Evacuation Day is celebrated on March 17 in Massachusetts. It commemorates when, in 1776, George Washington and the Continental Army drove Loyalists and British forces out of Boston, ending an 11-month siege.

In history class, you read a lot about Boston during the Revolutionary War—the massacre, the tea party, Bunker Hill—but I, for one, don’t remember hearing much about this, which is too bad because it’s a great story about military sleight of hand and perseverance. It would make a great novel.

Washington had been hankering to attack Boston for the better part of a year, but his officers kept refusing and insisting it was a nonstarter because the British were receiving supplies by sea. They pushed  Washington to wait until the waters around Boston were frozen—and then to keep waiting; settling in for a nice, sedate siege. It’s funny how much of military history involves sitting, stalling, leeriness, listlessness, deliberation, drag. I’m not saying outright cowardice—that’s a different animal. But I do find reluctance to move a big recurring factor in my reading. Don’t get me wrong, that’s totally understandable—if the option is “hey, let’s die today” or “eh, wait a while and see what shakes out,” I know what I’d go for. But at some point, someone’s gotta blow a whistle and someone’s gotta do a job.

(This preference for movement might explain my psychosis about cancer treatment, actually. I know that chemo and radiation play a part and there are good reasons to go that route—but given a choice, I know mine will be to go Defcon 1 immediately and Evict That Scumbag Tenant with extreme prejudice. This is why I’m not a doctor, and it’s why I’m not a military strategist, and it’s why I lose at chess.)

Anyway, while Boston was struggling along under British occupation, Henry Knox won a fight at Fort Ticonderoga (Home of the pencils! But not til later!) and dragged 59 cannons 300 miles (not by himself) to Boston—a feat that came to be labeled “the Noble Train of Artillery” and that has several nonfiction outings but that I think would be a great name for another great novel. Bernard Cornwell should get on that.

So then Washington gets to work. Under cover of night, he tells one bunch of men to hump all those cannons up Dorchester Heights to the southeast—nothing like a big uphill finish after a 300-mile trek!) Meanwhile, he stages an engagement in Cambridge to the west. The British blast away at the troops in Cambridge all night, only to have the sun come up and reveal the big, menacing fortifications looming over the town. 

The British did take a shot at dislodging the guns but were thwarted by a snowstorm. So on March 17, 1776, 11,000 British soldiers and hundreds of Loyalists bailed from Boston by boat.

And that is the story of Boston’s Evacuation Day. Note that there is a related Evacuation Day—New York’s was on November 25, 1783. But that’s a whole other story.