This is the definitive work on Americans taken prisoner during the Revolutionary War. The bulk of the book is devoted to personal accounts, many of them moving, of the conditions endured by U.S. prisoners at the hands of the British, as preserved in journals or diaries kept by physicians, ships' captains, and the prisoners themselves. Of greater genealogical interest is the alphabetical list of 8,000 men who were imprisoned on the British vessel The Old Jersey, which the author copied from the papers of the British War Department and incorporated in the appendix to the work. Also included is a Muster Roll of Captain Abraham Shepherd's Company of Virginia Riflemen and a section on soldiers of the Pennsylvania Flying Camp who perished in prison, 1776-1777.

The purpose of this book was to prove the ancestry of Michael Sword and to document his Revolutionary War record. Michael Sword is the descendant of German immigrants who first arrived in Philadelphia in 1737. He served in the Revolution in the Army and was in battles at Brandywine, Germantown, and Charleston, SC. This book will be of interest to genealogists, to military historians, and to researchers of the Sword family of Russell County, Virginia.