Note 1127 — Chapter VI · (continued 2)

Ramsay was a prisoner at the time, and what he says (Rev. in S. C., ii. 158-173, 288-303) has a considerable value. A large portion of Moultrie's second volume (pp. 117-201) is taken up with the same subject. Both of them relied on a letter written to Ramsay by Dr. P. Fassoux, surgeon-general in the hospital at Charleston. Moultrie declares that the letter "is an exact statement of their conduct in our hospital at that time." The letter is in Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 397,—the indorsement is on p. 277; Gibbes, Doc. Hist. (1781-82), p. 116; and Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 527. If a tithe of this statement is true, the conduct of the British officers in charge at Charleston was simply brutal; but the British surgeon denied most of the statements. It will do no harm to contrast this with the treatment of those taken at Yorktown, as told by one of their own number, Gen. Graham. Cf. his Memoirs, 66 et seq., and App. p. 306. English writers have asserted that papers implicating the Charleston prisoners in a conspiracy to overthrow the government were found in the pockets of those taken at Camden; but no proof of this has ever been produced. In fact, in his letter of Dec. 4th Cornwallis alleged as a reason for their removal to St. Augustine that they were so insolent in their behavior they could not be allowed to go at large in Charleston. Indeed, the prisoners seem to have been treated with increased harshness after Camden. Before that time everything had been done to induce them to enlist in the British army. A regiment had been raised, and the command offered to Moultrie, and refused by that sturdy patriot in a letter which has been printed over and over again. Cf. Moultrie, Memoirs, ii. 166; Ramsay, Rev. in S. C., ii. 289; Charleston Year-Book for 1884; and reprinted as The Correspondence of Lord Montague with General Moultrie, 1781 (Charleston, 1885).