In his book Captives of Liberty, T. Cole Jones argues that an American culture of vengeance and violence against prisoners of war lent the Revolutionary War its true “revolutionary” nature. Jones focuses on the treatment of prisoners captured by American forces in the war to examine a shift in American attitudes about war and violence and to shed light on the creation of the state in the fledgling United States. Jones's work is pathbreaking in examining an aspect of the Revolutionary War that has received little attention from modern historians: much has been written about British treatment of American prisoners, but relatively little about the reverse. And yet Jones stops short of proving why the transition he charts in conduct towards prisoners of war was truly the factor that made the war revolutionary.
Over five crisply written chapters, Jones presents a nice range of evidence that showcases insightful case-study examples. Jones argues that at the war's outset in 1775, American officials wanted to treat enemy prisoners according to prevalent rules of European warfare that demanded mercy and proportionality in a carefully orchestrated set of rules for treatment of enemy prisoners. But as the war developed, Jones maintains, “increasing popular pressure for retaliatory violence” caused harsh treatment against enemy prisoners to increase, as Parliament refused to recognize the legitimacy of American combatants, as the American population was divided, and as the United States did not possess enough state power to guarantee a “monopoly on violence” (4). Jones argues that connecting violence to politics and social context is essential, and it is this connection that he leverages to assess the character of violence.
In the first two chapters, Jones charts the early modern British and European understandings of war that governed treatment of prisoners, shows how harsh British treatment of American prisoners classed as traitors (rather than combatants) and acceptance of violence by Native allies inspired Americans with thoughts of vengeance, and illuminates how American leaders like George Washington emphasized generous treatment of prisoners despite conflicts with locals who often struggled to provide sustenance for prisoners such as those captured during the early campaigns into Canada. Leaders in the Continental Congress were committed to showing themselves equal to European states, and they enshrined the rules of warfare in the Declaration of Independence. In chapter 3, Jones argues that by 1777 British decisions to “employ foreign troops, confine captured Americans in floating prisons, and arm loyalists to oppose the revolutionary movement galvanized ordinary Americans, who took to arms in the quest for retribution,” and convinced many of their leaders (such as John Adams) to believe that treating captured prisoners similarly was justified (92). Americans struggled to conclude prisoner exchange agreements, refused to recognize captured loyalists as prisoners, and demanded vengeance especially where British forces encouraged loyalist violence.
In the final two chapters, Jones illustrates how American vengeance against American prisoners of war escalated from 1777 onward by examining closely the fate of Burgoyne's army, surrendered after the Battle of Saratoga, and the escalation of violence as the war turned south in subsequent years. In Captives of Liberty's most compelling chapter, Jones follows the tribulations of Burgoyne's men, prisoners for five and half years, as they were continually moved, starved, and exposed to disease. The fate of Burgoyne's men also illustrates one of the factors that allowed their poor treatment to escalate: conflicts between state and local officials and Congress over who should pay to feed, house, and clothe the prisoners as they traipsed from New York to Massachusetts to Pennsylvania and finally to Virginia. The same kind of conflict affected the treatment of prisoners captured at Yorktown in 1781. Congress was reluctant ever to conclude a mass prisoner exchange, in part because of recruitment pressures, and Jones relates that six thousand enemy prisoners remained in American hands when the war ended in 1783.
Jones asserts repeatedly that American vengeance on prisoners made the war into a truly revolutionary war, but he never fully explains exactly why. Jones implies that violence against prisoners was revolutionary because it was demanded by “popular” forces who in turn shaped elite behavior and the nature of state development. With this interpretation, Jones seems to measure violence by a French Revolutionary yardstick, arguing that the “the people” demanded harsh treatment. Yet Jones himself includes many examples of regular folks, like the Pennsylvania Moravians, who assisted prisoners with food and clothing and accounts of local officials who begged Congress for resources to better care for prisoners. In his conclusion, Jones argues that the “popular cry for retaliation and Congress's acquiescence to it were effaced from the history of the Revolution in the nineteenth century” by elites who were actively seeking to downplay popular radicalism of the American Revolution (247). But, as suggestive as this is, Jones does not explore the memory of the war extensively enough to actually prove his point. His main evidence here is a close reading of John Trumbull's history paintings of the Revolution, which certainly present sanitized visions of death, but which also reinforced wide trends in war memory present in popular print culture and civic rituals. Jones takes little account of the many common men and women who shaped Revolutionary memory—granting elites far too much power and cultural hegemony in this realm even as he acknowledges the power of everyday people to shape war policy.
In sum, Jones has presented a well-written and engaging account of violence against prisoners, and he truly does illuminate a little studied aspect of the Revolutionary War. Captives of Liberty is well worth reading, and it will be of interest to both military historians and those who consider civil-military relations. But he does not convince that a popular thirst for vengeance lent the rebellion its revolutionary character, and he seems to show that the lack of centralized state power in the fledgling United States was equally at fault. The actual picture of violence that Jones paints is far more subtle than his main argument allows.
