“THE DISAGREEABLE SITUATION”: PRISONER OF WAR ADMINISTRATION IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Abstract

During the American Revolution, authority over British-allied prisoners became a hotly contested issue. This contest reflected clashes between early Americans and their governments to secure political and military authority in the new nation. At the start of the conflict, provisional wartime governments including Committees of Safety assumed responsibility for the first prisoners of the war. The radical democratic spirit of the Revolution afforded early Americans significant power over prisoner allowances and restrictions through their revolutionary governments. In 1777, Congress established the Department of Prisoners to better pursue its interests regarding captive populations. Inhabitants in and around detention centers resisted this increase in Continental authority at the peril of their own. This resistance reflected the endurance of the early war’s radical democracy, notwithstanding the recent dissolution of the revolutionary governments that provided a legal avenue for it. The nation’s first Commissary General of Prisoners Elias Boudinot had to contend with popular opposition to his supremacy in prisoner affairs, as well as with the jealous pursuit of state interests regarding both American and enemy prisoners. Reacting alongside Congress to the democratic impulse of the early revolutionary years, conservative lawmakers endowed state governments with coercive governing authorities that enabled them to pursue interests distinct from those of their constituents. The pursuit of state interests respecting prisoners manifested in various activities that conflicted with the efforts of the Department of Prisoners to standardize prisoner administration under its auspices, including, most obtrusively, state-initiated prisoner exchanges. As Commander-in-Chief, George Washington acted alongside the American public, the states, and Congress during the war to establish the contours of his authority. Boudinot’s tenure coincided with a cautionary phase of Washington’s negotiations, forestalling the general’s intervention to protect the Department of Prisoners against the intrusive actions of the states. This hesitance, combined with Congress’s failure to assert Boudinot’s authority, compounded the difficulties of his administration. The irresolution of Congress to assert the superintendency of the Department of Prisoners over prisoner affairs, born of a dual fear of standing armies and centralized authority, poorly equipped Boudinot to advocate for Continental interests with prisoners. By the time Washington, and to a lesser extent Congress, shifted to curtail state-initiated prisoner exchanges, they had hardened into assumed authorities of the new state governments. The confusion and overlapping authorities that characterized America’s first, sprawling system of prisoner management represented a contested negotiation over the distribution of authorities in the new nation. But even as early Americans and their governments variously justified their claims to power on the basis of traditional and emerging ideological imperatives, they also acted in self-interest. Prisoners of war offered personal and economic benefits to early Americans and financial and reputational benefits to Congress and state governments. Selfish jealousies and ideological motivations would continue to shape the contours of the American political system after the war, informing the imperatives of the Constitutional Convention and beyond.