As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week Jonathan looks at the British abandonment of Boston, and the loyalists who left with them. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
The loyalists in Boston had hoped the day would never come, but come it did on March 17, 1776, when the British evacuated the city after a nearly yearlong siege by patriot forces. There would be chaos and confusion, but no refugees left to swim after ships that had already sailed, no scenes as tragic as the ones that the country born out of the American Revolution would one day leave behind in Saigon and Kabul.
As we commemorate the birth of the United States, there’s no shame in admitting there are still lessons worth learning from the example the Mother Country set. Two hundred fifty years ago this week, the British showed how a great power can abandon a city without forsaking its friends.
