hich he persevered: from that
time his confinement has become a voluntary one. You delivered us
your letters the next day, when, the post being just setting out, much
business prevented the Council from taking them into consideration. They
have this day attended to them, and found their resolution expressed in
the enclosed advice bearing date this day. It gives us great pain
that any of our countrymen should be cut off from the society of their
friends and tenderest connections, while it seems as if it was in
our power, to administer relief. But we trust to their good sense for
discerning, and their spirit for bearing up against the fallacy of this
appearance. Governor Hamilton and his companions were imprisoned and
ironed, 1st. In retaliation for cruel treatment of our captive citizens
by the enemy in general. 2nd. For the barbarous species of warfare which
himself and his savage allies carried on in our western frontier. 3d.
For particular acts of barbarity, of which he himself was personally
guilty, to some of our citizens in his power. Any one of these charges
was sufficient to justify the measures we took. Of the truth of the
first, yourselves are witnesses. Your situation, indeed, seems to have
been better since you were sent to New York; but reflect on what you
suffered before that, and knew others of our countrymen to suffer, and
what you know is now suffered by that more unhappy part of them, who
are still confined on board the prison-ships of the enemy. Proofs of the
second charge, we have under Hamilton's own hand: and of the third,
as sacred assurances as human testimony is capable of giving. Humane
conduct on our part, was found to produce no effect; the contrary,
therefore, was to be tried. If it produces a proper lenity to our
citizens in captivity, it will have the effect we meant; if it does not,
we shall return a severity as terrible as universal. If the causes of
our rigor against Hamilton were founded in truth, that rigor was just,
and would not give right to the enemy to commence any new hostilities
on their part: and all such new severities are to be considered, not as
retaliation, but as original and unprovoked. If those causes were,
not founded in truth, they should have denied them. If, declining the
tribunal of truth and reason, they choose to pervert this into a contest
of cruelty and destruction, we will contend with them in that line, and
measure out misery to those in our power, in that multi