Museum of the City of New York offers intimate view of life in occupied NYC during Revolution

UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (WABC) -- A new exhibit timed to America's 250th anniversary explores the Revolutionary War through the prism of occupied New York City, offering a window into what was a messy, violent, and very real war that a majority of the colonists here didn't want to fight.

"The Occupied City: New York and the American Revolution" at the Museum of the City of New York covers an entire floor and focuses on the British occupation of Gotham. New York was a target for two reasons: money and because it was the perfect spot geopolitically.

The artifacts that are on view are extraordinary: A dress worn at the inaugural ball for George Washington; Alexander Hamilton's private personal desk; a water bucket used to put out the great fire in lower Manhattan; cannonballs - one that's shaped like a dumbbell - and so many more tactical traces of an epochal time in New York and the nascent United States.

There's a whole wall to remember 18,000 men who died as POWs on a dozen warships, killed in Wallabout Bay in the East River. They died from cruel conditions -overcrowding, infection, and starvation.

Michelle Charlesworth gives us a tour in the above video player.