British jailers murdered American prisoners several months after the end of the War of 1812 in the last act of hostility between the U.K. and the United States.
The penitentiary was invented in the United States as a more rational and humane way of punishing. It quickly ran into problems that still overwhelm us.
Hard Looks at Hidden History
While some American captives languished, others conducted a flourishing market—and a huge black sailor organized everything