Henry Knox (2 page)

If Henry had ever wished to be rid of the drudgery of school, it was unlikely that he wanted to trade it for a job in a bookstore. Yet he harbored an ambition to distinguish himself and did not neglect his studies. During idle moments in the shop, he read, submerging himself in
Plutarch's Lives
of ancient Greek and Roman leaders. He enjoyed the romantic adventure of ancient battles and characters from antiquity. His knowledge of Latin from the grammar school enabled him to teach himself to read French and gain passable fluency in speaking. He read classic histories and philosophy.

Henry possessed a genial, gregarious personality, and he enjoyed dealing with customers: clergymen, merchants, seamen, mothers, and daughters. He especially enjoyed talking to veterans of the militia, who stirred his imagination with stories of battling French soldiers and Indians in the ongoing war for control of the Ohio River Valley, which had exploded into a world war between Britain and France. With rapt attention, he listened to tales of the unsuccessful expedition led by Massachusetts governor William Shirley to capture Fort Niagara in 1755 and the victorious siege of Louisburg three years later to protect the gateway of the St. Lawrence River. Henry must have imagined himself as a soldier, transformed from his obloquy to the heroic status of the men who showed their scars from these illustrious battles to the awe and hushed reverence of onlookers. Confined to a bookstore, he longed for adventure.

Whatever hope he harbored for his father to return and restore the family was dashed when he was twelve years old. Word reached Boston that William Knox had died in the West Indies at the age of fifty. The cause of death is unknown. Feelings of abandonment must have haunted Henry. Any child would have wondered if his father had thought about him and longed to see his son. Why had he not returned? Did his father realize that his son was supporting the family? Henry's memory of his early childhood, the comfortable home on Sea Street or playing at his father's construction yard, must have seemed as illusory as a dream.

Henry sought friends among the tough juvenile street gangs that fought for dominance of Boston's winding streets. He was taller than most boys his age, and he developed a muscular, athletic build. He enjoyed fighting, which provided him the chance to vent his conflicting emotions and the anger he felt over being abandoned by his father and put to work by his mother. Henry became part of a gang from the south side of Boston near the docks, boys whose
fathers were shipyard workers and seamen and tavern owners. Their rivals came from the north end, on the other side of the Common, boys from families of merchants and mechanics and dockworkers. In tests of toughness, the gangs fought each other in bloody fistfights. Henry became the champion of his neighborhood and frequently took on the leaders from the rival gang. For at least three years, he was known as the best fighter in the area.

The opposing gangs engaged in a ritual parade on November 5, or "Pope's Night," which invariably led to a battle for dominance. Each gang marched from its neighborhood carrying effigies of the pope and the devil. When the columns met near Union Street, a fight erupted to capture each effigy and chase their defeated foes through the streets. During one of these processions, the south side's effigy was erected on a cart, which lost a wheel during the procession. Knox bent over, nudged his shoulder under the axle, and bore the weight of the cart as the march proceeded. Everyone began to talk about his unusual strength.

Yet inside the bookstore, the rough and aggressive Henry was transformed. He impressed customers with his pleasing personality, intelligence, and his politeness. Radical Whig leader Samuel Adams thought Knox was "a young gentleman of a very good reputation.“
³
John Adams, a young lawyer from Braintree who had recently opened a practice in Boston, thought Knox a "youth who had attracted my notice by his pleasing manners and inquisitive turn of mind." Some of young Knox's questions concerned the political controversies swirling around Boston over British tax measures, which began to cost the bookshop revenues and customers and greatly concerned his employers. In 1767, Parliament passed the Townshend Revenue Act, which placed a duty on tea, glass, red and white lead, paper, and paint in an attempt to raise £20,000 to pay the salaries of royal governors and crown officials as well as for British troops in America. In opposition to the measure, Samuel Adams spear-headed a Continental boycott of British goods. The bookshop canceled orders from London and saw a sharp drop in business.

Shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Knox took time off from his clerking duties to watch the local militia parade through town to celebrate the birthday of King George III. Governor Francis Bernard's troop of guards, whose ranks came from the sons of the leading families in Boston, led the vanguard of the procession, which included the town's regiment followed by a train of artillery under the command of Lieutenant Adino Paddock, a Boston chair-maker with a shop along Boston Common. Paddock had a reputation as an efficient, disciplined drillmaster. The soldiers mustered in King Street,
where the riflemen fired three rounds. The artillery regiment responded with a booming shot from each of their new field pieces. The three-pound brass cannons, the pride of the town, had arrived in February aboard the ship
Abigail
. The Massachusetts general assembly had sent two aging cannons to London to make a cast for these new guns, which bore the insignia of the province.

Henry, impressed with the artillery company, which Paddock put through the choreographed movements of a mock battlefield engagement, decided to join its ranks. The company, proudly known as The Train, had formed in 1763 under the direction of Captain David Mason. Paddock, an ardent Tory with loyalty to the British, took over command in 1768. Unlike the governor's guards, the members of the artillery unit were not among Boston's leading families, but were mostly sons of south-end shopkeepers, shipyard workers, and blacksmiths, silversmiths, and cobblers. Although they were amateur soldiers, they had gained great proficiency thanks to instruction from a group of British gunners two years earlier. In the late autumn of 1766, a regiment of British artillery arrived in Boston on its way to Quebec. As it was too late in the season to proceed up the St. Lawrence River, the soldiers quartered in the militia barracks on Castle William Island, a fort in Boston Harbor, where they remained until the following May. Over the winter, the professional soldiers took the time to instruct and drill members of The Train in the intricacies of firing cannon with precision.

Henry took his place among the ranks drilling under Paddock, learning how to load and fire a cannon and how to maintain it. He quickly realized that learning to be a competent soldier encompassed more than just valor, honor, and duty; there was an underlying, dispassionate science to military art. To build entrenchments and fortifications, he needed to learn engineering and geometry, as well as the calculus involved in gauging distant targets and firing guns with accuracy. He pored over the bookshop's volumes on military science, such as
Sharpe's Military Guide
, and borrowed books from the Harvard library. He had already spent years preparing himself for life as a soldier by studying French under the then-widespread belief that war with France would erupt again someday, and he had also familiarized himself with biographies of famous generals and by reading Julius Caesar's
Commentaries
. Knox longed to distinguish himself by earning military laurels. But unlike most militia at the time, he saw the need to apply in-depth study to the craft and take an analytical approach to battlefield tactics. He learned how to design fortifications that would protect musket men while allowing them a clear view of the field and providing vantage points to unleash enfilading fire in all directions.
He learned the best ways to transport cannons weighing several tons, how to survey a position to find its topographical strengths and weaknesses, and where to place the most effective entrenchments. Within months, Knox became a skilled engineer and military tactician.

The political controversies between England and the colonists also provided Henry with opportunities to learn the craft of being a soldier. In August 1768, two ships sailed out of Boston Harbor bound for Nova Scotia. The governor of the province, Francis Bernard, let it be known that their mission was to transport troops of Irish regiments to Boston to occupy the town and quell agitation and resistance over Parliament's tax measures. On September 28, the ships sailed back into the harbor. On the first day of October, two regiments landed. Knox could watch the soldiers disembark and march in an impressive military parade along the length of Long Wharf, which led into town, with beating drums and glistening bayonets. Each man carried a cartridge box of sixteen balls, the allotment usually packed when entering enemy territory. The British battleship
Hussar
provided protective cover from the landing with seamen ready to open fire on any resistance from the townspeople, who could do nothing but watch in apprehensive silence.

The regiments took up quarters in unoccupied houses and public buildings in town. Knox watched the soldiers drill on Boston Common and Brattle Square to the sounds of an ear-piercing fife and the pounding of drums. The townspeople were incensed by the sight of the armed men. In the evenings, the Sons of Liberty, a secret Whig society that undermined British tax measures, played soothing and patriotic melodies on violins and flutes to calm residents.

Boston became an armed camp, and spectacles such as the public flogging of military deserters became frequent at the Common. The British commanders ordered that a cannon be placed directly in front of the Massachusetts Provincial House, which had been converted into a barracks. Knox watched the professional artillerists practice their maneuvers and carefully studied their movements. Like many in town, he seethed at this threat to his freedom.

As he entered adulthood, Knox was uncertain what his future held. He made tentative plans to open his own bookstore, but he placed this dream on hold until the boycott of English goods ended. Foremost on his mind was the support of his aging mother and younger brother, who by then was entering his teen years. Knox remained in the employment of Nicholas Bowes and supported the boycott, which caused deep tension and financial hardship in Boston. Henry was friends with several of the Sons of Liberty, including
Benjamin Edes and Jonathan Gill, publishers of the
Boston Gazette
, and Paul Revere, the silversmith and sometime dentist.

On a cold winter Monday, March 5, 1770, Knox crossed the Charles River to visit friends in Charlestown. Returning home that evening, he walked through Cornhill along Boston's crooked and icy streets and was only a short distance from home at around 9
P.M.
A fresh coat of snow had fallen, and the night was clear. Boston was without street lanterns; the only light came from a half-crescent moon and the glow from windows. Rumors had circulated for the past two days that residents should avoid walking the streets because soldiers had vowed to avenge a beating of several of their comrades by the workers at Gray's Rope manufacturing factory the previous Friday. Knox ignored such warnings. More than six feet in height and an able fighter, he had little to fear.

Only minutes before Knox was to pass by the customhouse and town hall, a British officer crossed King Street. A boy who served as a barber's assistant yelled at the redcoat, "There goes that mean fellow who had not paid my master for dressing his hair!“
⁴

A sentry by the name of Hugh White, who had been involved in the fight at the rope plant, was stationed in front of the customhouse. He walked up to the boy who had insulted the officer and said, "Show me your face.“
⁵

"I am not ashamed to show my face to any man," the boy said defiantly.

The sentry struck him in the head with the butt of his musket, and the boy fell to the ground stunned before staggering off, yelling that he thought he would die from the blow.

A witness rang a fire alarm for the townspeople to run to the rescue. Knox, hearing the clanging bells, began to pick up his pace. A group of soldiers also rushed up Exchange Street. Seeing that there was no fire, the soldiers began to clear the streets, before gathering at their station near the town house. Officers ordered the men to their barracks at the main guard not far from the customhouse.

The injured boy returned with friends to taunt White and throw snowballs and ice. "There is the soldier who knocked me down!" he yelled, pointing to the sentry. The soldier felt threatened and outnumbered. As objects were hurled at him, he quickly loaded and primed his musket.

"The lobster is going to fire!" yelled one boy.

By then Knox had arrived at the scene and recognized a potential disaster. He ordered the boys to stop harassing White. A Tory who stood nearby thought that Knox did "everything in his power to prevent mischief on this
occasion.“
⁶
Knox then turned to the sentry, warning, "If you fire, you must die for it." Under British law, any soldier who fired on residents without orders from the civil authorities was subject to capital punishment.

"I don't care!" White yelled to Knox. "If they touch me, I'll fire."

The boys continued to threaten and taunt the soldier. "Fire!" shouted one.

"Stand off!" the sentry ordered, and he retreated to the door of custom-house. Pounding on the door, he shouted: "Turn out, main guard!“
⁷

A servant rushed from the customhouse up to the main guard and screamed to the soldiers, "They are killing the sentinel!"

The captain of the day, Thomas Preston, ordered a dozen men out. As Preston made his way toward the customhouse, townspeople lining the streets yelled insults and profanities. The soldiers fell out with bayonets fixed, knocking townspeople out of the way to get to the scene.

The sentinel was surrounded by at least ten townspeople as the soldiers arrived in front of the customhouse, and in minutes another fifty followed them up King Street. The servicemen pushed their way through the crowd, using bayonets and the butts of their muskets to clear a wedge, before lining shoulder to shoulder in a semicircle to protect the sentry. Knox raced to Preston and pulled on his coat to get his attention, pleading with him not to ignite the situation.