Henry Knox (36 page)

Two days later, he sent a letter to Benjamin Lincoln congratulating him on his handling of the Shays crisis and urging his friend to support the Philadelphia convention and a new constitution. "The convention will be at liberty to consider more diffusively the defects of the present system than Congress can, who are the executors of a certain system.“
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On February 21, Congress sanctioned the Philadelphia convention to be held beginning on May 14, and recommended that state legislatures choose delegates to attend for the purpose of revising or amending the Articles of Confederation and that the changes would be sent back to the states for approval. This was the plan that Knox had supported.

As the date for the convention approached, Washington felt mounting pressure to attend. Uncertain where his duty lay, he turned to Knox and a close circle of advisors. In a letter to Knox written Thursday, March 8, he asked: "Inform me confidentially what the public expectation is on this head, that is, whether I will, or ought to be there? You are much in the way of obtaining this knowledge, and I can depend upon your friendship, candor, and judgment in the communication of it, as far as it shall appear to you.“
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Knox realized that Washington would be compelled to sit as the convention's president and, therefore, the success or failure of the proceedings would be attributed to him. But Knox told Washington in a letter of Monday, March 19, that without his approbation, the convention would lack credibility in the eyes of the public. "Your attendance will be grateful, and your non-attendance chagrining; that your presence would confer on the assembly a national complexion, and that it would more than any other circumstance induce a compliance to the propositions of the convention.“
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By attending the convention and risking failure in Philadelphia, Washington was putting at stake the honor and fame that he had sacrificed so much to achieve during the war. Realizing this, Henry carefully crafted his appeal by prodding Washington with an almost irresistible temptation: "It would be circumstance highly honorable to your fame, in the judgment of the present and future ages, and doubly entitle you to the glorious epithet—Father of Your Country."

This is believed to be the first time that anyone of significance referred to George Washington as the "father of his country." It is likely that Knox was drawing parallels between Washington and other historical figures who had been given paternal homage, such as Cicero in 64 B.C. and Peter the Great in 1721.
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To Knox's satisfaction, Washington informed him in a letter dated Friday, April 27, that he would attend the convention. Knox was genuinely concerned for the fate of his country, but his own personal fortunes were also completely tied up in the success of the nation and its government. He was deeply in debt, in part because he and Lucy loved to entertain and were unable to curtail their spending. As one of the handful of individuals who held a national office, he needed the federal government to become effective for his own prosperity. The waning state of the confederation troubled him on a visceral level; an American collapse threatened all that he had worked for during the agonizing hardships of the war, the sacrifice he made in giving up his most energetic
youthful years to public duty as well as the promise of a future basking in the honors due a leader of a new nation.

Without a stable government, his army pension was in jeopardy. American dollars would remain nearly worthless unless a federal government could back the currency and stabilize the economy. Knox seemed to internalize the national troubles. In April he wrote to Winthrop Sargent, his former artillery captain and fellow Cincinnati member, that he felt like "the most wretched man on earth . . . the poverty of the public is so great that all national operation might soon cease.“
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Knox received regular updates from Constitutional Convention delegates working in the sequestered sessions of the secretive deliberations, including notes from George Washington, Elbridge Gerry, and Rufus King. On May 27, King notified Henry that Washington had been named president of the convention, as he had predicted.
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In July, he received a letter from an exasperated King: "I wish it was in my power to inform you that we had progressed a single step since you left us.“
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Henry and Lucy's life then took another downward spiral in August when their one-year-old daughter, Caroline, died from an infection. From Philadelphia, Washington wrote an August 19 letter of condolence: "[I] am sure, however severe the trial, each of you have fortitude enough to meet it. Nature, no doubt, must feel severely before calm resignation will over come it."

In the same letter, he confessed that the deliberations at the Constitutional Convention were proving tedious: "By slow, I wish I could add and sure, movements, the business of the Convention progresses; but to say when it will end, or what will be the result, is more than I can venture to do.“
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The slow process came to a successful conclusion by Monday, September 17, when delegates adjourned with a draft of a completely new Constitution.

Knox received the news with joy. The proposed system for a federal government was not dissimilar to the plan that he had outlined in his letter to Washington earlier in the year. Although he did not believe the new Constitution was perfect, he believed that it would create a more vigorous government and cement the union. Much of the language of the draft had been composed by Pennsylvania's Gouverneur Morris, whom he had written four years earlier with the strong suggestion that just such a convention be held.

Although Knox had not been a delegate to the constitutional convention, he had played a major role in rounding up support for the proceedings and
sounding the alarm against the weak national government. Even before the peace treaty that had ended the American Revolution was signed, he had pressed prominent civil leaders with the need for a more vigorous central government. And perhaps most of important of all, he helped convince George Washington to take the risky step of attending the convention and supporting the move toward a new Constitution.

In his private life, Knox believed that a remedy for his family's financial problems was near. He and Lucy cleared their claim on the Waldo patent, which provided them with thousands of acres of uncultivated land. His former army colleague Henry Jackson sent him news that this land contained many settlers, some of whom were willing to pay for their property and some who denied his right. Knox wrote a land agent who was about to embark to Europe with an offer that he was willing to sell well-timbered land, suitable for farming, on the St. George's River and Penobscot Bay at $2 an acre. He told the agent he could deliver perfect titles and to sell any amount, from a single acre up to 80,000 acres.

On Tuesday, November 27, Lucy gave birth to a boy, whom Knox described as a "fine black-haired, black-eyed boy." He named his son after George Washington, and notified the child's namesake in a letter: "As an evidence of our respect and affection for you, which we hope will survive ourselves, we have done him the honor of giving him your name.“
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Five states had ratified the Constitution—Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticut—by the time the ratifying convention in Knox's home state of Massachusetts opened on Wednesday, January 9, 1788. Massachusetts emerged as the critical swing state, upon which the success or failure of the constitution rested. The size and influence of the state would likely sway delegates in ratifying conventions in New York, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

Knox wrote a stream of letters to influential leaders lobbying support for the constitution. He explained that landowners, or "Federalists," wanted a strong government to ensure stability to protect their homes and businesses, but that many former Shays men sat at the convention as "anti-Federalists" and opposed any viable government. Knox was exasperated by those who favored state rights over federal sovereignty. To Washington, he wrote: "Mr. Samuel Adams has declared that he will oppose it to the very great disgust of
the people of Boston, his constituents. It is said Boston was about to take some spirited measures to prevent the effect of his opposition."

Knox overstated Samuel Adams's opposition, however. As the debate progressed, Adams became persuaded of the imperative need for greater federal power and finally threw his support behind the Constitution. After delegates scrutinized and argued over the document line by line, paragraph by paragraph, for nearly a month, Massachusetts became the sixth state to ratify the compact by a narrow margin of just 18 votes: 187 to 168. Church bells rang and cannons fired in celebration in Boston.

An overjoyed Knox wrote to Washington on Thursday, February 14: "It may with great truth be asserted that no subject was ever more candidly debated.“
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Knox continued to lobby support for the Constitution through his connections around the country, which provided him with greater knowledge of Federalist efforts than almost any other leader at the time. Even Washington was forced to ask Knox about the identity of the writers behind the
Federalist Papers:
"Pray, if it is not a secret, who is the author, or authors of Publius?“
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Knox replied that the essays were the work of his former aide, Alexander Hamilton, along with James Madison and John Jay. Knox's passions were caught up in the prospective fate of the proposed Constitution. Rhode Island invoked his ire when he received news that the state had rejected ratification in a referendum on Monday, March 24, by the wide margin of 2,945 to 237. To Lafayette, he wrote on Saturday, April 26: "As to Rhode Island, no little State of Greece ever exhibited greater turpitude than she does. Paper money and tender law engross her attention entirely: this is, in other words, plundering the orphan and widow by virtue of laws.“
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When New Hampshire ratified the Constitution on June 21, it was formally adopted as the government of the United States. Major Doughty at Fort Pitt wrote Knox with congratulations and credited the predominately Federalist-party Society of Cincinnati with the achieving its ratification. He pointed out that the former soldiers in the society were the group who "more generally advocates for good government than perhaps any other class of individuals.“
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Henry Knox had become one of the most prominent figures in national politics. His name consistently popped up as a possible candidate for the vice presidency of the United States.

Under the new Constitution, the candidate with the most electoral votes was elected president while the runner-up became vice president. Everyone agreed that Washington would be chosen as nation's first chief executive, but the field of vice presidential candidates was wide open. The most astute political observer in the city, Virginia congressman James Madison, thought the vice president should hail from New England to balance the Washington administration.

In gauging the prevailing political sentiment, Madison pared the possibilities down to John Adams, John Hancock, John Jay, or Knox. Writing to Thomas Jefferson on Wednesday, October 8, 1788, Madison said he preferred Jay or Knox but thought that neither would accept the job, since it was a largely impotent post. The following day, Alexander Hamilton sounded out Massachusetts congressman Theodore Sedgwick in a letter discussing the vice presidency: "What think you of Lincoln or Knox?" he asked.
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Sedgwick responded on Thursday, October 16, opining that: "Lincoln & Knox I love, their characters too, I respect. But it is now too late to push in this state the interest of either. The minds of all men here seem to be fixed either on Adams or Hancock.“
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Hamilton realized that Knox faced financial struggles and doubted whether he could afford to take the vice presidency, which lacked the financial perks and expense account that came with running and staffing the war office. Writing to Madison on Sunday, November 23, he observed: "As to Knox, I cannot persuade myself that he will incline to the appointment. He
must sacrifice emolument by it, which must be of necessity a primary object with him.“
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Knox, in fact, did not want to leave the war office, and wrote to Washington on Sunday, December 21: "Mr. John Adams will probably have the plurality of views for vice President.“
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Henry had cause to reflect on the path his life had taken after receiving a letter from a childhood friend, David McClure, who had risen to become a clergyman in Hartford, Connecticut. McClure reminded Knox of their adolescent games, of sliding down a ship's oar from atop a building owned by Henry's father. "Have you forgotten that diversion?" McClure asked. "I have often rejoiced with gratitude that the Supreme Disposer of all events has preserved you through the dangers you have encountered, and made you so great a blessing to your country, for whose happiness and glory your labors have been directed.“
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