One of the most revealing of the many diaries kept by American soldiers in 1776 was that of Lieutenant Jabez Fitch, a Connecticut farmer who recorded his experiences through one ordeal after another, including his time as a prisoner of war. The page at left, from August 28, records how, unexpectedly, the British general James Grant gave the famished prisoners “two quarters of mutton well cooked,” and, from August 29, that the prisoners are to be put aboard a ship.