a

Loring’s responsibilities did not extend to Americans captured at sea, and we shall see that as their numbers grew, the British would also appoint a commissary for naval prisoners. Etymologically, “military” and “naval” refer to two distinct and separate kinds of power or activity—one taking place on land and concerning soldiers, the other taking place on water and concerning seamen. The difference between them was still quite sharp in eighteenth-century usage, and I have tried, within reason, to respect it in the pages that follow.

b

Ironically, Lee may have been flirting with treason all the while. In February 1777 he had asked Congress to send envoys to New York to hear his plan for brokering peace talks. Congress, suspecting a British trick, said no. Washington disagreed, reasoning that because Lee was so popular in the army, ignoring him would damage morale. For several weeks he tried without success to convince Congress to change its mind, both about refusing to talk with Lee as well as retaliating against Campbell. As a result, it was not until early April that Lee got the bad news. The delay may well have persuaded him that his American friends could not protect him, or did not want to, for he had by then given his captors a plan for breaking down American resistance and quashing the Revolution. There is no evidence that Howe ever knew what Lee had in mind, however. His overture was forgotten, lost in a sea of official paper, and did not come to light until the middle of the next century. Not surprisingly, the scholar who found it saw conclusive proof that the most famous American prisoner in New York at that time had turned coat to save his neck. Lee’s modern biographer gives him the benefit of the doubt and speculates that he may only have been attempting to lead the British on a wild goose chase. Absent the discovery of new information, exactly what happened remains a mystery.