Inclosed with this you have a correspondence[168] between the two
Generals concerning the cartel for the exchange of prisoners. Washington
is in the right, and has maintained his argument with a delicacy and
dignity which do him much honor. He has hinted at the flagitious conduct
of the two Howes towards their prisoners in so plain and clear a manner
that he cannot be misunderstood, but yet a decency and a delicacy are
preserved, which is the more to be applauded because the natural
resentment of such atrocious cruelties renders it very difficult to
avoid a more pointed language in describing them. They might indeed,
without much impropriety, have been painted in crimson colors of a
deeper die. If Mr. Howe's heart is not callous, what must be his
feelings when he recollects the starvings, the freezings, the
pestilential diseases, with which he coolly and deliberately destroyed
the lives of so many unhappy men! If his conscience is not seared, how
will he bear its lashes when he remembers his breach of honor, his
breach of faith, his offense against humanity and divinity, his
neighbor, and his God (if he thinks there is any such Supreme Being), in
impairing health that he ought to have cherished, and in putting an end
to lives that he ought to have preserved, and in choosing the most slow,
lingering, and torturing death that he could have devised. I charitably
suppose, however, that he would have chosen the shortest course and
would have put every man to the sword or bayonet, and thereby have put
an end to their sufferings at once, if he could have done it without
detection. But this would have been easily proved upon him, both by
friends and enemies, whereas, by hunger, frost, and disease he might
commit the murders with equal certainty, and yet be able to deny that he
had done it. He might lay it to hurry, to confusion, to the fault of
commissaries and other officers; nay, might deny that they were starved,
frozen, and infected. He was determined to put them out of the way and
yet to deny it; to get rid of his enemies and yet save his reputation.
But his reputation is ruined forever.