Between 1775 and 1783, some 200,000 Americans took up arms against the British Crown. Just over 6,800 of those men died in battle. About 25,000 became prisoners of war, most of them confined in New York City under conditions so atrocious that they perished by the thousands. Evidence suggests that at least 17,500 Americans may have died in these prisons—more than twice the number to die on the battlefield. It was in New York, not Boston or Philadelphia, where most Americans gave their lives for the cause of independence.

New York City became the jailhouse of the American Revolution because it was the principal base of the Crown's military operations. Beginning with the bumper crop of American captives taken during the 1776 invasion of New York, captured Americans were stuffed into a hastily assembled collection of public buildings, sugar houses, and prison ships. The prisoners were shockingly overcrowded and chronically underfed—those who escaped alive told of comrades so hungry they ate their own clothes and shoes.

Despite the extraordinary number of lives lost, Forgotten Patriots is the first-ever account of what took place in these hell-holes. The result is a unique perspective on the Revolutionary War as well as a sobering commentary on how Americans have remembered our struggle for independence—and how much we have forgotten.

Length: 383 pages	Word Wise: Enabled	Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A moving tribute to the martyrs of the prison ships." ---Kirkus

About the Author

Edwin G. Burrows is a distinguished professor of history at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York and coauthor, with Mike Wallace, of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, which won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for History.

File Size: 3083 KB
Print Length: 383 pages
Publisher: Basic Books; 1 edition (November 11, 2008)
Publication Date: November 11, 2008
Sold by: Hachette Book Group
Language: English
ASIN: B0097D7CLG
Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:

Enabled
Word Wise: Enabled
Lending: Not Enabled
Enhanced Typesetting: Enabled
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #262,973 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #226 in US Revolution & Founding History (Kindle Store)
- #716 in U.S. Revolution & Founding History
- #1044 in Military History of the United States

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Wade R. Goria

Painstaking documentation and expert narrative.... a heartbreaking and indispensable guide...

Reviewed in the United States on January 5, 2020

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Edwin Burrows was a superb scholar, the very best of teachers and one of the most beloved Professors and mentors in the history of Brooklyn College, or of American academia.
As an undergraduate major of History, and as President of the Brooklyn College Historical Society from 1973-75, it was my high honor to invite Professor Burrows to address the society during his very first year of teaching as a then untenured Professor of American history.
The finest qualities of his scholarship are very much in evidence in this outstanding work. Painstaking documentation and expert narrative provides a hallmark for Forgotten Patriots. The book provides a heartbreaking and indispensable guide to the unspeakable hardships and horrors endured by patriots during the American Revolution as they worked heroically and indefatigably on behalf of the attainment of American freedom.
At a time when the sovereignty of our Republic has been challenged as never before by a wide range of traitorous mercenaries and depraved criminals operating within and without America’s borders, a careful reading of Professor Burrows’ extremely sensitive and erudite book will elucidate for the reader, a disturbing sense of immediacy for the terrible dangers involved for all Americans to maintain US internal and external sovereignty. Against seemingly impossible circumstances patriotic heroes forged independence from the British and ultimately established the most powerful country the world has ever known.

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Rocco Dormarunno

A Harrowing Account

Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2013

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Edwin G. Burrows "Forgotten Patriots" is an informative, sobering and, at many times, harrowing account of American revolutionaries (mostly military and sometimes non-military) who suffered unspeakable cruelties and miseries aboard the prison ships and make-shift hell-hole gaols in British occupied New York. Professor Burrows is to be credited for not only bringing (back) to light this history of inhumanity, but for also doing it in a well-documented and accessible manner.

One reviewer called this book "path-breaking". I think "heart-breaking" is more like it. Like some others who have reviewed this book, I was also aware of this event but I had never realized the magnitude, duration and horror of it. And while the bulk of the text focuses on the abuse suffered by these patriots, the book takes great pains to discuss the denials, accusations, cover-ups, reprisals and repercussions surrounding it. The political wrangling among Congress, George Washington and concerned citizens is infuriating, as one reads about their bickering while their fellow countrymen died by the dozens weekly. And if they weren't dying, they were tortured by disease, madness, starvation and beatings.

Another terrifying aspect of the event is its almost inevitability. How were the British to treat American captives? As Burrows explains, Great Britain couldn't treat them as prisoners-of-war; that would acknowledge the United States' sovereignty. Instead, they were treated as "D--n rebels" and traitors, and the British administered the cruel punishments and neglect that was usually reserved for the most hated of criminals and enemies. The other contributor to this inevitability was the frothy, rabid anti-American sentiment among the British during the years leading up to the war. This frenzied hatred was carried across the Atlantic before many Englishmen laid eyes on an American.

Finally, the book discusses the often frustrated attempts of New Yorkers to respect the memory of these patriots in the years after the war. For decades, and then over a century, plans to erect a suitable monument were contested, blocked, and hog-tied by petty local and, sometimes, national considerations. The ambivalent attitudes that the City and the Nation held towards Great Britain shifted constantly. This not only affected the plans for a memorial but actually created a rewrite of history and history books, to the point where the deaths of over 10,000 prisoners-of-war was "determined" to be exaggerated or understandable or brought about by the prisoners themselves. The perceptions were so distorted that there was even doubt the deaths even happened, in spite of the bones that continually washed up on the shores of Brooklyn.

When it came to the calculus involved in determining the number of casualties, well... in all honesty, the numbers-crunching was an unnecessarily long distraction: something that could have been relegated to an appendix. It gave me a headache. (Then again, math was never one of my strengths. So maybe it's just me.) However, this should not detract from all of the positives of the book.

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John A. Kristianson

The treatment of American Prisoners of War during the American Revolution

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2019

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I think the most important thing that came out of the book for me was the fact that, to the British, the Americans of the Revolution were traitors. I think as Americans, we tend to forget this. Hence the nostrum “0ne man’s terrorist, is another’s freedom fighter” (or something like that). But the day to day accounts of the hostilities really did not add anything to my understanding. It did make the book incredibly easy to put down (over and over again).

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Happy Ten

Thanks for reminding us...

Reviewed in the United States on December 13, 2013

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I purchased the book in hopes of finding out more about the prisoners and what they went through. This book delivered on that.

While I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about our colonial American history I actually was surprised by the extent of the POW's suffering along with the notable persons who were captured and held under some really horrific conditions.

This book may not be the most academic and there will always be someone who doesn't agree with the statistics or an analysis and has to quibble over them. The book isn't a bad read and it does tell a nearly forgotten chapter/cost of the American Revolution (and most wars in general) that will always need to be highlighted.

It's safe to say that any study of the American revolution that doesn't include aspects of the material in this book or another (if one exists) book that covers this material is an incomplete study.

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