Evacuation Day 250 - The British are Leaving!

March 17 marks the 250th anniversary of Evacuation Day, when British forces left Boston for good in 1776. Learn about the tremendous feats that forced them out.

https://www.meetboston.com/podcast/

Transcript

Setting The Stage For Boston Found

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Founded four centuries ago, Boston has simply never settled. Conversations here determine the future, so let's discover what's next. Join us as we seek out the real Boston, past and present, through stories and perspectives that capture a city always in motion. I'm Martha Sheridan, CEO of Meet Boston, and this is Boston Found.

Birth Of Revolution 250

SPEAKER_02 0:34

Welcome to another episode of Boston Found, the podcast of Meet Boston. I'm Dave O'Donnell. I'll be filling in as your host today. Of course, our regular host is Meet Boston CEO Martha Sheridan. But I'm delighted to fill in for her today and have a great conversation with Suffolk University professor and American historian Bob Allison. Bob, thank you so much for joining us today on Boston Found. Great to be here, David. It's wonderful to have you. So, Bob, we've we've worked together for about a dozen years now, and it went back to the formation of a group called Revolution 250, right? This is 2014, if you can remember that far back, because we had to start early here in Boston, right? The big events in Boston were preceding what became the American Revolution. So talk to me a bit about, because you you essentially founded this organization. Talk to me a bit about what your vision was for Rev 250 and kind of what the impetus of it was for you.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Well, we knew these events were coming. And we knew that most of the historical sites, and the historical sites in Boston, are pretty much independent entities, that they would all be planning annual. They do annual events anyway, annual event commemorating the massacre, the Tea Party, Dorchester Heights. These are things different civic groups commemorate, different institutions commemorate. And we thought, okay, so for the 250th, we really should do something bigger. Because if suddenly it will occur to us in 2020, hey, you know what? This is the 250th. We're too late. We're too late. And we know the revolution really happened in Massachusetts. It was these events really happening here in the 1760s. You know, we we like to say the revolution happened in Massachusetts, then they went to Philadelphia to fill out the paperwork. Yes. That's a great line. We love that line. Yes, yes. I think it was Jim Rooney who actually first used it, and then Marty Walsh picked it up.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

I think there's about a dozen people who claim to be the original author of the line. Regardless, it really encapsulates.

Uniting Historic Sites And Partners

SPEAKER_01 2:26

It does encapsulate what happened. Okay. So we said, okay, so 2015 we saw was actually the first kind of big event, and that's the Stamp Act, resistance to the Stamp Act. And so we thought we really should get these groups together, get them to work together. So we started But who are these groups? What was then the Old State House or Boston the Bostonian Society, Old South Meeting House, of course the National Park Service is another because they do oversee a lot, the Freedom Trail Foundation, and then groups who were involved in tourism, like Duck Tours and the Trolleys and others, thinking, what can we do to coordinate this? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Right. And that's when we first kind of got involved as well, right? To tell that story to a broader audience.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Yeah, we really needed people who weren't just historians because if you have a room full of historians, we'll just keep talking and never really do anything. And so we were planning, and our first big event, I believe, was about the um the Liberty Tree. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

That's right, in Chinatown.

Stamp Act To Occupation: Why Boston

SPEAKER_01 3:21

And that coalesced with the city redeveloping that little park at the corner of Essex Street and Boylston, Essex, Washington, where the Liberty Tree was. And so that was bringing together lots of folks to do this. And I remember it was an August night. We had all these lanterns illuminating this kind of otherwise quiet spot with projections on the walls. And that I think has been so the idea was let's all get together and try to work together to make this a big event. You may remember at the time we were planning this too, there was this idea of bringing the Olympics to Boston in 2026.

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yes, that's interesting to think back to that history. And we said 24, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:59

We may or may not get the Olympics, but we definitely know these events are going to happen.

SPEAKER_02 4:02

Right. So so that was it. So let's talk then a little bit more about the the the 1760s, but then the uh the anniversary events of you know 2015 through 2018, because I do remember uh the Stamp Act and the Stamp Act repeal, you know, and working together as Revolution 250 to program and promote that. And then a few years later in 2018, so on the 250th of 1768, we reenact the arrival of the British to occupy Boston. So we'll talk more about that in a minute. But I'd love your thoughts on so in this latter half of the 1760s decade, you know, what is unique to Boston that is making these events here? These events that we look back and say, oh, those are catalytic events moving towards revolution. We weren't moving towards it yet. But here there was something happening. So why the Stamp Act here? And then what happens in the ensuing couple of years that leads the British to be like, we we better we better get over there and occupy that city?

Troops Arrive And Resistance Deepens

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Trevor Burrus People in Boston and people in Massachusetts had more power over their municipal government than anyone else in the British Empire. And remember, people in the British Empire were the freest in the world. But here in Massachusetts, every town was governed by its town meeting, which is a very democratic form of government. It is all men and all property owners voting, but so that's much broader than anywhere else in the British Empire or in Europe, and anywhere else in the North American colonies. So people here governed themselves. In fact, in the 1740s, the governor, the governor William Shirley, whose house still stands in Roxbury, said that if something isn't done about the democratical nature of their constitution, there's going to be big trouble here because ever everyone thought, you know, hey, I'm entitled to do what I want. And I we make the rules. And that's what was changing in the 1760s. And people in Massachusetts saw this being their power to govern themselves being abridged. And so that's why there's much more resistance here than in Virginia, where about a third of the population are enslaved. Or in New York, where you have all of these different factions who are all looking out for their own self-interest. So Massachusetts is really unique because of the nature of the government here and the idea people had that the only power over them was Jesus, and that they could govern themselves. And Parliament couldn't make the rules for us because we have always made the rules for ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

So in that vein, you know, once the British arrive in 68, you know, you're we're still five years away from the Boston Tea Party, you know, which is seen obviously as a more well-known seminal moment in the coming revolution. In in that five years, it would you say the notion of revolution is still a fringe and radical notion within the colonies, I mean, really confined to Massachusetts?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I believe it is. But there are folks in other colonies now saying, like John Dickinson in Pennsylvania writes a series of farmers' letters talking about Parliament's rules being an infringement on liberty. But here in Massachusetts, it's simply taken for granted. And what happens with the reason the troops are here is because when Parliament passes a new series of tax laws in 1767, he says, I'm gonna need military force to back this up. Because he remembered the Stamp Act, right? They tore down the governor's house in that episode and the lieutenant governor's warehouse on Long Wharf. And they hung the um Andrew Oliver, who's a fairly very successful merchant and someone here. That's another thing just to remember. We're not dealing with the distant British, we're dealing with people here. We know. And his warehouse on Long Wharf is torn down. He's hung an effigy from the Liberty Tree. So the governor knows if you want to collect this tax here, these you're gonna need military force. So that's why these troops arrive. And that's what we commemorated in 2018, having um ship a boat come in filled with red coats marching up Long Wharf. They had a great time. And the remember the British Consul General greeted them. That's right. And we're putting pressure on Parliament now to back down. That's what and that is what happens in this case. Parliament repeals all of these acts, except the Act on T, because they know they need to make the point that we can do this, but they know how much it is going to cost to do it. And so in 1768, no, no one's thinking, hey, we're going to have a revolution. They don't know there's going to be destruction of tea or any of these other events. They just know we're dealing with this particular crisis, and we're dealing with it because it's an affront, an invasion of our liberty. And that's what we are trying to protect.

1774: The Quiet Turning Point

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Yeah. So December of 1773, the Tea Party occurs. And for many contemporaries, I'm sure the mindset after that event was, you know, there's kind of no going back from there. But certainly the events of the next, say, 12 to 18 months, notably the spring and summer of 1775, you have a series of events, Lexington and Concord, Battle of Bunker Hill, uh, Washington arrives. That certainly by by then it seems like the the path to a war for independence is is is kind of inevitable. Is that true even by July of 1776 when Washington is here, or sorry, July of 1775 and Washington's here? Or is there still this kind of robust debate even at that late hour between you know loyalists and people kind of fomenting revolution?

SPEAKER_01 9:20

The debate isn't that robust by that point. And I think 1774 is really the critical year. One thing we know notice looking at this, we have these kind of high-profile events. We hope everyone can identify Boston Massacre, Boston Tea Party. You've mentioned the ones from the 1760s, equally important, but a little more obscure. But it's often in this quiet time between that we see real interesting things happening. And a lot of uh certain law looking at the year 1774 as when things really are happening. And it's not so much the destruction of the T as it is Parliament's response to the destruction of the T, which is to shut down the port of Boston and suspend the Massachusetts government. You no longer can have a town meeting. The governor says when you can have a town meeting, you have to tell him what the agenda is, you can only have one a year. So this means towns like, for example, Concord, which had not really been in line with Boston. They thought these crazy radicals in Boston are causing just causing trouble. We want to be left alone. Suddenly they can't have a town meeting because parliament says, and they have to have the governor tell them when they can have a town meeting. Well, wait a minute, this is what the radicals have been saying, and now it affects us. So you see in 1774, people in the towns, and at the end of 1772, the Boston Um Committee of formed a committee of correspondence, and they sent out uh and here, uh this is imagine trying to reenact this. The big burning issue in 1772 was who is going to pay the judges? Parliament Parliament knew with the acquittal of the soldiers in the Boston Massacre, and John Adams, Josiah Quincy defended these guys, they'd really dodged a bullet. What happens the next time some crown official gets in trouble with a local mob and they're they don't have John Adams defending? Yeah. So they say, okay, we are going to start paying the judges, so they'll be on our side.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

Well that, of course, for the excuse, any kind of democratic principles.

Judges, Impeachment, And Local Power

SPEAKER_01 11:15

So the judge and according to the Massachusetts Charter, the judges are paid by the assembly, not by anyone else. So this becomes a big issue, and the judges actually all agree we won't accept a salary, except one judge, um, Peter Oliver, who says no, he's losing money being a judge. So yeah, if the crown wants to give him two hundred pounds a year, that's not going to hurt anything. It's actually even not going to make up for what he loses being a judge. So he refuses. So the assembly impeaches him. And no assembly has ever impeached a crown official before. And when the impeachment gets to the governor's council, of course, presiding at the council is Thomas Hutchinson, who is Oliver's brother-in-law. And their children, actually, their children are married too. And then uh also on the council is the secretary, Andrew Oliver, Peter Oliver's brother. And Governor Hutchinson says the assembly can't impeach judges, that's the end of it. But then in a few months later, when Oliver goes out to Worcester to try to impanel a jury, the jurors look at him and say, You've been impeached. We can't serve in a court. They walk out. Imagine walking out on the judge. So they had thought the whole problem is in Boston. Samuel Adams and uh James Otis hate Hutchinson, they'll do anything they can to get rid of him. People in the rest of the province aren't like that. But then in Worcester, people are walking out. Wow. Similar things happening around the province as people realize we're standing up for our protections under the charter.

SPEAKER_02 12:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

And so when Boston Town Meeting sends out this call saying, hey, these this new law infringes our rights as men, and they're using men in the generic sense that men and women, as Christians and as Englishmen. And they send it out to the towns, and the towns respond saying yes. And so in some cases, the towns go further in demanding that their liberties be protected. So this is what's happening in 72-73 with the formation of committees of correspondence and these other groups. So you have a network being created. So it's not just a group of guys in Boston. It's events.

SPEAKER_02 13:26

Interesting. We are approaching kind of the final event of the 250th anniversary commemorations here in Boston, in Greater Boston. And that is, of course, Evacuation Day, which will occur. The 250th anniversary will occur on March 17th, 2026. We'll we'll talk in a moment about that unique date of March 17th, as both Evacuation Day and something else we're familiar with, which is St. Patrick's Day. Um, but before we get to Evacuation Day, we have to talk first about Henry Knox's amazing feat that really precipitates Evacuation Day. And that's retrieving artillery from Fort Tigondroga, which hundreds of miles away in the dead of winter, as 1775 is turning into 1776. Talk to us about that plan, what Washington was thinking, what Knox knew, what other military folks knew about this, what the British knew. How feasible was this notion of going to Fort Ticonderoga and hauling these cannon back to South Boston?

Networks Of Correspondence Take Shape

SPEAKER_01 14:32

It's really not feasible at all. And it it's kind of for Knox, it's a good news, bad news thing. He's 25, 25 years old. He had been part of an artillery company here, blows off a couple of fingers on his hand in an accident on his 24th birthday, and he had a bookshop in Boston, but he read a lot of military science, and he had built a fort in Roxbury that impressed Washington. And Washington wants to put him in charge of all the artillery. The bad news is the artillery is 300 miles away and he has to go get it. So Knox and his brother William set off. And first they go to New York City because the province of New York has artillery, and they want to see maybe we can borrow that. And New York says nothing doing because we haven't been paid for anything else we've loaned to the Continental Cause. So then they go up to Fort Teconderoka. And Knox had already done a survey of what artillery they had in Cambridge and Roxbury.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

Do the British know he's doing this?

SPEAKER_01 15:27

Do they know this artillery exists? No, they don't. They know it exists because that fort had been captured in May of 1775 by Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen, who were working in an uneasy collaboration. Arnold was there on behalf of the Massachusetts provincial government, because he knew the cannon were there. Allen was going on behalf of these folks who lived in an area called the New Hampshire Grants, and he wanted to get the cannon to use them against their bitter enemies, the New Yorkers, because New York claimed this area.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

So even the British have some notion it's there. They don't think anyone has the gumption to go get it.

Knox’s Impossible Cannon Mission

SPEAKER_01 16:01

That's right. Imagine dragging it then 300 miles, and how would they do that? So the British know it's there, but there's really nothing they can do about it. The British, you know, they're in Boston. Their ships are in Boston Harbor, and their army is in downtown Boston, which is just a fist of the Shauma Peninsula, and they're surrounded by somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 militia troops. The British had taken Bunker Hill in June of 75, but the British know these guys don't have any artillery. They know they're not very well organized. But the British also know Boston really isn't the best place for us to use to win back the loyalty of Americans. By now they've kind of given up New England as a lost cause. So they are thinking about leaving anyway. Interesting. But the people in England have just sent a new army which to join this cause. And if the first thing they do is pull out of Boston, people in England will say, Well, wait a minute. We thought you were winning the war. We thought this was just a minor rebellion. Now you're giving up like a third of the continent. So politically, it would have been disastrous for General Gage, General Howe, simply say, militarily, this isn't feasible. Probably would have been the best thing for them to do. But um they needed a pretext. Although they are thinking we're going to leave, and then but they are surprised when in early March these cannon appear. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

So how long did it take Knox to get them from Ticonderoga to Dorchester Heights?

SPEAKER_01 17:23

He arrives at Ticonderoga in early December, and he writes to Washington, within two weeks, I will present your excellency a noble train of artillery. It actually takes him until the end of January. He has to build sleds and other things. He also has to hire Teamsters. These aren't soldiers doing this. These are Teamsters that he's hiring with teams of horses or oxen. And so they have to go down the Hudson River and then cross, they have to cross the Hudson several times just because of the way the roads were. And if the ice was too thin, they would have to they didn't want the oxen or the cannon to fall through. He would go out, have guys go out the night before to drill holes in the ice, so water will come up and make it solid by morning. Wow. And they do a couple of times lose a cannon. It's like an ice dam.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

It is in the river, create their own ice dam.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Exactly, yeah. So they needed to do this in winter, both because of the frozen rivers, also because the roads would have been too soft in any other time to haul the cannon. So they need but then getting them over the mountains, getting them up is one problem. Getting them down without running over the oxen is another problem. So we know that by January 24th or 25th, he's gotten them to Framingham. And then he rides ahead to Cambridge to tell Washington, I've got the cannon. So we don't so so then Washington Knox are directing where to place these guns. And they realize, you know, Dorchester Heights will give us control over the peninsula of Dorchester Neck and also put the British fleet and Castle Island within range. And so that is a big surprise to Howe. And Howe writes in his um journal about these soldiers are talking about the Americans like Aladdin's genie planting fortifications on the tops of hills.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

And so they wake up one morning in March of 76, there's the artillery, train down upon them. What are their options?

Dorchester Heights And The British Exit

SPEAKER_01 19:13

Well, one option is to storm the heights, which they are planning to do. So March 4th is when the fortifications go up. The morning of March 5th, Washington apparently exhorts his men. Will you men of Boston allow them to triumph on the 5th of March? And they all knew what the 5th of March was. The hard massacre. And so he does know the British are going to try to attack the heights. Washington thinks that'll be great. They'll leave Boston. I will have my groups come across from Cambridge and attack the British in Boston. It's kind of fortunate for the whole cause that what happens is a nor'easter. Big storm blows up, so the British can't land on Dorchester Neck. Their boats scatter, many of them go to Castle Island, so they kind of call that off. But meanwhile, Washington, after the storm, has Nook Hill, roughly near the corner of B Street and Broadway in South Boston now. It's no longer a hill, but it's closer to Boston. That gives them artillery range into the town of Boston. And it's around this time, a few days after this, that the head chairman of the Board of Selectmen from Boston comes to the neck. This is Washington Street in Roxbury, with a message that he had heard General Howe say that if Washington doesn't fire on them as they are leaving, he won't won't burn the town on his way out. So it's not an official thing, but it gives Washington an idea they're planning to leave. And on March 17th, they do. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

And what for so for this year, what kind of programming our reenactment components will there be?

SPEAKER_01 20:40

Yes. On Saturday, the park service at Dorchester Heights, this is Saturday, the 14th, there uh the monument's been reopened. It's been restored.$35 million project to restore this monument that was built in 1901. In fact, Henry Cabot Lodge was the speaker when the monument was dedicated, and he recalled seeing a cannonball in the church steeple in Brattle Square he went to as a boy, and always imagined it being fired from Dorchester Heights. So the mon and by the way, the monument went up because they're building a high school in the park, and people thought if there's a high school there, people won't remember history. It's kind of a sad commentary on what people thought of uh education at that time. But the monument goes up, so their monument's been restored. They'll have oxen, they'll have cannon, and so that's March 15th, March uh 14th, Saturday, and then March 17th, there will be a ceremony, and actually it's a ceremony that models something we do every year, beginning with a mass at St. Augustine's Chapel, which is the oldest Catholic church in Massachusetts, and then a procession up to Dorchester Heights with the Lexington Minutemen, other milit military companies, oxen. We're not sure if the oxen can make the hill. Back in 1776, the oxen couldn't make the hill. The guys with the oxen said, No, my oxen aren't gonna pull Canada up that hill. Get the soldiers to do it. So the soldiers did. So there will be those. Ceremonies at Dorchester Heights with the firing of the cannon and other things to commemorate the day.

Evacuation Day Traditions And Events

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Got it. What a great and such a uniquely and peculiar Boston thing that, you know, this neighborhood of South Boston that has this iconic parade for St. Patrick's Day, that at the same time there's this other event that really led in many ways to the founding founding of the country.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Well, most of the events actually are orchestrated by the South Boston Citizens Association, which is the oldest civic organization in the country. And it was formed in 1881 to preserve the height as well as to build a monument. And they have a banquet every year on the Friday before. So Friday the 13th will be the Evacuation Day banquet. And there was an evacuation. Evacuation Day always has been a little bit separate from St. Patrick's Day. There already was a St. Patrick's Day parade when in 1901 there was an evacuation day parade that went from South Boston to downtown. I should just say that in Washington's um order book for he every day they would have a new countersign password. So if you're trying to get into the camp, the sentry will challenge you, and you have to know what the countersign is. So in this day, the challenge word was Boston. And the countersign was, you know what it was? No. St. Patrick.

SPEAKER_02 23:14

Really? That's a great, great confidence of the two. So a couple more questions, then we'll wrap up here. Just curious. So after the war moves down to New York and the mid-Atlantic state, so after evacuation day, what's happening in Boston over the next several years, you know, before Yorktown?

Aftermath: Boston’s Recovery And War Effort

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Boston, it's in tough shape because of the way the British left it. And there had been a smallpox outbreak in Boston. So and it takes a while to recover. However, it's a very important port. So the French fleet will be here. Also, Burgoyne's army, captured at Saratoga, will be here. Massachusetts actually, through the war, will send more men to the Continental Army than any other state. And it continues to do that and support the war throughout the war. And after I should tell you, and this is a good thing for anyone who wants to become an historian, we actually don't know a lot about what's happening in Boston in those years. So it's something worth looking into. And we know that a lot, 1,100 loyalists left on evacuation day in 1776. A lot of them were merchants. And so we do know merchants from other from Salem, Newburyport come to Boston because this is a better place to do business. So Boston does revive, but it takes a while, both because the war is distracting a lot of things, even though it means a boom for shipbuilding and other things, uh, and also commerce. And commerce also suffers in the 1780s. So it takes a while for Boston to recover, but it does. But Massachusetts continues to provide men and supplies and money to the continental cause.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

Interesting. Okay, so final question. I can't I can't help but ask, since I have you here, Bob, just for your insights and perspective on where we're at at the 250th anniversary of this country. You know, these these these founding figures, and particularly the ones in in Boston that are really becoming leaders well ahead of when the idea of revolution was was popular, you know, they they have no notion that the new nation is gonna, you know, end up being an entire continent, right? They know a lot about commerce, but they don't know about how commerce is gonna be regulated in the 19th and 20th century. They don't know anything about regulating railroads, let alone AI. Right. Right. So if you can take the kind of the long view of America at 250 and in kind of an anachronistic way, look at those founding figures' perspectives, would they recognize this country as the one that they were trying to build?

SPEAKER_01 25:41

That's a very good question, very interesting question. Of course, the good thing about it is we have no idea. So we can say anything we want.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

That's right.

Would The Founders Recognize America

SPEAKER_01 25:48

But in many ways they would, in many ways, they wouldn't. Um I remember some years ago, Henry Adams, the great-grandson of John Adams, wrote a memoir, and he was very put uh stunned at the world of the early 20th century, the motor car and other things. I can't picture John Adams being as floored by these things. Because even they lived in a different time, but this was a time of experimentation, a time of thinking about what is the root of things, what is the cause of things. I think and you think about that line in Emerson's Conquered Hymn about those heroes who dared to die and leave their children free. What they were doing was not necessarily to preserve their world, but to allow their children to shape their own world. So they would look at a lot of what we've done, and some things they think are pretty positive, ending slavery, may, for example. Other things they may really wonder about, the intrusive power of the state and other things, something they were trying to guard against. So there are probably some things that would genuinely puzzle them, but they would see these are human choices that people have made. And it was the ability to make choices, is why they set off on this cause. You know, fifty years after the declaration, Jefferson Adams and Charles Carroll of Carleton were the only surviving signers, and each one was asked to attend a ceremony in Washington, and they all declined for reasons of health. But they all wrote. And Jefferson wrote about this election we had made, I mean, a choice we had made between submission and the sword. And he's happy that after 50 years, people approved that choice they had made. So he's very much thinking about that. And John Adams also writes a letter. But then I think the more touching thing was uh folks in Quincy were having an event on July 4th of 1826, and they asked John Adams to come to it. He couldn't, but he did send a toast. And his toast was independence forever.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

So, Bob, how do people learn more about Revolution 250 programming and activities?

Independence Forever And Where To Learn More

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Aaron Ross Powell The best way is to go to our website, revolution250.org, and that will have information on our events, other partner organizations. We have 75 partners in the Commonwealth, and all kinds of things are happening. The big thing we're doing is reawakening this idea so that in 50 years, young people who were inspired this time will be able to commemorate the events for the 300th anniversary.

SPEAKER_02 28:19

Professor Allison, those are some great insights. And thank you so much for joining us today on Boston Found as one of the original architects of Revolution 250. And here we are on the eve of evacuation day in March of 26. Uh, it's been great partnering with you on it, and we appreciate you sharing your thoughts today with us. It's been great having you as a partner, David. Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

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