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| Campaign to preserve neglected 18th century British POW camp in southern Pa ... - Washington Post Posted: 06 Apr 2013 08:53 AM PDT YORK, Pa. — The mud of a south-central Pennsylvania cornfield may soon produce answers about the fate of British prisoners of war — and the newly independent Americans who guarded them — during the waning years of the American Revolution. A few miles east of York, the city that briefly served as the fledgling nation's capital after the Continental Congress fled Philadelphia, more than a thousand English, Scottish and Canadian soldiers were imprisoned at what was then known as Camp Security. The fight to preserve the plot where those soldiers and their captors worked and lived has lasted almost twice as long as the Revolutionary War itself. And the end is in sight — if its backers can raise the last few hundred thousand dollars needed to pay for it. "This is an extraordinarily important site, because so few of these camp sites survived," said Steve Warfel, a retired curator of archaeology at the Pennsylvania State Museum who is involved in the project. "It's a very important piece for understanding the revolutionary period, and how people were treated when they were incarcerated." A 1979 archaeological study found numerous artifacts that confirmed local lore about the prison camp's location. Two years ago, the local government, Springettsbury Township, took possession of an adjacent, 115-acre property and last year The Conservation Fund paid a developer nearly $1 million for the 47-acre parcel. Now the Friends of Camp Security faces a May deadline to pay off the fund so it can turn the smaller plot over to the township as well. Nothing about the property today suggests it was once teeming with prisoners. The first group arrived in 1781, four years after their 1777 surrender at Saratoga, N.Y. More arrived the next year after the battle in Yorktown, Va. By April 1782, there were 1,265 men at the camp, along with 182 women and 189 children — family members and others who accompanied the prisoners. The first group was kept under less strict conditions and could be hired out to nearby farms, where among other things they were put to use chopping firewood and hunting wolves. The Yorktown veterans were much more strictly confined, kept inside a circular stockade that had been constructed from 15-foot-high log posts. The 1979 dig, which focused on a small area, produced metal items such as buckles and buttons that are associated with British soldiers of the period, suggesting that could have either been the Camp Security stockade or the adjacent Camp Indulgence village where low-risk prisoners stayed. That survey also turned up 20 coins and 605 straight pins that may have been used by prisoners to make lace. Ken Miller, an associate professor of history at Washington College in Chestertown, Md., said Camp Security's historical significance comes from its role in a network of camps in Pennsylvania and elsewhere that held more than 10,000 prisoners during the war. "Nobody's really appreciated the extent to which the war reached the American interior in places like York and Lancaster and Reading and Winchester, Va., and Frederick, Md.," Miller said. "These prisoners put the war on America's doorstep, even when the battles were far away." |
| Powers, Iran fail to end nuclear stalemate in Almaty talks - Reuters Posted: 06 Apr 2013 07:27 AM PDT ALMATY | (Reuters) - World powers and Iran remained far apart after ending two days of intensive talks on Tehran's nuclear program on Saturday, the European Union's foreign policy chief said, prolonging a stand-off that risks spiraling into a new Middle East war. The failure to reach a breakthrough deal aimed at easing growing international concern over Iran's contested nuclear activity marked a further setback for diplomatic efforts to resolve the decade-old dispute peacefully. Underlining the lack of substantial progress during the meeting in the Kazakh city of Almaty, no new negotiations between the two sides appeared to have been scheduled. "Over two days of talks, we had long and intensive discussions on the issues addressed in our confidence-building proposal," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said. "It became clear that our positions remain far apart," Ashton, who represents the six powers - the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany - in dealings with Iran, told a news conference. Russia's negotiator sounded more upbeat, saying the talks were "definitely a step forward" although no compromise had been reached, Interfax news agency reported, without giving details. Iran's critics accuse it of covertly seeking the means to produce nuclear bombs and say Tehran in the past has used diplomacy as a stalling tactic. Further inconclusive talks will not reassure Israel, which threatens air strikes, if necessary, to stop its arch-enemy from getting the bomb. The Jewish state is widely believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal. Iran says its nuclear energy program is entirely peaceful but U.N. inspectors suspect it has worked illicitly on designing a nuclear weapon. With all sides aware that a breakdown in diplomacy could shunt the protracted stalemate a step closer to war, no one in Almaty was talking about abandoning diplomatic efforts. Ashton said that for the first time there had been a "real back and forth between us when were able to discuss details, to pose questions, and to get answers directly ... To that extent, that has been a very important element" But, she added: "What matters in the end is substance. We know what we want to achieve and the challenge is to get real engagement so we can move forward with this and that's the ambition." With a presidential election due in Iran in June, scope for a breakthrough was slim in Almaty, when Iran declined to accept or reject an offer of modest relief from economic sanctions in exchange for curbing its most sensitive nuclear activity. Without substantial progress in coming months, Western governments are likely to increase economic sanctions on Iran. The talks were held against a backdrop of flaring tension between big powers and North Korea, which like Iran is defying international demands to curb its nuclear program. But unlike North Korea, which has carried out three nuclear tests since 2006, Iran says its nuclear energy activity is entirely peaceful. (For an interactive timeline on Iran's nuclear program, click on link.reuters.com/gad76r) (Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian in Zurich and Fredrik Dahl in Vienna; Editing by Mark Heinrich) |
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