What would happen to POWs in the Napoleonic Wars/the War of 1812?

#Part 1 of 2

u/Ser_SinAlot pointed you to a number of sources regarding POWs in the Napoleonic Wars, but I'd be happy to shed some light on prisoners taken in the War of 1812.

The prisoner experience in North America likely differed a bit from the war in Europe, given the ramshackle state of the armies contending for the various frontiers. The British had, essentially, a skeleton crew of garrison troops numbering around 3,000 in Upper Canada at the time, and the US had a standing army of around 10,000, but spread around the country with forces numbering no more than a few thousand at any particular theater. Between the Detroit campaign and the Niagara, the US collected maybe 10-12,000 troops in total, most of those men being militia.

Your experience after being captured would depend heavily on your rank, status, and whether you were a regular - that is, a paid member of the official United States or British forces - or a member of the militia.

If you were a member of the militia, it was highly likely that you'd be paroled; that is, officially documented as a prisoner of war, but sent home after giving your word that you would not participate in any fighting until you had been exchanged. Parole and exchange was an important social factor of warfare in the long 18th century, because it reinforced certain gentlemanly notions of warfare believed at the time, and because, pretty simply, it was less expensive to let men take care of themselves at their own homes than it was to shelter, clothe, feed, and guard them. The hundreds of militia captured a the capitulation of Detroit in August, 1812, for instance, had their names taken and were sent home. We'll get to what happened to the regulars in a moment.

There were other examples of when regular troops were similarly paroled. When the British captured Fort Mackinac in July, 1812, its regular garrison was paroled. It was a small number of men, no more than 70, with a couple of officers. Still, the British had captured the place with a tossed-together force of voyageur militia, Indian allies, and 40 men of the 10th Royal Veteran Battalion, a force kept together to garrison frontier forts while young, fitter, "more spirited" troops were syphoned off to Europe or other theaters of the war against Napoleon (the garrison battalions were put together before the United States declared war). As a brief aside, the commander of this little invasion force, Captain Charles Roberts, was so unimpressed with his regulars that he once wrote that his men were "so debilitated, and worn down by unconquerable Drunkenness, that neither the fear of punishment, the love of fame or the honour of the Country can animate them to any extraordinary exertions."

With Roberts' temporary allies leaving, his 40 drunken old men were unlikely to be up to the task of watching over a lager number of prisoners, and so the Mackinac garrison were paroled, and sent to Detroit. There, to their great misfortune, they were caught up in Isaac Brock and Tecumseh's attack on the fort, and not only were these men captured again, but their young commander, Lieutenant Porter Hanks, was killed by a cannonball in the bombardment.

This brings us back to the forces at Detroit, and how they were dealt with. The regulars were all captured, including the commander William Hull - and one of his daughters - and were put on a long march toward Lower Canada. Along the way, Brock orchestrated an effective piece of psychological warfare, by marching the long line of prisoners along the Canadian side of the Niagara River, in full view of the American forces on the other side. It had a great emotional effect on them.

John Lovett, an aide of General Stephen Van Rensselaer, wrote of it:

Yesterday I beheld such a sight as God knows I never expected to see, and He only knows the sensation it created in my heart. I saw my countrymen, free-born Americans, robbed of the inheritance which their dying fathers bequeathed them, stripped of the arms which achieved our independence and marched into a strange land by hundreds as black cattle for the market.

Take a look at the language he uses. He's not describing men, he's describing cattle, he has assessed these men - stripped of their arms and held in the thrall of the tyrannical British general - and has determined that they are no longer men They had been ritually emasculated.

Of course, this kind of purple description wasn't held by everyone, and prisoner conditions were usually fairly good, but treatment largely depended on rank. Officers were treated quite well, and regulars were given enough to keep from starving or freezing to death. Winfield Scott, a colonel captured during the Battle of Queenston Heights, describes several instances of great kindness and hospitality during his time as a prisoner. He is given quarters with the commander of the garrison at Prescott, a Colonel Pearson, and the commander having been captured and paroled only recently himself, the two swapped stories and shared a meal and a few drinks. The story told by the Pearson is worth relating here, as it is indicative of the cordiality with which most officers were treated during the conflict:

On board of a transport ship, with his young wife, he fell in with the ------, Captain -------, and being without heavy guns, surrendered after the first fire. Captain ------, with a party, boarded the prize, when learning that Mrs. Pearson was thrown into a state of premature labor, he placed a sentinel at the cabin door, and left to the colonel an absolute control over all within it - giving such aid as was called for. The colonel was also desired to mark everything that belonged to him, with his name, and assured that all should be held sacred as private property.

Scott and the rest of the regulars were paroled once they reached Quebec, and Scott, in his autobiography, notes that he and the men were treated with a great deal of kindness and charity from the British officers throughout their ordeal. Hull, for his part, is relatively quiet about his time as a prisoner of the British, but he does note that his daughter was treated with kindness, and then released when the force passed Buffalo.

The ride was much rougher, however, if you were suspected of being a British citizen, which the British assessed by "speech or other evidence." Not only were those men not paroled, but they were put aboard a British warship and sailed to England. Scott spends a considerable amount of time on this subject, owing to the fact that impressment of British citizens from American vessels and property was one of the major causes of the war. He relates a series of letters that explain that the natural-born citizens of England and Ireland - regardless of their naturalization to the United States - were to be held as hostages until the end of the war. The British viewed these men, who had taken up arms against their native country, as traitors, whereas their counterparts in the United States - those having the luxury of being born there - viewed them as naturalized citizens, and the behavior of the British regarding this small set of men as barbaric and indicative of the American cause as a just one.

Below, I'll continue with discussing the role of Native warfare in prisoner-taking and ritual, and the different experiences of those captured by Indian forces.