Henry Knox was only 25 years old when he convinced George Washington to trust him with retrieving nearly 60 tons of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga and getting it to Boston before the winter was out.
A Boston bookseller turned self-taught artilleryman, Knox had already shown in the siege lines that he possessed the combination of drive and technical skill Washington’s fledgling army badly needed. So on November 16, 1775, Washington assigned him to gather the artillery at Ticonderoga. The following day, Knox left Washington’s camp and set out to make the necessary arrangements.
Ticonderoga, readers will remember, had been taken in May 1775, when Ethan Allen—alongside Benedict Arnold—seized the fort at dawn. That coup placed dozens of British cannon in American hands, and there they sat for months. Meanwhile, the Continental Army outside Boston had almost no heavy artillery of its own. Without those guns, Washington could not break the stalemate or force the British to abandon the city.
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Knox reached Ticonderoga on December 5, 1775, and immediately set to work, selecting and preparing 59 cannon, mortars, and howitzers. Within a few days, he began the long trek using a mix of oxen and horses pulling 42 reinforced sleds across frozen lakes, river ice, and the rough spine of New England.
Writing to Washington from Lake George on December 17, Knox admitted the scale of the challenge:
It is not easy to conceive the difficulties we have had in getting them over the lake owing to the advanced Season of the Year & contrary winds—three days ago it was very uncertain whether we could have gotten them over untill next Spring, but now please God they shall go—I have made forty two exceeding strong sleds & have provided eighty yoke of Oxen to drag them as far as Springfield where I shall get fresh Cattle to carry them to Camp.
Teams dragged guns up snowbound ridges, ferried them across brittle ice that sometimes gave way beneath them, and hauled several cannon back to the surface after they plunged through.
After more than 50 days of winter travel, Knox brought every gun into the American lines outside Boston on January 25, 1776. Washington now had the firepower he needed. And Knox was still only 25.
Knox’s march did more than deliver cannon. It showed the kind of quiet competence that wins wars and builds nations. Armies fight battles, but men like Knox make battles winnable. He gave Washington the means to free Boston. Today, we need the means to chase drug smugglers in fast boats.
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Yet we still praise the charge more than the supply line. That may be why we let our industrial backbone weaken. The factories that could once be turned into producers of tanks, ships, and fighters now stand empty. Machines scrapped. Skills lost. Reviving them would be a siege in reverse—unglamorous, grinding, and twice as brutal as hauling guns through a blizzard.
But the republic will need that backbone again. And it will need Knox’s spirit: the refusal to say a thing can’t be done, the will to take on hard, technical work because the country depends on it.
We need more Henry Knoxes.
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Art by Beck & Stone
