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 surprise operation that would break the stalemate around Boston. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here. —The Editors
The Fortress Washington Built Overnight
There was little sleep this night 250 years ago around Boston. The British troops occupying the city had heard rumors of a rebel movement but could not hear the procession of wagons, oxen, and soldiers over the roar of the artillery duel that the Continental Army had begun. Not until the sun rose over Boston Harbor the next morning did the British discover what the cannon fire and darkness had disguised: George Washington’s men had transformed the previously unoccupied Dorchester Heights across the water into a formidable bastion with the fortifications and firepower needed to force the British out of the city.
The operation on Dorchester Heights on the night of March 4, 1776, led to Washington’s first significant triumph of the Revolutionary War and previewed a secret weapon that regimes underestimating the United States have failed to reckon with time and time again: the ingenuity and enterprise of the American people.
By March, the siege that had begun with the British falling back into Boston from Concord and Lexington was nearing the one-year mark. As discussed here a few weeks ago, Washington felt his countrymen losing patience with the stalemate. The officers he convened in a war council in mid-February had rejected his plan to throw troops across the frozen water separating his army from the British but gave their support to an alternative plan: fortifying Dorchester Heights.
