Boston Mayor Tom Menino has a column in the local newspaper Boston Post-Gazette. Last week he recalled that March 17 is not just St. Patrick’s Day, but also the Suffolk County holiday of Evacuation Day—Boston City workers get the day off, essentially— which recounts, well, let’s let the mayor tell you.
“On March 17, 1776 the British Army finally left ‘the colonies,’ by way of Boston Harbor after being beaten in the American Revolutionary War.”
I’m not sure what Washington was doing at Yorktown but apparently the British had been gone for years. I wonder if Washington had held up a big billboard after the Battle of Bunker Hill: “Mission Accomplished.” I guess the years between 1776 and 1783 only count as a “quagmire” for the American troops.
Way to set an example for all those kids in school, Mr. Mayor. Maybe they should administer MCAS to politicians before they can take office.
Dom, I am certainly no historian, but how could the British armies have evacuated the colonies even before the Declaration was signed?
LOL. Oops. I get you now. I plead sleep depravation (Felicity has had me up since before 5).
As a non-Bostonian though, just what is the holiday for if the Mayor is a worse historian than I am? Or did he just get the year wrong?
March 17, Evacuation Day, is supposed to commemorate the day the British left Boston during the War. But it wasn’t the end of the war.
In reality, it’s a made up holiday form the 20th century designed to give Irish city workers St. Patrick’s Day off.
And what’s with “George Washington’s troops “bringing cannons from Fort Ticonderoga”??
As a lifetime resident of western Massachusetts, I’ve known since a young age that General Knox brought the canons to Washington, who badly needed them. You read all about it on several historical markers posted along the old Boston Post Road (modern day Route 20) across the Commonwealth.
I know that Tom Menino probably doesn’t get out of Boston much to see those monuments, so he might watch a re-run of HBO’s current series on John Adams. The whole episode about the canons is now being portrayed on national television.
Fr Bill Pomerleau
Springfield
I’d much rather hear the Mayor expound again on how Jesus didn’t want people going around talking Him up.