Henry Knox

by Mark Puls

  Knox sensed that a conflict was coming. He quietly advised the rest of the grenadiers to leave town while they could. Almost all of his company left. Colonists began to slip out of Boston smuggling gunpowder, munitions, and military supplies. Knox tried to gain information about activities outside of Boston and became part of a network of spies. He heard that inhabitants were building up military stocks in cities around the region such as Quarry Hill, between Cambridge and Medford, and at Charlestown, in preparation for the advent of war. The same information came to the attention of Gage, and Tories became alarmed that many of their radical neighbors had closed their homes and disappeared. Boston lay on a round peninsula that at the time was nearly an island, connected to the mainland only by a 120-yard-wide isthmus called Boston Neck. British troops fortified the neck, mounted twenty-eight cannons along its length, and monitored traffic in and out of the city.

  Knox's anxiety grew. Although he still entertained military ambitions, if he left Boston, he would surely be tracked down and arrested by royal authorities on charges of treason. He also had his business to consider; he desperately did not want to fail like his father. He was deeply in debt to London booksellers and had to weigh the needs of his young wife and eighteen-year-old brother. If he joined the ranks of the militia, he would be abandoning his wife, his brother, and his business, just as his father had once forsaken his family.

  On the first day of September, Gage commanded 260 soldiers to march from Boston to Cambridge before sunrise, and to seize the powder from the town's community gunpowder magazine, and confiscate two cannons. When news of this order spread, thousands of militiamen raced to Cambridge to protest the taking of the items. No shots were fired as the British troops quietly removed the military supplies and commandeered the two field pieces. Wild rumors spread throughout the colonies. According to one report, six colonists had been killed in a desperate battle with British soldiers. According to a report that reached the Continental Congress in Philadelphia a week later on September 8, Boston had been cannonaded through the night and the town lay in ashes and heaps.

  In October, a meeting of town leaders throughout Massachusetts approved a provincial congress to operate outside of royal authority, collect taxes, and raise militia companies. This was the first nonroyally authorized state government in the colonies.

  Knox was uncertain what he should do. His business was suffering badly from the boycott and the economic strain under the British Coercive Acts or intolerable acts, which were passed as punitive measures in the wake of the Boston Tea Party and included the closing of the town's harbor. In November 1774, he wrote his book distributor in London, Thomas Longman, that he would abide by the boycott and that he was unable to meet his payments for shipments already received. "I had the fairest prospect of entirely balancing our account this fall; but the almost total stagnation of trade, in consequence of the Boston Port Bill, has been the sole means of preventing it, and now the non-consumption agreement will stop that small circulation of business left by the Boston Port. It must be the wish of every good man that these unhappy differences between Great Britain and the Colonies be speedily and finally adjusted. The influence that the unlucky and unhappy mood of politics of the times has upon trade is my only excuse for writing concerning them.“25

  He asked Longman to lobby for colonial interests, which were closely aligned with the book distributor's own. "I cannot but hope every person who is concerned in American trade will most strenuously exert themselves, in their respective stations, for what so nearly concerns themselves."

  The inhabitants around Boston suffered under severe economic hardships. They survived on a steady stream of donations from surrounding colonies of wheat, corn, flour, and other foodstock along with money. Provisions were smuggled in at night on small boats that crossed the Charles River and the back bay of Boston Harbor. Henry may have been broke, but he was not starving. Married life agreed with him, and his waist began to expand. He was still strong and energetic, but his physique became less athletic and more pear-shaped, and his weight began to rise to about 260 pounds, despite the boycott.

  On the first day of February 1775, a Wednesday, a second Massachusetts provincial congress, which considered itself the legitimate constitutional government of the colony, convened in Cambridge and drew up plans to begin full preparations for war and build defenses to thwart British aggression. Dr. Joseph Warren, a prominent Boston physician and fiery patriot, was named to head the Committee of Safety. On Thursday, February 23, Warren was directed to ascertain the number of grenadiers from Paddock's old artillery company who could be "depended on to form an artillery company when the Constitutional Army of the Province should take the field, and that report be made without loss of time.“26

  Knox wondered if he should list himself among those who could be counted on. He considered abandoning his business and leaving it in the hands of his brother. He seemed to clutch at the hope that the boycott could work to prevent a war, as it had before. Knox also had to consider that British soldiers were no longer careful not to insult the colonists. The homes of patriots who had left Boston were looted and vandalized. Soldiers broke into the houses of noted radicals, shattered windows and destroyed furniture. Knox knew that his own business would be targeted. But his hope for peace diminished daily. News arrived that on Thursday, February 27, British forces landed at Salem and captured a colonial arsenal. No shots were fired.

  The last advertisement for Knox's London Bookstore appeared in the Boston Gazette on Monday, March 20, 1775, touting copies of a pamphlet sent along by Rivington and written by a young student at King's College in New York named Alexander Hamilton. The ad said: "Just published and to be sold by Henry Knox in Cornhill, price 1 s. 6 d. The Farmer refuted: Or a more impartial and comprehensive view of the dispute between Great Britain and the Colonies, intended as a further vindication of Congress."

  Knox had refused to carry Tory pamphlets, but he promoted Hamilton's piece, which proclaimed "[t]hat all Americans are entitled to freedom is incontestable on every rational principle.“27

  On the evening of Tuesday, April 18, Knox and others around Boston noticed that many of the British troops were not at their usual posts. Dr. Warren walked through the streets trying to find out if they were preparing to march. He sent for Knox's friend Paul Revere to carry a warning to radical leaders outside of the city. Warren suspected that soldiers were being sent to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were staying at the home of the Reverend Jonas Clark in Lexington, a town about twelve miles north of Boston. Perhaps their mission was to destroy the storehouse of munitions in Concord, eighteen miles to the north. Word spread that the army was collecting boats along the back bay of Boston Harbor. Knox and others watched closely to divine British intentions. By 11 P.M., 700 soldiers had marched to the west side of town, where they began to climb into boats to cross the harbor. Within a couple hours, the troops formed ranks and began the march from Cambridge. Church bells rang, guns were fired, and flares shot into the night sky as patriots tried to rouse the inhabitants along the road to Lexington.

  Early that Wednesday morning, Knox watched the Forty-seventh and Thirty-eighth regiments of about 1,200 Welsh soldiers, carrying light muskets and carting two cannons, leave Boston to support the mission, marching to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" to mock the colonists. Then news arrived that shots had been fired at Lexington between British soldiers under Major Pitcairn and the patriot militiamen. Seven colonial soldiers were killed and nine others wounded.

  Knox's heart sank. The war so long anticipated had begun. He could no longer stay out of the conflict. He would have to abandon his business and sacrifice everything he had built and all that he owned. Lucy wanted to accompany him if he left the city. William agreed to stay and watch the bookstore, to try to prevent looters and vandals from destroying the shop.

  By Thursday morning, British troops, many wounded, straggled back into Boston. A significant battle had erupted the previous evening in Lexingt
on and Concord as the troops destroyed munitions, spiking two field pieces and throwing 500 pounds of cannonballs and 60 barrels of flour into the river. Samuel Adams and John Hancock had escaped capture. Almost 500 militia-men rushed to Concord's defense and fired at the British soldiers from every direction. After two hours, the king's troops were forced to retreat. On the way back to Boston, they were ambushed by a group of 150 colonists from the line of trees flanking the road. The British suffered nearly 300 casualties. The American loss was 90 men, including 8 killed.

  Shortly after the battles of Lexington and Concord, Henry and Lucy dressed in disguises and prepared to sneak out of the city. With his size, however, there was little that Henry could do to hide his identity. Lucy sewed his sword into her coat. The couple said good-bye to William and, under the cover of darkness, slipped out of their house and headed for the waterfront, carefully avoiding the posted guards. If detected, they would be arrested and would spend the war in a British prison. They could even be hanged under charges of treason.

  They reached the water safely, and Henry helped Lucy climb into a small boat. They pushed slowly from shore, under agonizing tension so as not to make a sound.

  As Lucy watched Boston disappear in the night air, she could not help but wonder if she would ever see her family again, her sisters Hannah and Sally and her brother Thomas. She had forsaken everything for Henry and was about to accompany him to the war. Knox wondered how long his business could last. He knew that it almost certainly would be a casualty of the conflict. Everything he had achieved, rising as a fatherless kid from the tough streets of Boston to become a respectable owner of a popular business, was gone. As he rowed the boat across the river, the couple soon became enveloped in darkness, unable to see Boston behind them or the future in front of them.

  TWO

  TICONDEROGA

  Henry planned to visit the camp of colonial militiamen surrounding Boston and find a secure place for Lucy to live. She pleaded with Henry to allow her to accompany him, but he was concerned about her safety amid the thousands of rowdy young militia soldiers and backwoods-men who filled the army's ranks. He accompanied her to nearby Worcester, where she was taken in by friends. Knox then walked to the Cambridge encampment, which was being called the "camp of liberty.“1 In the aftermath of Lexington and Concord, the Massachusetts Committee of Safety put out a call for other provincial militias to aid in the siege of Boston. The force quickly grew to 13,600 men. New Hampshire sent 1,200, and Connecticut provided 6,000. Rhode Island planned to send another 1,500.

  Knox quickly saw that the "camp of liberty" was a chaotic collection of hunters, farmers, unemployed seamen, and tyros. Many had little if any military training and lacked discipline or order. He found his way to the headquarters of Artemas Ward, who had been named commander in chief of the hodgepodge of militias. The forty-eight-year-old Ward had made his mark as a lieutenant colonel of the Massachusetts militia during the French-Indian War and had been appointed brigadier general in charge of the province's militia in 1775. Ill during the battles of Lexington and Concord, he had risen to take command of the siege of Boston and was frantically trying to organize the army before the British marched out and attacked. Ward was ecstatic to see Knox. Among the thousands of troops under his command, almost no one had any skill as a military engineer. Henry declined a specific commission and instead suggested that he might be more useful in helping design fortifications throughout the army. Ward agreed.

  As Knox surveyed the camp around Boston, he realized that the patriot army had erected few obstacles to bar the British from taking the offensive. His first concern was building a line of defenses at Roxbury, a small town along the road leading from Boston Neck, the only land route out of the town. Knox drafted plans for a redoubt on a hill overlooking Roxbury and put men to work digging entrenchments and building fortifications that could help repel a British attempt to leave Boston or prevent enemy troops from circling around and flanking rebel musket men.

  Knox walked throughout the camp and noticed men coming and going as they pleased. When he tried to assess the number of men fit for battle, he found that company commanders could only guess at the figures of troops they could depend on. There was no system to channel food and no allowance for hygiene. The camp stunk from the lack of sanitation. Many men had no rifles, and others had only fowling pieces that discharged buckshot. Fights broke out from rivalries within the mosaic of militias.

  News arrived in camp that an expedition headed by Ethan Allen, a militia leader from Vermont, and Benedict Arnold, a Connecticut militia captain, had on May 10 captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York and its rich supply of munitions, which included 78 serviceable cannons, 6 mortars, 3 howitzers, and 30,000 musket flints. Knox thought that the patriots surrounding Gage's 6,500 men in Boston were sorely in need of those supplies. But Ticonderoga was almost 300 miles away, and the ground in between was rugged, hilly forest.

  Dr. Warren and the Committee of Safety also were concerned about the lack of training and skill in the American force and on May 16 recommended that Knox "be applied to for supplying the Colony Army with military books.“2 Henry could do nothing to acquire books while Boston was occupied and could only recommend books from the library at Harvard College. When he could, he visited Lucy, who had moved into the crowded home of John Cook in Watertown, where the Boston Gazette publishers Benjamin Edes and John Gill also were staying. After the works at Fort Roxbury were complete, Knox helped train gunners. The American artillery received a boost when 12 cannons, 18-pound and 24-pound pieces, arrived with a company from Providence and four more large guns came with another Rhode Island unit.

  Many of the soldiers were frustrated by inactivity. Patriot leaders had ordered Ward to attack only if the British fired first. On June 12, Gage posted an order declaring that all rebels who did not lay down their arms and swear an oath of allegiance to the crown would be deemed traitors. When it was learned that the British planned to take Bunker Hill, the strategic height overlooking Boston, the American commanders decided to seize the position first. Knox was sent to reconnoiter the sloping hill and the adjacent Breed Hill, which lay about 1,500 yards north of Boston across the Charles River on the Charlestown peninsula. As darkness fell on the evening of Friday, June 16, 1,200 militiamen marched to Breed's Hill to build a line of fortifications. The next day, the British crossed the harbor in 28 barges with about 3,000 men.

  The battle opened when the British cannons on Boston Neck rained fire on the Knox-designed works at Roxbury. Knox responded with cannon fire and demonstrated his marksmanship with the heavy guns. Cannonballs came crashing around his men. It became quickly evident that the colonists were no match for the British firepower.

  Knox was awed by the precision of the British gunners aboard the battleships, as the 68-gun Somerset, the 20-gun Lively, the 36-gun Cerberus, the 34-gun Glasglow, and other war vessels opened thundering fire on the Breed Hill redoubt. The redcoats mounted cannons on Copp's Hill, about a mile opposite of the American entrenchments, and sent accurate shots pounding the position. The patriot line atop the hill stubbornly held, however. Gage lost patience and ordered his gunners to level Charlestown. The English artillery from sea and land sent whistling shots against the buildings, which exploded into flying splinters. British soldiers lit the wooden structures on fire, and the town soon was aflame. The carnage was devastating.

  Knox watched as the sea of red-clad troops formed a battle line and began the march up the green slope of Breed Hill. After the British neared the crest, a loud volley from colonial guns shredded their ranks and sent the British in retreat, stumbling among the tall grass and fallen bodies. The king's men made a second assault but were again repulsed by the muskets of colonials. On the verge of abandoning the battle, the British received news that the colonists were out of gunpowder. Gage saw his opportunity and ordered a bayonet charge. The Americans were not equipped with bayonets. The redcoats regained their composure to make one final attempt to take t
he hill. They raced to the top, stepping over their fallen comrades. The armies clashed in brutal hand-to-hand fighting, the British lunging their bayonets to spear the patriots. The Americans scattered in retreat, and the royal army gave up chase after a few hundred yards, too exhausted to pursue.

  In what became known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British lost 1,150 men to 441 casualties for the Americans. Among the dead were many of Knox's friends, including Dr. Joseph Warren, who had received a commission as a general just four days earlier.

  The defeat looked catastrophic for American hopes. Warren had been the most able of the American commanders, and the aging Ward was not up to the task of organizing the army. Optimism was renewed within a few weeks, however. General George Washington, whom the Continental Congress had named to replace Ward as commander in chief, arrived in the Cambridge camp on Monday, July 3, after a twelve-day journey from Philadelphia, accompanied by several New York militia companies and a troop of Philadelphia cavalry. Two days later, on Wednesday, July 5, as Knox walked on an errand to Cambridge, he met Washington and General Charles Lee, who asked him to accompany them to the Roxbury works. As they came upon the line of entrenchments and crescent-shaped batteries, Washington and Lee marveled at Knox's design and breathed a sigh of relief that someone in the disordered Continental Army knew how to build fortifications. Knox reported to Lucy in a letter the next morning: "When they viewed the works, they expressed the greatest pleasure and surprise at their situation and apparent utility, to say nothing of the plan, which did not escape their praise.“3