Henry Knox Brings the Noise

As part of my Fourth of July celebration this year, I decided to actually learn something about the history of the American revolution. It started off with getting together with a couple friends to watch episode two of the HBO John Adams series, which spans the time of the revolution. There’s a little bit in it where Abigail Adams meets Henry Knox hauling cannons from Fort Ticonderoga, and we were like, Wait, what’s that all about? So I looked up the story behind it, and it turns out to be an epic tale of unlikely bad-assery.

Henry Knox was a bookseller in Boston before the revolution, a big, pudgy, friendly guy. This was back in the day, which meant that he actually read a lot and would discuss books with his customers. In fact, his bookstore was more prosperous as a social spot than a commercial venture. As things started getting tense, he started reading up on military tactics and engineering. At the outbreak of hostilities, he signed up with the colonial army, and in short order impressed George Washington with his potential. In the fall of 1775, as the British here holed up in Boston, under seige, he hatched this mad plan.

Fort Ticonderoga, up in northern New York state, had been captured by the colonials, but then abandoned with all its artillery. Knox’s thought was, “Hey, we could use those. Why don’t I go get them?” I.e. Why don’t don’t I go round up some ox carts and drag a bunch of 2000-pound chunks of metal clear across the breadth of New England in the dead of winter?

Actually, the “dead of winter” part was the key to the plan. Snow is slippery, and frozen ground would keep them from getting bogged down in the mud which covers New England for much of the rest of the year. That much of it is actually logical. The crazy bit is that they have to do this with 1775-era technology, which means muscle power and hand-made clothing. No down parkas, gore-tex boots, chemical hand-warmers, etc. Think about the last time you and your friends tried to move a large piece of furniture. Now try to imagine that outdoors in the snow with something the size of three kegs stacked end-to-end which weighs as much as an SUV. It’s frozen iron and probably slippery. Right, that’s one of them. There are nearly 60 of them altogether, totalling about 120,000 pounds. You’ve got 300 miles to go. Oh, and did I mention the mountains?

It took Knox and his guys a couple months, but they pulled it off. They show up outside Boston with all this gear sometime late January, and it takes everyone a while to figure out exactly what to do with them. Dorchester Heights is a couple of hills just across the the water from Boston, about a mile and a half from the British lines. With the elevation, that’s easy canon range. The trick is getting them there. Nobody has taken Dorchester heights since the beginning of the war because the British can’t hold it, but they’re enough of a threat to keep the colonials from building anything useful there.

This deadlock is finally broken when the entire colonial army pulls an all-nighter and stealthily builds an artillery emplacement on top of the hills. This involves a massive coordination of men, equipment, and oxen. There’s a line of hay bales all along the road to hide their movement. Bits of the emplacement are pre-fabricated. They distract the British with an artillery barrage from the other end of town, and by morning have 20+ guns up there. The whole thing has the air of a truly epic college prank.

In the morning, the British have a jaw-dropping “WTF?!” moment before opening up on it with their own guns. They only manage to prove that the elevation puts Dorchester completely out of their range. They start gearing up for a counter-attack, but a truly hellacious sleet storm derails that, and by the following morning they accepted the writing on the wall. They start start packing. Within two weeks, they’re gone.

Calling that Knox’s victory is certainly a stretch, but he set it in motion and made it possible. I don’t even remember his name from junior high American history. It’s sad that stories like this get lost in the fire-hose of testable factioids. It encapsulates a lot of both the myth and fact of the American revolution. This is back when officers in the British military were all landed gentry. This guy ran a bookstore. The fact that he got to pitch this mad scheme to General George Washington, leader of the entire colonial army, and was given the resources for it says a lot about how truly egalitarian and meritocratic the American power structure was. The fact that he pulled it off, and it marked a turning point in the war, shows the power of those values. This is the kind of thing that our mythology, our day-to-day beliefs about who we are and what we’re capable of, is built on. Stories like Knox’s tell us that given the chance, any of us could be that guy.