Narrative of Mr. John Dodge During His Captivity at Detroit

This is a voice from the American Revolution you rarely hear: not a general or statesman, but a trader caught in the machinery of war. John Dodge was seized by British forces in Detroit under the notorious Governor Henry Hamilton and thrown into a stone cell to rot, facing mock executions and the slow violence of starvation and neglect. His narrative, written after his escape and desperate appeal to Congress, pulses with the raw anger of a man who watched colleagues die while the powers that imprisoned him remained untouchable. But Dodge was no passive victim. While captive, he worked the diplomatic margins, attempting to negotiate peace with Native American tribes and intervening to spare other prisoners from brutal fates. The result is a document that refuses to let readers forget the human cost of frontier warfare, where the lines between soldier and civilian, ally and enemy, were perpetually blurred. This is history told from the ground up, messy and moral and unmistakably alive.