Henry Knox (25 page)

Knox became concerned when the British began reinforcing their garrisons in Rhode Island, and the American troops began leaving the state by August 30. He feared that Boston would become vulnerable to capture. He wrote to his brother, warning William to protect what little property they had left. But Henry also wondered if the British had tired of the war in America. "I believe [the enemy] are about to quit the continent, and perhaps only wait for their last orders to effect it." He thought that British confidence had been shaken at Monmouth. Lord Clinton's troops were deserting by the hundreds, cutting his strength by nearly a third. The Hessians were refusing to fight. Henry confided that he had lost much of his former admiration for the opposing commanders: "It is improper for a person in my station to speak thus, were it to be divulged; but I do not believe there ever was a set of men so perfectly disqualified by a total and profound ignorance of every thing that ought to constitute the characters of leaders of an army to conquest. I beg you not to imagine that by depreciation of their abilities I mean to exalt our own. God forbid! I shall say nothing about it but only this, that we never set ourselves up as great military men.“
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But the British had little reason to evacuate America after Admiral d'Estaing decided to set sail for the West Indies, a move that ended any hopes of a major American offensive for the rest of the year. And perhaps, as Knox may have imagined, the British generals did not want to leave America as failures. The Continental Army, however, could do little to physically force the British out of New York City and back to England without a fleet to blockade the sea and hold off English warships and supply vessels. Washington had another problem that, unless solved, promised another winter of starvation, nakedness, and want for the troops. American credit was sinking and the currency of the fledgling country was nearly worthless, having plummeted 90 percent in value in recent months. To clothe his men, Washington had to plead for blankets, stockings, and shoes from the warehouses at Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut. Although he suspected that the British might abandon America, he knew that they could simply hold on and wait for the country's finances to collapse under heavy debt and high inflation. To Congressman Gouverneur Morris of New York, he wrote in early October that the question was not "simply whether G. Britain can carry on the War, but whose Finances (theirs or ours) is most likely to fail." Officers suffered along with the enlisted men because the equipment for their positions was becoming prohibitively expensive. Washington reported to Morris in exasperation: "A rat, in the shape of a horse, is not to be bought at this time for less than £200; a saddle under thirty or forty; boots twenty, and shoes and other articles in like proportion. How is it possible therefore for officers to stand this, without an increase of pay? And how is it possible to advance their pay when flour is selling (at different places) from five to fifteen pounds pr. ct., Hay from ten to thirty pounds pr. ton, and beef and other essentials, in this proportion.“
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In the temporary stalemate, the British barricaded themselves in New York while the patriot army stationed troops in a forty-mile semicircle around the enemy. Knox moved with Washington in late November 1778 to Pluckemin, New Jersey. Lucy was again pregnant and spent the winter in Boston.

While the troops prepared winter quarters, Congress asked Knox and Greene to return to Philadelphia to help reorganize the ordnance department, which funneled supplies and weapons to men in the field. Washington also returned to the capital to meet with Congress over the war effort. The government was still learning as it went along and groping for ways to build a more efficient army to match the British. As Washington observed in a letter to one of his generals, "We are young in the business in which we are engaged.“
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Knox, who was just twenty-eight years old, oversaw the Continental ordnance. He laid out a detailed plan to organize America's war arsenal, streamline operations, and invigorate the flow of critical weapons and supplies. Around January 28, 1779, he paid a visit to delegate James Duane of New York, a member of the committee conferring with Washington, and unveiled his recommendations while offering guidance. Knox's knowledge left Duane feeling "not sufficiently master of the subject to decide,“
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and he referred Knox's plan to the committee and Washington.

While in Philadelphia, Knox saw Benedict Arnold, who introduced him to the woman he planned to wed. Two years earlier Arnold had appealed for Lucy's help during fruitless efforts to court another young woman. Arnold's fiancée was the beautiful Margaret Shippen, daughter of a former chief justice of Pennsylvania, who attracted a bevy of suitors for her charm and vivacity as well as a keen gift for eliciting protective instincts in men, especially men in uniform. Although she was from one of the most prominent families in Philadelphia, she was socially ambitious. During the British occupation, she was a favorite among British officers, including Major John Andre. Arnold courted her with full ardor. Knox was impressed with Peggy and seemed willing to forgive her former attentions to British officers. To his brother William, he wrote: "The girls are the same everywhere—at least some of them: they love a red coat dearly. Arnold is going to be married to a beautiful and accomplished young lady—a Miss Shippen, of one of the best families in this place.“
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Shortly thereafter, Benedict Arnold was charged by the state of Pennsylvania with war profiteering and with snubbing civilian officials by overstep-ping his authority and granting unwarranted passports while in command of Philadelphia. Knox refused to believe the accusations and held a steadfast belief in Arnold's character. The earlier criticisms against Knox, Washington, and several of the military brain trust had made Henry skeptical of attacks against Continental generals. To William, he wrote: "You will see in the papers some highly colored charges against General Arnold by the State of Pennsylvania. I shall be exceedingly mistaken if one of them can be proven. He has returned to Philadelphia, and will, I hope, be able to vindicate himself from the aspersions of enemies."

Knox left Philadelphia with Washington on Tuesday, February 2, as the members of Congress were preparing to host a lavish public celebration to commemorate the first anniversary of the French alliance. Knox returned to his artillery corps, which had set up winter quarters in Pluckemin. Huts had
been constructed on the high ground of a hill in what one correspondent called "a very pretty manner as you approach," and said of the camp: "Its regularity, its appearance, and the ground on which it stands, throws over it a look of enchantment, although it is no more than the work of a few weeks.“
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Mobile field guns, howitzers, mortars, and cannons formed the front wall of the square-shaped park, which was marked off by smartly arranged barracks, military laboratories, and a military school. Ever since Knox had entered the army, he had tried to impress Congress and American leaders of the need for a military academy similar to those in Europe to train the Continental officer corps the principles of fighting a war. At Pluckemin, Knox ordered such a school to be built. It was the first military academy in America and a direct forerunner of what would later be the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, which would open in 1802. This military school was simply known as the academy. Knox took great care in the design and look of the building, as if, from its very conception and creation, to instill it with an aura of tradition. It stood several feet higher than any other building in camp and was adorned with a small cupola. The fifty-foot-by-thirty-foot lecture hall could hold several hundred students. At the end of the hall was an elevated enclosure, from which Knox and other speakers lectured.

For the most part, Knox was the school's sole professor. He wrote up a curriculum and demonstrated every kind of weapon in the American arsenal and the methods used in the laboratories for preparing munitions. He explained battle tactics and logistics, military principles, the considerations a commander had to make before engaging the enemy, the common errors and traps that officers fell into on the battlefield. Knox firmly believed that battles were won and lost in the planning and felt that the officers of Continental Army needed to be as knowledgeable as their counterparts in the British army and their comrades from France.

On February 18, Congress resolved to put the country's ordnance under the official control of Knox and granted him an additional $75 a month to be used expressly for his duties. He would be in charge of telling Congress the needs of the army and dispersing weapons and munitions throughout the continent. Congress was sensitive to the democratic ideal of civilian control of the country's stockpile of weapons. Arms and munitions could be removed from the permanent magazines only by express orders from the Board of War: a civilian, democratically elected body. But the delegates, acknowledging that the contingencies of war often demanded a quick response, gave Knox and Washington the exclusive power to pull weapons from the arsenals as needed.
In the reworked regulations for the ordnance department, Congress followed several of Knox's recommendations, including plans to improve the preservation of ammunition and arms. A colonel from his artillery corps would be assigned to regularly inspect weapons throughout the army, check procedures, and survey the arsenals. During lulls of activity in the war front, artillery officers would be sent to the military laboratories to learn more about munitions manufacturing and gain knowledge that might be helpful in the field. Knox also was ordered to make regular reports to Congress, to assess and project the army's needs.
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The scope of the responsibilities for which Congress placed their faith in Knox is remarkable for a young man not yet thirty years of age and who had been a professional soldier less than four years. He was responsible for the army's entire artillery corps, and had to maintain a full grasp of all the of battlefronts of the war to supply every regiment with arms.

By early 1779, Knox realized that the tiresome war would drag on for some time to come. The British shifted their focus to the southern states, invading Georgia and South Carolina. Knox's close friend, General Benjamin Lincoln, faced the enemy along the Savannah River near Augusta, Georgia. His men suffered a devastating defeat at Briar Creek on March 3, with many of the troops fleeing to the river and some drowning. The British were left in complete control of Georgia, and the Continental Army was helpless to send reinforcements as the English pushed farther toward Charleston, South Carolina.

As the spring weather brought rising temperatures, Knox expected the British to launch an offensive within weeks. Congress had let an opportunity to draft soldiers slip away, Knox believed, by resolving on March 15 to allow individual states to recruit artillery or cavalry regiments to fill their quotas but stopped short of giving the states the power to conscript men. As a result, the most educated and talented men either were pursuing business opportunities created by the war or were serving in posts to defend their states. Knox, like Washington, thought in national terms rather than provincial ones and was more concerned about the country's needs than state rivalries.

Knox's personal finances, however, took a brighter turn when the long-overdue reimbursement for his Ticonderoga mission three years earlier was finally paid on April 6, 1779. He received $2,500, out of which he had to pay himself, his brother, and a servant. He had earned $3 a day for their grueling efforts to preserve the American cause.

The American army stood better trained than ever. Grueling military drills by Baron von Steuben had transformed the enlisted ranks of soldiers, who could now perform complex, orchestrated battlefield maneuvers with discipline. And Knox's military academy had improved the Continental officers' understanding of tactics, strategy, and logistics. But the army was still too undermanned and short on provisions to launch an attack against the British fortifications in New York.

Both Henry and William Knox were concerned that the interruption of business during the war would leave them penniless. William sailed to Europe that spring with plans to visit France and the Netherlands in order to make business connections to import goods to Boston.

Henry's days were filled with a bewildering variety of responsibilities gearing up for the summer military campaign. He was filling requests for armament and munitions throughout the army, running an artillery corps consisting of forty-nine companies and 1,607 men. He also served on time-consuming court-martial boards, including the case against Benedict Arnold for accusations stemming from his command in Philadelphia. Citizens claimed Arnold ignored the civilian government and used his position to financially benefit himself. Arnold initially demanded a speedy trial but then delayed the hearings as he secretly withdrew his allegiance to the United States. Using the name of Gustavus, he sent a coded letter on Sunday, May 23, 1779, to Lord Clinton with detailed information about Washington's force and expressed his willingness to turn against the Continental army.

With Arnold's information in hand, Clinton sent 6,000 soldiers up the Hudson River aboard 70 sailing vessels and 150 flat-bottomed boats on May
30. Two days later, the redcoats captured Stony Point and Verplanck's Point and threatened the camp of the main American army at West Point.

Throughout the spring and early summer Lucy struggled with her second pregnancy, and gave birth to a daughter on July 2, 1779, in Pluckemin, New Jersey. The infant, whom Henry and Lucy named Julia, was not healthy, and died in infancy, leaving Lucy distraught and despondent. Henry was troubled that Lucy and his family struggled without him, and the realization of the enormous sacrifices that his family was making for the sake of the war became painfully apparent. Lucy decided that it was better if she returned to Boston, where she would be surrounded by friends. Henry wrote to her a few weeks later, alluding to his frustrations over his public duties and the war and expressing his deep desire to devote himself solely to his family: "I long with the utmost devotion for the arrival of that period when my Lucy and I shall be no more separated; when we shall sit down, free from the hurry, bustle and impertinence of the world, in some sequestered vale where the education of our children and the preparation on our part for a pure and more happy region, shall employ the principal part of our time in acts of love to men and worship to our Maker.“
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