The City That Buried Its Revolution

New York does not wear its Revolutionary War history the way Boston does. In Boston, the Freedom Trail marks the route and the sites are maintained. In New York, the Revolution is buried — literally, in many cases — under layers of subsequent development.

The battlefield of Long Island is now the neighborhoods of Park Slope and Gowanus. Fort Washington is a park in upper Manhattan. The prison ship martyrs rest beneath a monument that most Brooklynites walk past without a second glance. Fraunces Tavern still stands, but it is surrounded by skyscrapers that dwarf any sense of the eighteenth-century streetscape.

This is partly a matter of scale. New York grew so fast after the Revolution that its earlier history was simply built over. But it is also a matter of narrative. New York's Revolutionary experience was not triumphant. It was a story of defeat, occupation, and suffering. The city was lost in 1776 and not recovered until 1783. During those seven years, it was a British stronghold, a Loyalist haven, and the site of the war's worst atrocity: the prison ships.

That is not the kind of history that cities naturally celebrate. Boston had its Tea Party, its Minutemen, its siege and liberation. New York had its rout, its fire, and its dead. The story is harder to tell, and for a long time, the city did not try very hard to tell it.

That is changing. The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument has been restored. Archaeological work continues to uncover Revolutionary-era sites beneath the modern city. And there is growing recognition that New York's occupation experience — the divided loyalties, the civilian suffering, the intelligence war — is at least as important to understanding the Revolution as any battle.

The British chose New York as their base because it was the most strategically valuable city in America. Understanding why they held it for seven years, and what happened to the people who lived there, is essential to understanding the war as something more than a sequence of battles.