Editor's Note: This article first appeared in the Reporter in March 2015.

There is a “rule” in Hollywood when it comes to real history, an axiom that goes something like this: “No matter how good a true story is, we can make it better.” In the entertaining History Channel miniseries “Sons of Liberty,” the key word is “liberty – or “liberties.”

Suffice it to say that the actor Ben Barnes’s portrayal of Sam Adams as a hunky heartthrob punching it out with the Redcoats and scurrying from rooftop to rooftop like some colonial Spiderman or Batman is way off the mark, historically speaking. Ditto for John Hancock, John and Abigail Adams, and George Washington.

In promoting the show, the History Channel candidly described it on its website and in other venues as “historical fiction, not a documentary. The goal of our miniseries is to capture the spirit of the time, convey the personalities of the main characters, and focus on real events that have shaped our past.”

One of those “event” with which the series took the most liberties was the rebel action that chased the British from Boston, spawning later “Evacuation Day” celebrations in Boston. From the moment the patriots dragged massive cannon from Fort Ticonderoga, in upstate New York, and emplaced them atop Dorchester Heights, the redcoats had two choices – abandon Boston or be shredded by Washington’s siege artillery.

The miniseries gives short shrift to this pivotal event and masterstroke by Washington by leading viewers to believe that it all happened because of a handshake over a fire. The show’s creators missed an opportunity to tell the real saga of Evacuation Day, which was infinitely more dramatic than that fleeting clasp of patriot hands.

On the night of March 4, 1776, patriot officers gave an order to 2,000 or so men: No one was to speak above a whisper. As American batteries opened up on British positions in and around Boston, the smoke and din cloaked the long file of Continental Army troops lugging timber and massive cannons as silently as possible through the darkened streets of Roxbury and into Dorchester.

Wincing from the blustery blasts off the Atlantic and from the heft of their ordnance, they pushed ever closer to their objective, Dorchester Heights. If spotted by the redcoat batteries, disaster would follow; if the procession reached the hills, the British regiments in Boston below and the British warships in the harbor and on the Charles River would lay wide open to lethal blasts of siege guns from the Heights. George Washington was rolling the dice in Dorchester.

The rebel general had the wherewithal to destroy Boston if necessary, “notwithstanding the property and friends within it.” Since his arrival in Cambridge in late June 1775, the Virginian had been grimly determined to drive Sir William Howe’s redcoat regiments, over 9,000 strong, from the region and break the stalemate. With the eye of the surveyor and soldier that he was, Washington soon grasped that emplacing batteries atop Dorchester Heights could put the British at his mercy. The problem he faced in doing so was twofold: where to come up with the heavy cannons necessary to pour metal upon the redcoats and how to take the Heights before the British could respond by launching sea and land bombardments at exposed American troops approaching the hills or by seizing the high ground before Washington.

On January 24, Henry Knox, a bold, portly bookseller and former Bostonian, solved the first problem. Having seized Fort Ticonderoga, he and his men dragged the garrison’s ponderous cannons through dense snow and icy gusts all the way to Cambridge. Now, Washington turned his attention in earnest to Dorchester Heights.

The American commander’s counterpart, Howe, also had his sights set on Dorchester Neck and the Heights. As “The History of Dorchester” notes, “For a long time, the English officers had their attention fixed on what they denominated, on their plan, the twin hills, with the intention of fortifying them; but while they were awaiting reinforcements enough to hazard it, the good judgment of General Washington prompted him to secure the hills, and he improved the opportunity.”

In early March, Washington and his staff rode out to Dorchester, and reined in at the farm of Captain John Homans, who lived in “the upper end of town.” Because the “ground [was] so much frozen that earth could not be used, even had there been time for it,” for any potential forts, embrasures, and gun emplacements on the Heights, the patriot commanders were combing the region for “fascines,” bundles of wood used to erect defenses. Homans’s acreage was full of white birch. Washington ordered a lieutenant and thirty men to cut down the birches and make the fascines. Then he sent out dispatches summoning “the citizens of this and the neighboring towns…to cart them [the fascines] on the night of the 4th, to the Heights.”

The Heights was inhabited by “nine dwelling houses on the Neck, now South Boston.” Proof of the importance that the British attached to the Heights was Howe’s map that detailed each home’s location, as well as “the road and principal trees.” The war was literally about to arrive at the front doors of those nine Dorchester households, those of “Mrs. Foster, Mr. Bird, Mr. Deluce, Mr. Williams, Mr. Farrington, Mr. Harrington, John Wiswall, Deacon Blake, and Oliver Wiswall.” Since Mrs. Foster’s home “was one of the best in the neighborhood…it was difficult to convince the continentallers [sic] that it did not belong to a Tory, as some of the rooms were even papered, which was considered very luxurious in those days. This house was the most westerly, and Dea. Blake’s the most easterly, of any on the peninsula, and these were both burnt by the British, who now had possession of Boston.”

On the night of March 4, as American cannons opened up on British positions to divert Howe’s attention from the Heights, teams of some 300 wagons and carts piled high with fascines creaked toward the slopes. So, too, did approximately 2,000 of Washington’s troops, cannons in tow, the entire procession snaking forward with as much silence as possible. Washington, anticipating that once his men climbed onto the Heights, the British would mount a bombardment and assault, had ordered the men moving through Dorchester to pack 2,000 bandages “prepared to dress the wounded.”

Many residents of Dorchester hauled timber toward the Heights on that icy, blustery night, chief among them “Mr. Boies.” Another, “The History of Dorchester” records, was “the late Mr. William Sumner, of Dorchester, so well remembered by many of those now living [in the 1850s], drove one team. He carried five loads before daylight, and remembered it with great satisfaction to his last day.”

The troops went right to work on the hills’ summits, erecting gun emplacements and bastions with a deadly view of Boston and the water below. Once the patriots had secured the position, they dug in mortars and large-bore cannons.

Howe, stunned to wake up on March 5 and find the patriots on the high ground of the Heights, reportedly wrote, “The rebels have done more in one night than my whole army would have done in a month…on Dorchester peninsula…a work which the king’s troops had most fearfully dreaded.”

Outmaneuvered by Washington and his “ragtag band” of Patriots, Howe had no choice but to abandon Boston. His nearly 10,000 redcoats boarded the 125 transports and warships in Boston Harbor, with Washington’s guarantee that the British could leave unmolested if they did not burn Boston. When the victorious rebels entered the city on March 17, 1776, the town had not been torched, but the redcoats had vandalized churches, homes, warehouses, and other structures.

The day of Boston’s liberation would become Evacuation Day – a date that would never have been possible unless the patriots had taken and fortified Dorchester Heights. That would have made for dramatic viewing.