On the morning of November 25, 1783, the last of the defeated British troops left the soil of New York City. It was the end of a seven-year-long occupation. Yet as the redcoats headed to their ships on that cold day, the royal flag still flew over Fort George at the tip of Manhattan.
The United States of America had won its war of independence against Britain at Yorktown two years earlier. Now the Treaty of Paris, which formally ended the war, ushered in a transition to peace.
When General George Washington and 800 troops reached the fort at the Battery, they discovered that the “flag had been nailed to the staff, the halyards taken away, and the pole itself besmeared with grease; obviously to prevent or hinder the removal of the emblem of royalty, and the raising of the Stars and Stripes.”
As James Riker wrote a century later, “gun…
