Virtual Author Series featuring Cole Jones

The Fort Ticonderoga Author Series features presentations by authors of books related to Fort Ticonderoga’s history.

Contrary to popular belief, the American Revolutionary War was not a limited and restrained struggle for political self-determination. From the onset of hostilities, British authorities viewed their American foes as traitors to be punished, and British abuse of American prisoners, both tacitly condoned and at times officially sanctioned, proliferated. Meanwhile, more than seventeen thousand British and allied soldiers fell into American hands during the Revolution. For a fledgling nation that could barely afford to keep an army in the field, the issue of how to manage prisoners of war was daunting.

Captives of Liberty examines how America’s founding generation grappled with the problems posed by prisoners of war, and how this influenced the wider social and political legacies of the Revolution. When the struggle began, according to T. Cole Jones, revolutionary leadership strove to conduct the war according to the prevailing European customs of military conduct, which emphasized restricting violence to the battlefield and treating prisoners humanely. However, this vision of restrained war did not last long. As the British denied customary protections to their American captives, the revolutionary leadership wasted no time in capitalizing on the prisoners’ ordeals for propagandistic purposes. Enraged, ordinary Americans began to demand vengeance, and they viewed British soldiers and their German and Native American auxiliaries as appropriate targets. This cycle of violence spiraled out of control, transforming the struggle for colonial independence into a revolutionary war.

Cole Jones is the author of Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution (Penn Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Society of the Cincinnati Prize from the American Revolution Institute and the 2022 Excellence in American History Book Award from the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution. The book also received honorable mentions for the Colonel Richard W. Ulbrich Memorial Book Award from the U.S. Military History Group and the Harry M. Ward Book Prize from the American Revolution Roundtable of Richmond, and it was a finalist for the Journal of the American Revolution 2020 Book of the Year Award. Jones is Associate Professor of History at Purdue University.

Your participation in these online programs through the Center for Digital History supports Fort Ticonderoga’s mission to preserve, educate, and provoke an active discussion about the past and its importance to present and future generations.