8970. WAR (Prisoners of), Treatment of.—
We think ourselves justified in Governor
Hamilton's strict confinement on the general
principle of national retaliation. * * * Governor
Hamilton's conduct has been such as to
call for exemplary punishment on him personally.
In saying this I have not so much in view
his particular cruelties to our citizens, prisoners
with him, * * * as the general nature of
the service he undertook at Detroit, and the
extensive exercise of cruelties which it involved.
Those who act together in war are
answerable for each other. No distinction can
be made between principal and ally by those
against whom the war is waged. He who employs
another to do a deed makes the deed
his own. If he calls in the hand of the assassin
or murderer, himself becomes the assassin or
murderer. The known rule of warfare of the
Indian savages is an indiscriminate butchery of
men, women and children. These savages,
under this well known character, are employed
by the British nation as allies in the war
against the Americans. Governor Hamilton
undertakes to be the conductor of the war. In
the execution of that undertaking, he associates
small parties of the whites under his immediate
command with large parties of the savages, and
sends them to act, sometimes jointly, and sometimes
separately, not against our forts or
armies in the field, but the farming settlements
on our frontiers. Governor Hamilton is himself
the butcher of men, women and children.
I will not say to what length the fair rules of
war would extend the right of punishment
against him; but I am sure that confinement
under its strictest circumstances, for Indian
devastation and massacre must be deemed
lenity.—
To Sir Guy Carleton.
Ford ed., ii, 249.
(1779)
