American flags vanished from Manhattan after the British forced George Washington’s army from the city in September 1776. But early on Tuesday, November 25, 1783, the day chosen for the redcoats’ departure from New York, a Mrs. Day raised the Stars and Stripes over her Murray Street tavern. Captain William Cunningham, the British provost marshal, tried to pull the banner down. “Take in that flag,” he roared, “the city is ours till noon.” Mrs. Day bloodied his nose with a broomstick, dealing “the Captain such lusty blows as made the powder fly in clouds from his wig, and forced him to beat a retreat.”

The British held New York when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781. A year later, “His Britannic Majesty [acknowledged] the said United States…to be free Sovereign and independent states…” in preliminary articles of peace. When proclaimed from the steps of City Hall in the King’s name, this news drove some Loyalists to suicide; others, like William Smith, were as shocked as if they had lost “all I had in the World and my Family with it.” But most New Yorkers felt up to regime change. A tailor was asked, “How does business go?” “Not very well,” he replied. “My customers have all learned to turn their own coats.”

News of the Treaty of Paris, signed September 3, 1783, which required the British to evacuate New York, arrived in early November. On November 21, 1783, the British withdrew from Long Island and upper Manhattan. That evening, Washington and New York’s governor, George Clinton, rode into Harlem, stopping at a tavern near Frederick Douglass Boulevard and 126th Street.

On November 25, even as Mrs. Day was thrashing Captain Cunningham, General Henry Knox and 800 Continentals marched south from McGown’s Pass, in what is now the northeastern corner of Central Park. He paused before the British pickets near Cooper Union, chatting with red-coated officers as they awaited orders. Around 1 p.m., the British moved south, picking up their outposts as they marched to the East River wharves. Cunningham paraded his Provost Guard at the New Jail near Broadway and Chambers Street. Accompanied by the hangman in his yellow jacket, Cunningham’s men marched out past a platoon of British regulars, which fell in behind them: they would be the last redcoats embarked.

At Cape’s Tavern, on Broadway below Trinity Church, General Knox took possession of the city in the name of the United States. An eyewitness wrote of Knox’s men, “(they) were ill clad and weather-beaten… But… they were our troops, and as I looked at them, and thought upon all they had done for us, my heart and eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more…”

The Union flag still flew defiantly over the Battery. The British had nailed it to the staff, removed the halyards (the lines for raising and lowering a flag), and greased the pole, heel to truck, “…to prevent or hinder the removal of the emblem of royalty, and the raising of the Stars and Stripes.” Revolutionary soldier John Van Arsdale sprinted to Goelet’s store in Hanover Square for tools, cleats, rope, and nails. He nailed cleats into the greasy pole and ascended, bit by bit. He ripped down the British flag and threw it to the cheering crowd. Then he strung halyards, and as patriots raised the Stars and Stripes, Knox’s field guns began a 13-gun salute. Off in the Upper Bay, as the colors rose and the cannon roared, the British fleet turned for the open sea.

That night as well as the following nine saw much “good humor, hilarity, and mirth.” At Clinton’s dinner on December 2, 1783, his 120 guests consumed 135 bottles of Madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of beer, and 30 bowls of punch while breaking 60 wineglasses and eight cut-glass decanters. On Thursday, December 4, Washington breakfasted with his officers in the Long Room on Fraunces Tavern’s second floor. Then he stood up, and there was silence. He said, “With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take leave of you. I most devoutly wish that your later days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.” Then he wept.

Composure regained, the commander in chief went down the stairs, popped on his cocked hat, and strode into Pearl Street. The infantrymen presented arms. He acknowledged the salute and walked west. At the foot of Whitehall Street waited the barge that would begin his return to private life.

New Yorkers celebrated November 25 as Evacuation Day for over a century. James Riker recorded a distich:

It’s Evacuation Day, when the British ran away

Please, dear Master, give us holiday.

But around World War I, obscured by R. H. Macy’s publicity campaigns for a parade celebrating another late November festival, Evacuation Day faded away.