HAPPY 250TH EVACUATION DAY!

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V29 2026 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 29, Number 12, 2026, Article 8

"While many people — especially here in Boston — are celebrating St. Patrick's Day, today is also Evacuation Day, the day George Washington and his Continental soldiers secured an important early victory in the American Revolution. And indeed, this year is the 250th anniversary of that great event on March 17, 1776!

"The scene is depicted on the reverse of the Washington Before Boston Medal, with the legend HOSTIBUS PRIMO FUGATIS, "the enemy for the first time was put to flight".

"For those unfamiliar with the story, Heather Cox Richardson summed it up nicely in her daily email yesterday, at: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-16-2026 ."

As a Revolutionary War general, George Washington is most remembered for his victories at Trenton, Princeton and Yorktown. But his earlier expulsion of the British army from Boston on March 17, 1776, should stand alongside these. After their ouster, the British would have to reconquer America.

The British evacuated Boston in 120 vessels, taking with them some 1,100 loyalists. The retreat represented the end of a siege that began almost a year earlier when American militia, citizen soldiers and provincial units followed British troops back from Lexington and Concord to surround Boston.

During the protracted siege, [British commander] Burgoyne relieved his boredom by establishing a riding school for the British cavalry in the Old South Meeting House and writing plays including "The Blockade of Boston," which portrayed Washington as a bumbling figure with an oversized wig and trailing sword and New Englanders as "Ye tarbarrell'd Lawgivers, yankified Prigs, Who are Tyrants in Custom, yet call yourselves Whigs."

On Jan. 8, 1776, as the curtain rose on a performance of "Blockade," a soldier — in costume for the play — ran onto the stage shouting, "The Yankees are attacking!" The audience laughed and applauded until they heard real alarm guns. The officers immediately dispersed to their units and posts, while the soldier-actors wiped makeup off their faces and jumped over the orchestra pit, "leaving the Ladies in the House in a most terrible Dilema."

As 1776 arrived, Washington lacked the artillery to launch a full-scale attack on the British in Boston. But toward the end of January, his situation improved dramatically with the arrival of 60 tons of artillery captured from the British at Fort Ticonderoga and dragged across ice and over mountains under the supervision of Col. Henry Knox, a former Boston bookseller.

The endgame came in March. After placing some of the cannon in Cambridge, to the northwest of Boston, Washington ordered the bombardment of the city as a smoke screen to allow 2,000 men to occupy the commanding position of Dorchester Heights. They crept up overnight and dug emplacements for the guns, making the city indefensible. Upon seeing the artillery mounted on the high ground across South Bay, [British senior commander] Howe ordered the evacuation. His army's departure was swift, and it left behind large quantities of military supplies, including spiked cannon, mortars, artillery carriages, shells and shot, as well as rugs, blankets and other items useful to the Continental Army. To spare the city, Washington chose to let the retreat proceed unmolested.

The patriots had now gained control of much of the country through the militia, committees of safety, the law courts and the assemblies, with most royal governors in exile. Even the British foothold in Canada had nearly fallen to Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen. Yorktown and "final exclusion" were still more than five years off, but Washington's victory in Boston had set the stage for what was to come.