On November 25, 1783, the British officially left New York City after seven years of occupation. They had first come at the Battle of Brooklyn, when they sailed across the narrows from Staten Island and stormed the Continental Army in the fields of Brooklyn before driving them back across the river to Manhattan. Washington’s men were then pushed north to Harlem before they escaped across the Hudson to New Jersey before they could be massacred. It was shameful defeat, and left one of the oldest American cities under British control.
Not all the residents of New York took objection to the capture. New York had been a hotbed of loyalist sentiment as many of the wealthier merchants who made their money chiefly through the import and export of goods from Britain were keen to keep the relationship strong with their trading partner. At the very same time Thomas Jefferson was penning the Declaration of Independence, the loyalists of the city were meeting to draft and sign their “declaration of dependence,” stating their intention to stick with the British no matter what happened. So it was a welcome sight as the redcoats rode into town in 1776, driving out not only the Continental Army, but also many of the verdant separatists. It was a dream scenario for New York Tories.
While it stood largely uncontested as British territory during the war, it remained a center of activity for both sides. Nathan Hale, the young and inexperienced spy from Connecticut, was rounded up with hundreds of other suspects after a deliberately set fire tore through Lower Manhattan and destroyed over a thousand buildings. Hale was found out and hanged as a spy, but not before he (possibly) uttered his famous phrase “I regret that I have but one life to give for my country.” The British never repaired the ruined section of town and even forced the poor and those with patriot sympathies to live there in what was essentially a shanty town. But their greatest atrocity would occur in the water. The British used their ships to create what was essentially a floating prison camp in Wallabout Bay near Brooklyn. They held thousands of people there in despicable conditions, leading to the deaths of over 10,000 civilian patriots and continental soldiers throughout the war. It was deadlier for the colonists than all the battles of the war combined.
By 1783 the British knew their days in New York were numbered. Open war had ended two years earlier with the victory at Yorktown, and the Treaty of Paris, which agreed that all British soldiers would leave the city, was signed between the two belligerents in September of 1783. It still took a couple of months for the British to organize themselves and get ready for evacuation, which included finding transport not only for their soldiers but also all of the slaves they had freed in exchange for service and the many loyalists who wouldn’t want to reside in a city with those they had actively rooted against during the war. By November 25 they were ready to go, and the British ships sailed from the harbor to the jeers of New Yorkers. In what was the final shot fired in the War for Independence, a bitter British general fired a cannon shot from his ship at crowd of shouting Staten Islanders as he sailed through the narrows and out to sea. The shot fell harmlessly into the sea.