Henry Knox
In 1775, when the Revolutionary War began, Alexander Hamilton commented, “There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” As the war with the British got underway, American farmers, blacksmiths, butchers, shopkeepers, and others with diverse backgrounds were called upon to become soldiers against the mightiest army in the world. One of those who chose this path was a twenty-five-year-old Boston bookseller named Henry Knox.
Knox was the quintessential American Patriot. His formal education stopped by age nine, but he remained devoted to gaining knowledge through reading. At age 18, Knox joined a British military artillery company, learning to fire brass three-pound cannons. He eventually opened the London Book-Store in Boston, devoted to selling Bibles, law books, almanacs, and many of the great literary works of the time. This store was frequented by British military officers and those considered part of Boston’s high society. His goal, he said, was to “exterminate ignorance and darkness.”
After the Revolutionary War began on April 19, 1775, at the Battles of Lexington and Concord, British soldiers retreated to Boston. Shortly thereafter, Henry Knox and his wife Lucy heard the call to join the fight for independence. They abandoned their bookstore and joined a company of the newly formed Continental Army to fight the British.
On June 17, 1775, the Battle of Bunker Hill took place on the heights outside Boston. Although a British victory, the American militia under the command of William Prescott inflicted substantial causalities on their British attackers.
After the Battle of Bunker Hill, American militia continued to come to Boston from all over New England and surround the British soldiers within the city from the heights above – the “Siege of Boston” as it came to be called. A stalemate developed between the two sides, as the British could not retake the city until reinforcements arrived from England, while the Americans remained short of supplies and organization to drive the British out of Boston. As long as the British controlled the city’s harbor, they could resupply themselves. Something had to change this situation.
George Knox met General George Washington shortly after Washington was appointed Commander in Chief of the newly created Continental Army on June 15, 1775. Most of the soldiers in the Continental Army had little to no military experience, so Knox’s knowledge of military strategy learned through his vast reading of the topic stood out to Washington and others of high rank within the newly formed army.
Immediately, Knox showed his strategic and daring nature by proposing that the situation in Boston be broken by deploying heavy artillery to the battlefield. The only problem was that the Americans did not have any heavy artillery. They lacked most items needed for an army, including gunpowder, arms, and shelter.
Knox’s solution was to travel over three hundred miles to the western shore of Lake Champlain to retrieve cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, captured from the British by a Vermont militia group led by Ethan Allen, and with the help of Benedict Arnold, on May 10, 1775. The fort contained French-made heavy cannons and mortars. The issue was how to move cannons, some weighing up to 5,000 pounds, over mountains, across rivers, and up and down difficult terrain to Boston, given the limited constraints of eighteenth-century technology. Some in the Continental Army considered the idea foolhardy, but George Washington sent Henry Knox to Ticonderoga anyway.
As winter approached and the two armies stood dormant to wait out the colder conditions, Knox left for Ticonderoga on November 16, 1775. His first order of business was to obtain what he needed to move massive cannons across difficult terrain. He secured soldiers, other manpower, animals – mostly oxen – 500 fathoms (about half a mile worth) of three-inch rope, and forty-two “exceeding strong” sleds for the job.
Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge, Massachusetts, is over 300 miles.
The trip from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston had several phases that needed to be navigated. First, the cannons needed to be lowered from the fort to boats on Lake George. The boats needed to travel forty miles down the lake and then the cannons loaded onto waiting sleds for the trip overland that included crossing frozen rivers and hills. The plan needed an adequate amount of snow or the sleds would not work.
The trip faced difficulties right from the start. Knox selected fifty-eight mortars and cannons, three of which weighed a ton and one 5,000-pounder nicknamed “Old Sow.” In total, Knox and his men were moving about 120,000 pounds worth of cannons and artillery. After getting the cannons loaded onto boats, the trip down Lake George lasted eight days. Knox reported that only the first hour did not bring the “utmost difficulty,” as the rest of the time was spent sailing against a strong headwind in wintery conditions.
When Knox and his cannons reached the end of the lake and the cargo was loaded onto the waiting sleds, he faced another problem. There was not enough snow. So Knox waited. On Christmas Day, 1775, a blizzard came through the area. As he did throughout the trip, Knox rode in front of the cannons to scout the terrain. He nearly froze to death as the storm grew worse, and he was forced to walk in three feet of snow on foot for about two miles.
On New Year’s Day, 1776, the weather warmed again and Knox had to wait for more snow before continuing his journey. He eventually got moving, traveling through Saratoga and Albany, New York.
All the men, animals, and cannons on the “noble train of artillery,” as Knox called his cargo, faced crossing the frozen Hudson River several times. Knox poked holes in the ice, believing it would be stronger once refrozen. Because the men, oxen, and sleds carrying the cannons were attached by rope, Knox supplied his men with axes in case the cannons broke through the ice. Without an axe, the men and oxen risked being pulled down under the ice by the weight of the cannons.
The last one hundred miles of the trip were some of the most challenging because the hills and terrain made moving the cannons difficult. Ropes needed to be tied to trees so the sleds with their valuable freight would not be lost down steep slopes. In his diary, Knox stated he “climbed mountains from which we might almost have seen all the kingdoms of the earth.”
Word began to spread about Knox’s endeavor, and onlookers became more common as Knox got closer to Boston. In Springfield, Massachusetts, Knox changed his oxen for horses, believing they would be faster. On January 24, 1776, Knox reached the Continental Army headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just outside Boston. He and his party had traveled over 700 miles in total, and the trip from Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge took them 40 days to complete.
On one of the trips across the frozen Hudson River, an eighteen-pound cannon broke through the ice and fell to the bottom, but the men retrieved it using the still-attached ropes. Some, but not all accounts, report he lost one of his eighteen-pound cannons at the frozen Mohawk River. Every other cannon was eventually deployed around Boston. It is not disputed that the 120,000 pounds worth of cannons he delivered to George Washington dramatically shifted the situation in Boston and changed the course of the Revolutionary War.
On March 4, 1776, as the weather warmed, the cannons were placed on the high ground at Dorchester Heights, overlooking Boston Harbor. British General William Howe, upon learning what the Americans had done, exclaimed, “these fellows have done more work in one night than I could make my army do in three months.”
Because the American cannons were outside the range of British ships, Howe ordered the British evacuation of Boston. 120 ships carrying 9,000 British soldiers, as well as 1,200 British Loyalists, departed the city on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1776. George Erving proclaimed to his fellow Loyalists, “Gentlemen, not one of you will ever see that place again.” Boston, the city where the Revolutionary War began, was never retaken by the British.
Henry Knox was made a colonel, and eventually a general, in the Continental Army and put in charge of the 600 gunners of the artillery regiment. He was one of George Washington’s most trusted officers throughout the war, leading Washington to say of Knox that there was “no one whom I have loved more sincerely.”
Knox, and others who lived in the Revolutionary era, embraced the “enthusiasm in liberty” that Alexander Hamilton spoke of. This enthusiasm for liberty is a vital part of our American heritage.