Henry Knox (45 page)

The funeral of Henry Knox took place at Montpelier on October 28. His life was celebrated with full military honors. An artillery company led the procession, which included a company of cavalry and infantry. His coffin was
transported to a tomb at a spot Knox had chosen. The shaded piece of ground was under a large oak tree on the couple's estate. As the mourners gathered about the gravesite, a musketry volley was fired into the air and standards were lowered.

In Boston, the
Columbian Centinel
marked his passing by recalling his military service, praising his virtues, and expressing Knox's conviction that his financial prospects were improving: "To his merits as a military chief and public man were joined those qualities which conciliate affection and engage esteem in private intercourse, which made him the delight of his family and the promoter of social happiness in the circles in which he moved. The affairs of his fortune which for some years had been perplexed and difficult, had taken a course offering him pleasant anticipations."

Memorials were offered in praise of Knox's virtues, which seemed to leave a deeper impression on those who knew him than even his remarkable achievements. One of the men who knew Knox well and had witnessed him in battle was Dr. James Thacher, a military surgeon. In his recollection of Knox, he focused on personality traits.

Long will he be remembered as the ornament of every circle in which he moved, as the amiable and enlightened companion, the generous friend, the man of feeling and benevolence. His conversation was animated and cheerful, and he imparted an interest to every subject he touched. In his gayest moments, he never lost sight of dignity; he invited confidence, but repelled familiarity. His conceptions were lofty, and no man ever possessed the power of embodying his thoughts in more vigorous language: when ardently engaged, they were peculiarly bond and original, and you inevitably felt in his society that his intellect was not of the ordinary class; yet no man was more unassuming, none more delicately alive to the feelings of others.
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In Knox's will, which had been notarized on November 26, 1802, he expressed his religious convictions in the preamble, a common practice of the time. He proclaimed: "First, I think it proper to express my unshaken opinion in the immortality of my soul, or mind, and to dedicate and devote the same to the Supreme Head of the Universe; to that great and tremendous Jehovah who created the universal frame of nature, worlds, and systems of worlds in numbers infinite, and who has given intellectual existence to his rational beings of each globe, who are perpetually migrating and ascending in the scale of mind according to certain principles always founded on the great basis of
morality and virtue; to this sublime and awful Being do I resign my spirit, unlimited confidence in his mercy and protection.“
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At the time of his death, his home was valued at $100,000. This included the value of seven carriages and fifteen horses.

Knox had been driven since childhood to build a secure haven for his family. He wanted to be the stable rock that his father had never been for him. Yet his sudden death cut short his plans. His daughter Lucy would later point out that had her father "been permitted to attain the common age of man, the gradual rise in value of his property would have enabled him to realize all his anticipations.“
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Knox's wife, Lucy Knox, became reclusive after his death, content to allow people to remember her from happier days. She stayed at Montpelier in Maine. Her independent streak sustained her, but without the social graces of Henry, her friendships were limited to a few close intimates. She gained a reputation of possessing a violent temper. To satisfy creditors, she was forced to sell off much of the remaining estate and many of her valuable possessions.

She was unable to lean on her son, Henry Jackson Knox, whose erratic habits and struggles with alcohol left him unable to sustain a living. His marriage dissolved after a few years, and his wife went to live with her mother in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. Eventually Henry Jackson Knox became destitute. In 1809, Timothy Pickering reported to Ebenezer Stevens, a colonel in the artillery corps during the revolution, that the son of Henry Knox had the ignoble misfortune of being tossed into "Debtor Prison No. 2" in Boston. In a gesture that Pickering described as "pathetic," Henry J. made a personal appeal to him, asking if any money was due from his stint in the navy. This amounted to a mere $43.50. Harassed by creditors, he moved to Windsor, Vermont, in an effort to turn his life around.

Henry J. Knox then entered medical school at Dartmouth College, and graduated in 1811. Trying to combine his naval experience with his elementary knowledge of surgery, he applied for a job as a surgeon's mate aboard the privateer ship
America
in hopes of one day reentering the U.S. Navy as a doctor. His earnings aboard the ship were seized by creditors, and he again plunged into depression and addiction. Henry J. Knox then took up employment as a clerk for his mother. His wife was able to obtain a divorce in 1818.

The family living at Montpelier could not help but hear the echoes of merrier days. Caroline commented to a friend in 1822 in offering an invitation to the mansion: "The glory of Israel has departed, the days of show and profusion are all gone and we are a plain, retired country family.“
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Lucy Knox's health began to fail in the spring of 1824, and she became confined to bed in May. She suffered a great deal of pain and was rendered senseless for two weeks. Her agony became so unbearable that it took several people to hold her in bed. She reportedly imagined that she was once again young, dancing with Henry at a ball. She died at 3
A.M.
on June 20, 1824, three days short of what would have been the fiftieth anniversary of her marriage. She was sixty-seven years of age, and had left her estate to be split between her three children, Henry Jackson Knox, Lucy Thatcher, and Caroline.

Henry J. Knox underwent a religious transformation in the last years of his life after hearing an evangelist speak in Thomaston. His sister Lucy was amazed at his metamorphosis, and wrote to her son that "you will be much surprised to hear that your Uncle Knox has lately become a pious man—his conversion is one of the most wonderful things I have ever met with . . . at length he felt irresistibly impelled to the study of the scripture—in which he had been hitherto almost an unbeliever—the more he read, the more he became confirmed in the truth.“
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Henry Jackson died in Thomaston in 1832, so repentant of his life that he requested to be interred away from the family burial ground. In compliance with his wishes, he was laid to rest at a community cemetery in an unmarked grave.

Caroline married James Swan, who died within a few years from complications of alcoholism, and then married John Holmes, who became a United States Senator after Maine became a state in 1820. She lived at Montpelier until her death in 1851. Lucy Thatcher and her husband moved to Mercer, Maine, where he set up a law practice. Her family then moved to Bingham, Maine, where her husband died in 1842.

After Caroline's death, Lucy Knox Thatcher returned to Montpelier and lived there for three years before passing away. Her son, Henry Knox Thatcher, who later became a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, did not have the time or interest in maintaining Montpelier and instead rented it out. The mansion eventually fell into disrepair and was finally demolished in 1871. The servants' quarters became the Thomaston railroad station. Because the home and property changed hands over the years, the grave of Henry Knox was relocated several times.

The name of Henry Knox, which during his lifetime was as widely known as any of the founding fathers', faded from the public consciousness but was never forgotten due to the many memorials to him. A fort bearing his name was built in 1844 at Prospect, Maine, not far from Thomaston. This first Fort
Knox was located at the narrows of the Penobscot River, opposite Bucksport. Joseph Totten, an army engineer who designed the fortification, took advantage of the abundance of quality granite in the area, and Fort Knox became the first fort in the state not built of wood and earth. During the Civil War, about ninety Union soldiers were stationed there. It remains a tourist attraction to this day.

As the country expanded to the west in the nineteenth century, Henry Knox was memorialized in the naming of counties in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. The third largest city in Tennessee, Knoxville, bears his name.

Given his financial struggles, Henry Knox might have felt a tinge of satisfaction that the fort in Kentucky that bears his name has become synonymous with untold wealth. Since 1937, the U.S. Bullion Depository at Fort Knox has housed the bulk of the nation's gold reserves in its secure vault. Fort Knox is one of the largest installations in the U.S. Army, stretching more than 109,000 acres and housing 23,000 soldiers. A school to train officers for the Army Armor Corps is located there as well as the George Patton Museum of Armor and Cavalry.

In Thomaston, the memory of Henry Knox was vigilantly kept alive in the early twentieth century by the Henry Knox Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, who looked for a time when the general could again be prominently memorialized in their town. In the 1920s, they launched an ambitious plan to completely rebuild the Montpelier mansion. Charitable donations poured in and ground for an exact replica was broken on July 26, 1929. Despite the economic depression that soon plagued the country, Montpelier was rebuilt. Painstaking efforts were made to match all the details of the original home, including the wallpaper, drapes, and furniture.

It was a fulfillment of the dream that Henry Knox had worked most of his life to achieve. In one of the last letters to his wife, he had written: "I hope our reunion will shortly be established, to separate no more.“
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Henry Knox was a remarkably ubiquitous presence during America's founding generation. His life was replete with adventure, and an examination of his career provides a virtual tour of many of the most significant events of his time. Although Knox has been overlooked by historians for two centuries, even a cursory glance at his story reveals some of the most stunning achievements in American history.

In fact, it almost stretches credulity that one individual could play as many key roles in such a variety of historical events. As fate would have it, a nineteen-year-old Knox unwittingly walked directly into the unfolding Boston Massacre, a tragedy that he tried to prevent. Three years later, he was present among the patriotic men guarding the tea-laden ships in the days before the Boston Tea Party.

After the opening shots of the American Revolution were fired in 1775, Knox performed the heroic feat of dragging fifty-nine cannons from Ticonderoga more than 300 miles to the Cambridge shores opposite Boston. The guns gave the Continental Army and Knox's artillery the firepower needed to liberate Boston in 1776, thus enabling Washington to claim his first victory of the war. The achievement of supplying the guns and reopening Boston provided the colonies with the crucial military triumph needed to justify cries for independence in the heady spring days of 1776. It is doubtful that many of the colonies would have supported separation from Great Britain if the army had been unable to free Boston from occupation. The victory led patriots to believe that the British could be beaten in the field and that freedom was attainable.

If George Washington was the indispensable man of the Revolution, then Henry Knox was his indispensable man. As commander of the Continental
Army's artillery corps, Knox played a major role in every one of Washington's victories and received some of the war's most critical assignments. Knox directed the army's desperate evacuation of Brooklyn Heights over the East River for the safety of New York in the summer of 1776. He was charged with getting the patriot soldiers across the icy Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776, during the famous crossing, and his guns led the way at the successful charge at Trenton the next morning. He set up a military academy at his artillery headquarters in 1778 to train officers in strategy, tactics, logistics, and engineering. The school became a forerunner of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Every aspect of the nation's ordnance was placed under his authority. It was Knox's artillery corps that devastated the British at Yorktown in 1781, thus providing the victory that ended the war.

His achievements were no less conspicuous during peace. As secretary at war under the Articles of Confederation, he oversaw the federal response to Shays' Rebellion and was among the leading voices calling for a new constitution. Knox was among the small circle that swayed Washington into his decision to attend the Constitutional Convention, telling him that the country trusted his leadership. Knox even provided a plan for a bicameral national government and a draft of a constitution that was strikingly similar to the one adopted by the country in 1787 and ratified a year later.

Knox went on to serve in the nation's first administration as secretary of war alongside fellow cabinet members Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. As head of the War Department, he helped launch the U.S. Navy, built frontier fortifications and coastal defenses, negotiated treaties and set policy with the American Indians. He advocated the building of a military academy at West Point, a proposal that would not be acted upon until 1802. The military historian and Knox biographer Callahan North wrote in the 1940s and 1950s that Knox more than anyone deserves the title of founder of West Point.

Yet despite all of his lasting achievements, the name of Fort Knox is more widely recognized than the exceptional man the installation memorializes. It seems like a comment on the fleeting nature of fame that one man could accomplish so much and yet fade from the public mind.

Knox's name is even less recognizable than that of many of his contemporaries, including Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams, John Jay, Paul Revere, Patrick Henry, Molly Pitcher, Betsy Ross, John Marshall, and James Madison. The reasons appear to have less to do with the nature of his achievements than other complicated factors.