first twelve months of my consulship I did most criminally neglect the American prisoners, who were dying daily for the want of my assistance, which I withheld through mercenary motives: the cries and petitions of my unfortunate countrymen I have always treated with the utmost disregard and contempt, but being fully convinced of all my past errors, I make this public and candid confession, in hopes that I may find mercy in the presence of a just and merciful God. I further do acknowledge, that I have been the means of detaining you in your present situation by neglecting to send you home, as I might have done, while the exchange was open for prisoners, which was not closed till June, eighteen hundred and thirteen; I likewise confess, that I have deprived great numbers of you of your regular turns of exchange, by filling the cartels with paroled officers, who were not entitled to the same; I must confess that had I have made proper application to the British government, and had I used my influence, I might have obtained the release of all the men discharged from his majesty’s ships of war; but being selfish, and swayed by despicable motives, I made no exertions for their relief. I do likewise confess, that after the second year of my consulship, I could no longer withhold from my unfortunate countrymen, some little assistance in money and clothing, as the United States had given me positive orders to supply all the wants of her citizens, who were prisoners of war at that time in England; but to my shame, and to the disgrace of any American agent, I entered in a contract with a _Jew merchant_ of London, to supply the prisoners with the very meanest and coarsest clothing that could possibly be procured in all England. At the same time I made advances to you, prisoners, of two and a half cents per day, and then represented to your country, the Congress of the United States, that I had supplied all your wants by providing you a sufficient quantity of clothing, and making you a daily advance of money suitable to your wants; for I did think that by deceiving the United States, and depriving you of the necessaries of life, I should in a very few years accumulate to myself a very handsome fortune; but to my great disappointment and disgrace, the peace took place, and all my villany and deception was discovered; my crimes stood in open day. For these crimes now I am justly doomed to this ignominious death, and must very shortly make my appearance before the just and Almighty God, to answer for all my crimes; where I expect there will rise up in evidence against me, the souls of hundreds of my departed countrymen, who now lie buried behind the walls of this prison by my crimes; as the time is now expired, I must depart to the uncertainty of an hereafter.

The hat drops.

I depart among the damned.

After the ashes was scattered in the winds, the following dirge was then sung:

The image of disgrace we’ve hang’d, And wish it was quite true That Beasley had himself been there, And the devil burnt his Jew: For both contriv’d to wrong us much; And they know it very well, They’ll always have the prisoners’ prayer To send them both to HELL.

On the twenty-sixth, the prisoners who had been taken to Exeter to give evidence against the insane man who stabbed Paul, and also those who were to give evidence against the three men who were accused of marking the traitors, returned to Dartmoor; as did also the defendants who had had their trial, and were acquitted.

On the twenty-eighth, we received our monthly pay as usual: the prison continued very sickly, and no preparation for our departure.

At this time the officers and soldiers of the garrison seemed greatly alarmed and much concerned at the news received from France. They had the greatest apprehensions of an immediate war with Bonaparte, as the Paris papers gave an account of his being at the head of three hundred thousand men in arms; and the British papers mentioned the great preparations they were making in this country to assist the allies. The very name of the Emperor, and the mention of the battle of New-Orleans, made every British officer and soldier turn pale, and shudder at the thought.

On the last day of March, I collected the exact number of all prisoners at this depot, and noted as follows:

In prison No. 1 1769 In do. No. 3 972 In do. No. 4 1051 In do. No. 5 958 In do. No. 7 1263 In different employments about the stores 51 Employed in the hospital 19 Patients in the hospital 130 Total at Dartmoor 5693

The following are the different descriptions of prisoners, and the number of each class.

There were of those discharged from British ships of war, and also those taken in England, 2200 Colored people 1000 United States’ soldiers and sailors 250 Taken on board of privateers and merchant-ships, Including those few mentioned, taken under the French flag. 2243

On the same day we received letters from London, informing us that the ships taken for our conveyance, lay wind bound in the Downs.

The month concluded with pleasant weather for Dartmoor; sickness and small pox had somewhat abated.

The prisoners made a contribution for the assistance of a prisoner, who had lost an arm in attempting to take possession of the cartel, which was conveying them from Halifax to England.

As this is intended to be a true and faithful account of all the occurrences and circumstances of the American captives in England, we cannot forbear mentioning some circumstances, which may appear trifling and uninteresting to those who have not felt as we have.

The weather now being mild, and the pleasant season for crossing the Atlantic fast approaching, the prisoners felt the most insufferable anxiety for their departure. The winds being favorable, and seventeen days having elapsed since the ratified treaty arrived, they could not but wait with impatience for the cartels.

On the first of March, Capt. Shortland received orders to discharge twenty-one prisoners, who had applied to be released in England. Previous to this time almost all the men who had been delivered from the British ships of war, had been paid at different times their prize money, and the wages due for their past services in the navy.

This day a man by the name of Bratt, who had belonged to the United States’ brig Argus returned to prison. This man, at the time we were attempting to make our escape by digging out, was accused of dropping some unguarded expression, which had led to a discovery of our first attempt; he was threatened to be put to death, by great numbers of prisoners, and the keepers fearing this might be the case, took him to the guard house, where he remained till the crew of the Argus were discharged from prison, when he was also discharged with them, and went along with the crew to Dartmouth, and entered the cartel; he was there accused of the same as before, and threatened, and fearing his life might be taken, he escaped from the cartel, went into the country and worked at his trade, which was that of a blacksmith, and had resided there the whole time.

On the second we had information that the ship Milo, of Boston, had arrived in England in eighteen days from that port; she was the first American vessel which had reached this place since the peace.

On the same day, we received a letter from Mr. Beasley, which read as follows:

_Fellow Citizens_,

From the numberless letters I receive daily, I find that the prisoners entertain an idea of my releasing any prisoners that are enabled with a sufficiency to provide for themselves; I therefore must give you fully my intention on that subject, which is, to grant passports only to such persons as have friends or connexions in this country, of responsibility.

I must also acquaint you that I am making every possible dispatch with the cartels for your conveyance to the United States, where you are much wanted, and the encouragement for seamen very great.

This letter again revived the drooping spirits of the prisoners, who for many days had been almost distracted with the tedium of suspense. We now felt that a few days would release us from this earthly hell, and like Ænas of old, pass by propitious gales from hell to heaven, and shortly repose on the Elysian fields, in the arms of the goddess of liberty.

The prisoners that had kept shops in the prisons for retailing small articles, such as tobacco, thread, soap, coffee, sugar, &c. now broke up, and every thing was in great confusion for want of these articles; these shops were a great advantage to those who kept them, and a great accommodation to all the prisoners. There had been from sixty to eighty in each prison; at these places all these small articles might easily be obtained, though at somewhat higher price than in the market.

Our salary would not go far in purchasing these articles, which were very high at this time all over England; we could buy for a penny sterling, only one small chew of tobacco, which was selling at Plymouth by the quantity at nine shillings and six pence per pound.

We find mentioned in the paper of this day, the arrival of the late U. States frigate President at Plymouth; they barely mention that she had arrived at that place, and that she was captured by the Endymion, but the circumstances of the capture they very prudently left out, as reflecting no honor on the captors.

Capt. Shortland had two men committed to close confinement, who had been accused of drawing money from the Directors of Greenwich Hospital, under assumed names.

On the fourth, a circumstance occurred, which may lead to the recital of other circumstances, which many to whose hand this work may come, may be inclined to doubt the veracity of; but I can appeal, not only to those who have certified this work, but to nearly six thousand of my fellow prisoners, who upon their solemn oath can attest to the truth of what is herein contained.

During the whole of this day the prisoners remained without bread, and the captain of the prison gone to Plymouth: we were obliged to subsist on the four and a half ounces of beef, and the soup made of it; we demanded of the contractor the reason of our not drawing our usual allowance of bread; he answered, that it could not be obtained till to-morrow; we waited as patiently as our feelings would allow, till the expiration of thirty-six hours from the time we had received the last bread, when hunger became so pressing, that it drove us to a state of desperation, and we could no longer endure it, as the whole allowance was scarcely sufficient to sustain life. At dusk in the evening, we again demanded the reason of our not receiving our allowance of bread as usual, as the store-house we well knew contained a sufficiency of both hard and soft bread. The contractor’s clerk informed us, that a quantity of damaged hard bread, which had been kept in reserve for times of extreme necessity, now remained on hand, and that unless we would accept of one pound of that in lieu of the pound and a half of soft bread allowed by the Transport Board, until all they had was expended, he should not serve us with any bread, until Capt. Shortland returned from Plymouth.

The prisoners then collected themselves into companies, to consider of this very extraordinary conduct in the contractor; and after mature deliberation, they all concluded that it must be a design in the contractor to get rid of his damaged bread, before we went away, and had taken this opportunity, while the captain was absent, to compel us to receive it by starving us till we were willing; we therefore concluded rather to die by the sword, than the famine, and determined to remain no longer in this starving condition, for we had all this time lived solely on the four and a half ounces of beef. Thus desperate by starvation, we determined to force open the gates in front of the prison, disarm the soldiers, break open the store-house and supply ourselves; and provided the garrison should charge or fire upon us, to make a general attack, and take possession of the guard house and barracks, and stand the consequences let come what might. Accordingly at dark, the prisoners were ordered, as usual, inside the prisons to be locked up for the night, but instead of complying with orders, a signal previously agreed on was given, and passed like lightning through every prison, and every prisoner appeared instantly at the gate in one solid body; on approaching the gates, and bursting open the first three, the soldiers and turnkeys stationed there, fled in the utmost confusion and consternation to the main body in the guard house. The alarm-bells rung and the drums in every direction around the garrison beat to arms; the women in the different houses connected to the depot, flew in confusion and terror in every direction from the depot; in a few moments the alarm had reached the neighboring villages for many miles, and the militia assembled in arms to assist the garrison, which was at this time twelve hundred. We stood arranged in front of the store-house ready to receive the attack of the soldiery, or receive our usual allowance of bread; in a few moments the soldiers arrived and advanced with charged bayonets within two yards of the prisoners. The soldiers were then brought to a stand by the threats of the prisoners who all declared, in the most determined tone, that if they attempted to fire or make a charge on them, they must abide by any consequences that would follow: we told them that we were confident that no such orders had been issued by the government of Great Britain; we also told them, that unless the bread was served out immediately, that the store-house should be levelled with the ground, and every prisoner should march out of the prison. The contractor, clerks, &c. then immediately came forward and entered into this engagement, that if the prisoners would retire into the prison yards, that the bread should be immediately served to them; the prisoners agreed and retired, and for the securing the fulfilment of the engagement, they took with them as a hostage one of the clerks inside of the prison, and there to remain till every prisoner had received his usual allowance of bread, which was not till after twelve o’clock at night. During this time, the guards, soldiers, keepers, and every person connected with the prison, remained in the greatest apprehension, fearing the prisoners had some further intention than merely to obtain their bread; they feared their troubles would end in a more serious way, and the prisoners all make their escape. But next morning showed that the prisoners had no intention of escaping, for during the confusion of the night, many of them had taken the opportunity to scale the walls in an opposite direction, while the attention of the guard was taken up with the main body of them.

Those that had gone out after remaining all night, came and demanded admittance into prison again. This movement in the prisoners astonished the natives of the moor, who left vacant their huts and fled for safety; and the women and children had retired to the nearest towns, and there took refuge, and the men had joined the garrison for protection.