On March 17th we can mark not just the day honoring St. Patrick, who in legend drove the snakes out of Ireland, but also the 250th anniversary of the day George Washington drove the British out of Boston.
While St. Patrick’s achievement is largely mythic, General Washington’s is real. It’s considered the first major victory of the Revolutionary War, and he did it without a fight.
Considering Boston’s heritage of Irish immigrants and the city’s storied role in the Revolution, March 17th provides a double dip of celebration.
In fact, the anniversary of Washington’s victory is an official holiday, known as “Evacuation Day,” in Boston and nearby communities.
How did he outfox the Redcoats?
According to the National Park Service, Washington had stealthily fortified Boston’s coveted high ground, Dorchester Heights, with captured British cannons dragged by oxen across the Berkshires from Fort Ticonderoga in New York.
The heavy artillery was ideal intimidation, in combination with Dorchester’s 120-foot height and its commanding view of a Boston Harbor filled with occupying British ships.
Working overnight and using hay bales to muffle the sound, Washington’s troops assembled a makeshift fort that in daylight revealed to the British they were at a grave disadvantage.
That March morning in 1776, 11,000 of their troops and loyalists boarded 120 ships and fled to Nova Scotia. As he left, British commander General William Howe said of the rebel troops, “My God, these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”
The Continental Army’s victory emboldened a Congress that on the following July 4th adopted the Declaration of Independence.
The major problem with St. Patrick’s story, as National Geographic and other sources have long pointed out, is that there have been no native snakes on the Emerald Isle since before the last ice age 12,000 years ago.
Many sources believe the snakes to be metaphors symbolizing pagan beliefs that St. Patrick, a fifth-century Christian missionary, sought to eliminate.
In our own roiled country, it’s paradoxical that as “Evacuation Day” and the nation’s 250th birthday approach, our incumbent president’s venom belies the faith our first leader had in our budding democracy.
Washington believed in the free nation he was fighting for, and this is what he said about it:
“The general government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any despotic or oppressive form so long as there is any virtue in the body of the people.”
As events unfold, let’s hope we measure up to his belief in “We the People” as we react to the toxic entourage that has wriggled into our halls of power.
The need for expulsion comes easily to mind, so – despite his questionable role with Irish serpents – it tempts one’s fantasy to ask, “Where is Saint Patrick when we need him?”
Gerry Goldstein (gerry76@verizon.net), a frequent contributor, is a retired Providence Journal editor and columnist.