Occupying British troops seized patriot homes and repurposed Boston’s public buildings
Evidence
Blind to the looming threat from Dorchester Heights, Howe and his army made the most of another enforced winter in Boston even as the slow-moving war ministry in London dispatched more ships for an orderly transfer of troops to New York and evacuation of loyalists to Nova Scotia in the spring. Cut off from the mainland by patriot forces, occupying British troops and local loyalists relied on goods brought in by sea, which drove up prices and limited supplies. Still, housed in the better homes abandoned by the patriots who had fled Boston after the Battles of Lexington and Concord, British officers lived well enough, with General Henry Clinton taking over John Hancock’s Beacon Hill mansion and a regimental surgeon residing in John and Abigail Adams’s townhouse. As Boston lacked a theater because of its Puritan roots, the British turned Faneuil Hall into one, with some officers writing plays and soldiers performing in them. Stripped of its pews, the Old South Church became a horse-riding rink for officers. — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 110
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: British postwar conduct in Boston drove Washington to embrace independence
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: British postwar conduct in Boston drove Washington to embrace independence