Sunday, November 24, 2013

Celebrate Evacuation Day!



Tomorrow is Evacuation Day.  November 25, 1783 was the day American patriots reclaimed New York City from the British troops and their loyalist occupiers.  General George Washington marched his troops through the streets of Manhattan.  He was astonished at what he saw. 



The Americans stopped at the Blue Bell Tavern, at what is now 181st St. and Broadway, once a hotbed of patriotic sentiment, where the head of King George III’s statue was stuck on a post in the first days of liberty. They marched through McGowan’s Pass, along what is now Central Park’s East Drive at about 102nd St., then made their way down the Bowery to Pearl St., and turning west on Wall St. — following much of the same route along which they fled in a desperate retreat from British troops seven years before.


The landscape about them was unrecognizable, “the island . . . totally stripped of trees,” an astonished Washington reported. Most of the villages of upper Manhattan had been burned and looted. It was, one observer said, “one general scene of ravage and desolation.”


Those who remained loyal to the crown sailed back to England or moved to Canada.  Here is a picture of a statue in Hamilton, Ontario lamenting the fate of British refugees.





This Monument is Dedicated to the Lasting Memory of The United Empire Loyalists who, after the Declaration of Independence, came into British America from the seceded American Colonies and who, with faith and fortitude, and under great pioneering difficulties, largely laid the foundations of this Canadian nation as an integral part of the British Empire.

Neither confiscation of their property, the pitiless persecution of their kinsmen in revolt, nor the galling chains of imprisonment could break their spirits, or divorce them from a loyalty almost without parallel.

“No country ever had such founders — no country in the world — no, not since the days of Abraham.” — Lady Tennyson




I can’t wait for the day when patriotic Americans once again liberate this country from the current occupiers that infest this country.





No comments: