British Evacuation of Charleston

Front: On Dec. 14, 1782, the last remaining British soldiers in the Carolinas evacuated Charleston from this site. Their departure ended a 31-month occupation of the city and marked the close of the American Revolutionary War in the southern U.S., more than a year after the Patriot victory at Yorktown, Va. Control of the city was peacefully transferred after months of planning and a ceasefire agreement by the American and British armies. Reverse: Around 14,000 British and Hessian soldiers, Loyalists, and enslaved and free Blacks embarked from Gadsden’s Wharf on up to 300 ships destined for the Caribbean, East Florida, Canada, New York, and England. Patriot Gen. Nathanael Greene called the evacuation a moment “so very important to all America.” News soon arrived of England’s provisional recognition of U.S. independence, formalized in 1783 by the Treaty of Paris.