Evacuation Day

If you had asked me ten days ago what Evacuation Day was, my tongue-in-cheek answer would have likely been, “Three days before any category-five hurricane is forecast to devastate some portion of the Gulf Coast.”

While that might be true enough, there really is a specific day in our history that is commonly referred to as Evacuation Day. It is the day that the British finally departed Manhattan Island after the end of the Revolutionary War – November 25, 1783. While it is more symbolic than it is meaningful to the end of the British occupation of the city of New York during the war, it is also a day that has been marked with public celebrations in New York dating back to 1787.

While General Cornwallis’ surrender at the Battle of Yorktown in October of 1781 is generally considered the end of the major hostilities of the Revolutionary War, a large contingent of British forces remained stationed at Charleston in South Carolina and Savannah in Georgia. At the same time, the main body of their army continued to be billeted in New York City. After the surrender at Yorktown, both the British and Continental armies remained mostly idle during the better part of the following two years. The British removal of their troops from Charleston and Savannah in late 1782 finally signaled the end of the war. British and American negotiators agreed to the preliminary peace terms in Paris in November of 1782.  On September 3, 1783, Great Britain formally recognized an independent United States of America at the signing of the Treaty of Paris.

All that was left was for the remainder of the British forces to leave New York. A task easier said than accomplished. The Revolutionary War had seen a great many American colonists take up arms to side with the British. These loyalists were now faced with the grim reality of where to live once the war had ended. In many cases, they were given little choice. Many of the communities where they had lived prior to the war decided that they were no longer welcome once the hostilities ended.

In August of 1783, several Connecticut towns held tribunals where returning loyalists were then expelled and banished. With nowhere else to turn, these loyalists sought the aid of those they had fought for, the British, which while isolated, were still occupying New York City awaiting their final orders to evacuate the United States and return home to England.

The Crown was not only willing to help these men and their families leave the United States, but it was also willing to issue them land grants in Canada, in both the Maritimes and New Brunswick where settlers were needed to establish new communities. As the British Army was preparing to leave New York, the constant influx of displaced loyalists into Manhattan would slow their efforts significantly. The logistics of moving that many families was staggering.

According to James Riker’s 1883 book, Evacuation Day, it was also in August, 1783, that the twenty thousand British soldiers and sailors who remained in New York, finally received their orders to evacuate New York and return to England. But with as many as thirty-five thousand loyalist refugees also seeking transportation to quit the city, an exact date for the final departure of the last British forces was impossible to determine. For General Washington, much of the autumn of 1783 was spent waiting for British General Guy Carleton to dismantle seven years’ worth of infrastructure and complete the evacuation of the city. It wasn’t until mid-November, four months after the orders to leave had been issued, that the date for the final evacuation of the city was announced – November, the 25^th.

General Washington and New York Governor Clinton were prepared to take possession of Fort George in lower Manhattan on the morning of the 25^th with the lowering of the royal ensign of the British and the raising of the Stars and Stripes in its place. However, in one last act of defiance, the British had nailed their flag to the top of the pole, removed the halyards, and then greased the flagpole. It wasn’t until a soldier in the Continental Army by the name of John Van Arsdale fashioned a set of homemade cleats and nailed them, one above the other, to the flagpole that he was able to ascend the staff and tear down the British flag before replacing it with the American one.

It was at the end of that day that a New York tradition was initiated when Governor Clinton hosted a dinner honoring General Washington at Fraunces Tavern. There, a total of thirteen separate toasts were made to commemorate the occasion. This is a tradition that still lives today, two hundred and forty years later in the very same building where it began.

Evacuation Day eventually became an official holiday in New York; one that rivaled or even surpassed the Fourth of July for many years. Schools were closed on November 25^th during much of the 19^th century. There were parades, fireworks, military drills, and festive banquets hosted by organizations such as the Sons of the Revolution. Today, the New York Public Library has menus from some of those celebratory dinners stored in its archives.

After 1863, when Abraham Lincoln proclaimed Thanksgiving as a national holiday to be celebrated on the last Thursday in November, New York’s celebration of Evacuation Day on the 25^th began to wane. Prior to that, in New York, Thanksgiving and Evacuation Day were often both observed on the 25^th, allowing children on school holiday to participate.

But perhaps the largest Evacuation Day celebration took place on the date of its centennial, November 25, 1883. There were a reported twenty thousand people who marched in the parade that day, and both the Hudson and East Rivers were lined with sailing ships to commemorate the day.

The last official celebration of the day was held in 1916. As the United States prepared to enter World War I, the tradition of celebrating a victory over Great Britain was considered out of place given that the two nations were by then the closest of allies.

But historic traditions don’t necessarily die that easily.

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According to their organization’s history page, Gold’s Dragoons is the second oldest chartered military organization in the Western Hemisphere. Founded in Fairfield in 1660 by Nathan Gold, the troop was officially entered into the colonial militia in 1662 under the royal seal of King Charles II. Their mission was to protect against Dutch encroachment from the west and Pequot Indians from the east.

Unlike many of the local colonial militias, Gold’s Dragoons was a mounted unit capable of traveling great distances in minimal time. As such, “Gold led his dragoons in two colonial conflicts: King Philip’s War against the Wampanoag sachem Metacom in New England (1675-1676) and also King William’s War (1689-1697) against the French and their Indian allies along the borders of New England and New France. In King William’s War, the troop would serve as far north as Schenectady in 1690 to avenge the massacre of English settlers and took an active part in the Quebec expedition later that year.”

Major Nathan Gold gave up his command of the troop at the conclusion of King William’s War in 1697. What became of the unit in the ensuing years has been the subject of some discussion, but there has been little to either confirm or deny its continued existence as an organized military unit during much of the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

In 1932, some two hundred and seventy years after its founding, the name “Gold’s Dragoons” was resurrected by a group of Fairfield County horsemen looking to follow the lead of other Connecticut horse owners by offering their services to the state as a mounted home guard. Their base would be the Fairfield County Hunt Club in Westport and they would supply their own mounts but not their own weaponry. In 1933, they were confirmed by a state charter and began nighttime patrols and performed riding drills on the weekends.

In early 1942, the troop was converted into a motorized unit, and as World War II grew in scope and size, the men joined the United States military as full-time soldiers.

After the war, the men returned to Fairfield County as veterans where they continued Gold’s Dragoons as a fraternal organization. Today, the organization hosts polo matches, dinners, and participates in historical military parades and events attired in full dress uniforms that are representative of the original dragoons. While not an officially recognized charitable organization, the troop does support the Equus Effect, a program designed to help veterans, first responders and frontline health workers cope with the stress their job has created, through working with horses.

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During the latter part of the 20^th century, the celebration of Evacuation Day from 1783 was revived in New York City. A bit different in character and with a slight deviation from the actual events of the day, it none-the-less recreates the spirit of the occasion when the City of New York was finally liberated from the control of the British.

The modern-day event has a parade that concludes with the more civilized version of what should have transpired some 240 years ago but didn’t – the lowering and folding of the British flag by the Americans before being presented to the British command for its return to King George III.

Easton resident, Chester Burley, who is also the current president of the Historical Society of Easton, is a long-time member of Gold’s Dragoons and has participated in this event for many years. He describes the festivities in this manner, “In the ceremony, Gold’s Dragoons with our scarlet uniforms (est.1660 in Fairfield, CT) represent the British. The British flag is lowered and presented to the ‘British’ commanding officer to be returned to George III.  Then the Veteran Corps of Artillery, an historic group formed in 1790 to defend NY Harbor (in blue uniforms) raise the American flag to the cheers and chants of ‘USA’ from a large crowd of tourists and spectators. After a half hour of speeches from various dignitaries, we march back to Fraunces Tavern with our piper where the Lower Manhattan Historical Association buys us lunch.”   

When asked if they continue the tradition of thirteen separate toasts while at Fraunces Tavern, he replied, “The Sons of the Revolution have an annual Evacuation Day dinner celebration (usually on the 3rd Monday of November) during which all 13 toasts are recited.  The luncheon is merely to feed those who participate in the event and is hosted by the Lower Manhattan Historical Association.”

I guess it is safer to ride your horses back to Westport without having enjoyed those thirteen toasts, but somehow, I feel the members of the troop are being a bit shortchanged; after all, they are gracious enough to always portray the defeated, something they never had to do when they rode with Nathan Gold in the 17^th century!

Many thanks to Chester Burley and Gold’s Dragoons for the modern photographs, historical information, and the inspiration for this article!

Author’s note: There is a second, slightly better-known Evacuation Day that is associated with Boston, Massachusetts. It commemorates the withdrawal of British troops on March 17, 1776. While the names are the same, they represent two distinctly different events.