Honor and George Washington
The Declaration of Independence was a bold document, but the Thirteen Colonies had a difficult time backing the Declaration up in the first years of the American Revolution.
The young colonial army lost a number of battles, and one of the battles was at Drake’s Farm, New Jersey, in 1777. That battle was fought between the American Colonies and the Hessians. The Hessians were Germans that the British had hired to fight their side of the war.
After the battle was over, American Lieutenant William Kelly offered to surrender his survivors, most of whom were wounded, to the British command, but the British refused the surrender offer and brutally killed all of the survivors.
Of course news of this massacre got out, and you can imagine how American soldiers felt about the British and the Hessians after that. What do you think you might have wanted to do to them if you had been an American Revolutionary soldier?
George Washington knew what needed to be done. Washington declared, “We will not do it to them.” He ordered that any British or Hessian captives were to be treated with humanity. Washington ordered the American army not to kill wounded enemy soldiers. Instead they were to feed them, give them a place to stay, and protect them.
In other words, Washington said, Americans must behave with honor, and our soldiers must be honorable.
Did General Washington make a wise decision?
Today historians have been able to read a lot of diaries and letters home from Hessian soldiers, and they all testify that the American colonial army treated them with humanity, the way Washington had ordered.
Once the American army captured a large number of Hessian soldiers and needed to move them from Pennsylvania to Virginia. That’s a long way, and the only way to get them to Virginia was to have them walk. The Americans didn’t have enough troops to adequately guard all of these prisoners during this long hike, and sometimes the prisoners marched without any guards. How many of them ran away? None. At the end of the hike, every one of the prisoners was accounted for.
After the Revolutionary war was over, and the Hessians had a chance to return home, one out of four of them decided to stay in America to help make this country the kind of nation that George Washington had envisioned, a free and honorable nation.
The Hessians might have become life-long enemies of America, but Washington’s emphasis on honor turned invaders into settlers, citizens, and neighbors.
SOURCE: Fisher, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 377-379. NOTE: This book was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for History.
This material has been rewritten as a meditation by Richard E. Davies.