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Conditions at Winchester were so dire that a month after the Yorktown prisoners arrived, a conference was called with George Washington in Philadelphia regarding the �safe-keeping and cheap feeding� of the prisoners. By the end of December a report indicated that there was an �absolute necessity� for breaking up this post. It was decided that they would be ordered out of state in January; the British would go to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and the Germans to Frederick, Maryland.
When the commander of the guard, Colonel Joseph Holmes, received instructions to march the prisoners, he wrote a sensitive letter to Colonel James Wood,
Superintendent of Prisoners in Virginia, urging consideration for the prisoners� welfare at such a harsh time of year:
�I have given the necessary orders, and Disposition of March for the Guard and British
Prisrs: they Are to Move to Morrow morning exactly at the hour of 10
OClk, the British in One Column the Anspach in Another. The extreme coldness of the season have enduced Me to refer to your Consideration, the hardship & difficulty both Guard and prisrs must encounter on the March, Many are almost as naked as the hour they were born, & not an ounce of animal food. Whither you could not with propriety detain them a few days, Or One half of them, then there might be a chance of getting into some sort of Shelter at night. It seems to shock the feelings of humanity to drive out of a warm habitation a poor Creature stark naked in Such a season.�
The letter Colonel Holmes wrote prompted Colonel Wood to delay the deparature for only twenty four hours. The prisoners would be divided into two divisions, which would march a day apart. The second division would encamp on the ground left by the first. The British prisoners marched from the Barracks on the morning of January 26, and the Germans left the next day.
During its use, about five thousand British and German prisoners passed through the Winchester Barracks, but no large body ever stopped there for more than a couple of months. The camp was a hub of complicated and chaotic activity devoted to the warehousing of prisoners until such a time that they could be shuffled out of state because of severe overcrowding; constant financial crisis; security threats; or the desire to move them north in hopes of a prisoner
exchange.
The Barracks continued to hold some prisoners for the next fifteen months, but with the departure of the Yorktown prisoners, its �heyday had come to a not so glorious end�. Left behind were eighty Germans. Some had been sick or injured at the time the main group departed; others had been dispersed out into the countryside, as far away as York, Pennsylvania, and could not be collected back in time to join the march.
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