A Day the British Left New York City, 1783

For seven years and two months, New York City belonged to the British Army. Redcoats had taken it in September 1776, and a fire days later gutted a fifth of the town, leaving Trinity Church a burned shell and creating a slum of sailcloth-roofed ruins called Canvas Town. The city became the empire’s American headquarters and a magnet for Loyalist refugees — and for thousands of enslaved people who fled to British lines seeking the freedom promised by proclamation. Churches were turned into prisons, stables, and hospitals; American captives died by the thousands in the Sugar House jails and the prison hulks in Wallabout Bay...

From the Time Surfing Graphic History Series. Read it here.