Authors: Mark Puls
Flucker returned to Gage seething with resentment over the actions of men he deemed rebels to both the king and Parliament. He could not help
but feel wounded by the thought that in three days, his beloved daughter Lucy would marry a known rebel sympathizer.
On Monday, June 20, at the height of the swirling controversy, as colonists continued to sign on to the boycott, as British soldiers daily marched through Boston streets and militia companies throughout the region prepared for war, Henry Knox and Lucy Flucker exchanged wedding vows. About a month later, he would be twenty-four years old, and she would turn eighteen, their birthdays just eight days apart.
A friend composed lines of verse for the ceremony in praise of Lucy's decision to risk a promising future for the considerations of her heart:
Blest tho' she is with ev'ry human grace,
The mein engaging, and bewitching face,
Yet still an higher beauty is her care,
Virtue, the charm that most adorns the fair
.
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The marriage sparked deep disappointment in Lucy's family and friends. By ignoring their pleas, by standing by Henry as his prospects declined and as he stood in opposition to the most powerful empire in the world, she showed a strong independent streak rare in her social circle.
Their wedded life began in the midst of financial crisis. Henry had to balance his political feelings with concerns for his business. The memory of his father's failed business and the turmoil it caused their family was still fresh in his mind. He tried to maintain cordial commercial relations with both loyalists and Tories. When James Rivington, the New York bookseller and publisher of
Rivington's Royal Gazette
in New York, sent him five chests of dutied tea on Thursday, July 28, Henry declined the commission. He wrote Rivington: "I forgot my politics—or rather, I have none to communicate at present. Things seem to be pretty much at a stand, since I wrote you."
He reported that the troops in Boston seemed disciplined and for the most part tried to avoid triggering confrontations with inhabitants, who also wanted to avoid another incident like the Boston Massacre. But he noted that militias were growing in ranks and the boycott had spread throughout the New England colonies, even though it had been prohibited by General Gage. Knox could not help but let his politics show in writing Rivington: "The new acts for regulating this government will, I perfectly believe, make great difficulties. The people are in no disposition to receive an act pregnant with so great evils. What mode of opposition will be adopted, I do not know; but it is
the general opinion that it will be opposed; hence the key to the formidable force collecting here.“
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To further his own military education, Knox often watched the British soldiers drill. He noticed another keen observer of the troops, a thirty-two-year-old Rhode Island Quaker by the name of Nathanael Greene, who was destined to be the closest male friend of his life. Despite the pacifism of Greene's religious upbringing, he harbored an almost overwhelming ambition for military glory. He looked like anything but a soldier, walking with a pronounced limp that was believed to be the result of an accident when, as a boy, he fell from a roof while sneaking to a dance. Quakers are forbidden to dance, and this would not be the last time Greene defied the restrictions of his denomination.
Greene grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, where he worked in his father's ironworks. He had an early interest in military life. In 1770, he moved to Coventry, Rhode Island, a sixty-mile horseback ride from Boston, to take over a foundry, and soon was elected to the colonial legislature. Three years later, he again defied religious sanctions by attending a military parade and as a consequence was turned out of the Quaker meeting. Undeterred, he organized a stylish militia called the Kentish Guards. Yet Green was denied a commission because of his game knee.
Sharing similar military aspirations as well as political sentiments, Knox and Greene became quick friends and spent hours discussing military strategy and tactics at Henry's bookshop or at Nathanael's Boston lodging, the Bunch of Grapes, which had become a favorite hangout of Whig leaders. Henry suggested several books on military science to him and was not impressed with Greene's knowledge, thinking him "the rawest, most untutored being I ever met with.“
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Gage knew of Knox's reputation as a skilled military engineer and grenadier, and he gave orders prohibiting him from leaving Boston. Aware that he was under surveillance, Knox became cautious about what he said and who was listening. Paul Revere's commitment to the colonial cause had not yet come to the attention of authorities. When he visited Knox's bookstore and loyalists or British soldiers were browsing the shelves, Revere pretended to quarrel with Knox over work that had been commissioned by Henry for engraving or silverwork. They had fun with the ruse and shouted insults at each other. Their apparent animosity fueled gossip, and it was widely held that they detested and distrusted each other. British spies approached Revere, seeking information about the rebel bookseller.
Knox sensed that a conflict was coming. He quietly advised the rest of the grenadiers to leave town while they could. Almost all of his company left. Colonists began to slip out of Boston smuggling gunpowder, munitions, and military supplies. Knox tried to gain information about activities outside of Boston and became part of a network of spies. He heard that inhabitants were building up military stocks in cities around the region such as Quarry Hill, between Cambridge and Medford, and at Charlestown, in preparation for the advent of war. The same information came to the attention of Gage, and Tories became alarmed that many of their radical neighbors had closed their homes and disappeared. Boston lay on a round peninsula that at the time was nearly an island, connected to the mainland only by a 120-yard-wide isthmus called Boston Neck. British troops fortified the neck, mounted twenty-eight cannons along its length, and monitored traffic in and out of the city.
Knox's anxiety grew. Although he still entertained military ambitions, if he left Boston, he would surely be tracked down and arrested by royal authorities on charges of treason. He also had his business to consider; he desperately did not want to fail like his father. He was deeply in debt to London booksellers and had to weigh the needs of his young wife and eighteen-year-old brother. If he joined the ranks of the militia, he would be abandoning his wife, his brother, and his business, just as his father had once forsaken his family.
On the first day of September, Gage commanded 260 soldiers to march from Boston to Cambridge before sunrise, and to seize the powder from the town's community gunpowder magazine, and confiscate two cannons. When news of this order spread, thousands of militiamen raced to Cambridge to protest the taking of the items. No shots were fired as the British troops quietly removed the military supplies and commandeered the two field pieces. Wild rumors spread throughout the colonies. According to one report, six colonists had been killed in a desperate battle with British soldiers. According to a report that reached the Continental Congress in Philadelphia a week later on September 8, Boston had been cannonaded through the night and the town lay in ashes and heaps.
In October, a meeting of town leaders throughout Massachusetts approved a provincial congress to operate outside of royal authority, collect taxes, and raise militia companies. This was the first nonroyally authorized state government in the colonies.
Knox was uncertain what he should do. His business was suffering badly from the boycott and the economic strain under the British Coercive Acts or
intolerable acts, which were passed as punitive measures in the wake of the Boston Tea Party and included the closing of the town's harbor. In November 1774, he wrote his book distributor in London, Thomas Longman, that he would abide by the boycott and that he was unable to meet his payments for shipments already received. "I had the fairest prospect of entirely balancing our account this fall; but the almost total stagnation of trade, in consequence of the Boston Port Bill, has been the sole means of preventing it, and now the non-consumption agreement will stop that small circulation of business left by the Boston Port. It must be the wish of every good man that these unhappy differences between Great Britain and the Colonies be speedily and finally adjusted. The influence that the unlucky and unhappy mood of politics of the times has upon trade is my only excuse for writing concerning them.“
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He asked Longman to lobby for colonial interests, which were closely aligned with the book distributor's own. "I cannot but hope every person who is concerned in American trade will most strenuously exert themselves, in their respective stations, for what so nearly concerns themselves."
The inhabitants around Boston suffered under severe economic hardships. They survived on a steady stream of donations from surrounding colonies of wheat, corn, flour, and other foodstock along with money. Provisions were smuggled in at night on small boats that crossed the Charles River and the back bay of Boston Harbor. Henry may have been broke, but he was not starving. Married life agreed with him, and his waist began to expand. He was still strong and energetic, but his physique became less athletic and more pear-shaped, and his weight began to rise to about 260 pounds, despite the boycott.
On the first day of February 1775, a Wednesday, a second Massachusetts provincial congress, which considered itself the legitimate constitutional government of the colony, convened in Cambridge and drew up plans to begin full preparations for war and build defenses to thwart British aggression. Dr. Joseph Warren, a prominent Boston physician and fiery patriot, was named to head the Committee of Safety. On Thursday, February 23, Warren was directed to ascertain the number of grenadiers from Paddock's old artillery company who could be "depended on to form an artillery company when the Constitutional Army of the Province should take the field, and that report be made without loss of time.“
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Knox wondered if he should list himself among those who could be counted on. He considered abandoning his business and leaving it in the hands of his brother. He seemed to clutch at the hope that the boycott could
work to prevent a war, as it had before. Knox also had to consider that British soldiers were no longer careful not to insult the colonists. The homes of patriots who had left Boston were looted and vandalized. Soldiers broke into the houses of noted radicals, shattered windows and destroyed furniture. Knox knew that his own business would be targeted. But his hope for peace diminished daily. News arrived that on Thursday, February 27, British forces landed at Salem and captured a colonial arsenal. No shots were fired.
The last advertisement for Knox's London Bookstore appeared in the
Boston Gazette
on Monday, March 20, 1775, touting copies of a pamphlet sent along by Rivington and written by a young student at King's College in New York named Alexander Hamilton. The ad said: "Just published and to be sold by Henry Knox in Cornhill, price 1 s. 6 d.
The Farmer refuted: Or a more impartial and comprehensive view of the dispute between Great Britain and the Colonies, intended as a further vindication of Congress
."
Knox had refused to carry Tory pamphlets, but he promoted Hamilton's piece, which proclaimed "[t]hat all Americans are entitled to freedom is incontestable on every rational principle.“
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On the evening of Tuesday, April 18, Knox and others around Boston noticed that many of the British troops were not at their usual posts. Dr. Warren walked through the streets trying to find out if they were preparing to march. He sent for Knox's friend Paul Revere to carry a warning to radical leaders outside of the city. Warren suspected that soldiers were being sent to arrest Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were staying at the home of the Reverend Jonas Clark in Lexington, a town about twelve miles north of Boston. Perhaps their mission was to destroy the storehouse of munitions in Concord, eighteen miles to the north. Word spread that the army was collecting boats along the back bay of Boston Harbor. Knox and others watched closely to divine British intentions. By 11
P.M.
, 700 soldiers had marched to the west side of town, where they began to climb into boats to cross the harbor. Within a couple hours, the troops formed ranks and began the march from Cambridge. Church bells rang, guns were fired, and flares shot into the night sky as patriots tried to rouse the inhabitants along the road to Lexington.
Early that Wednesday morning, Knox watched the Forty-seventh and Thirty-eighth regiments of about 1,200 Welsh soldiers, carrying light muskets and carting two cannons, leave Boston to support the mission, marching to the tune of "Yankee Doodle" to mock the colonists. Then news arrived that shots had been fired at Lexington between British soldiers under Major Pitcairn
and the patriot militiamen. Seven colonial soldiers were killed and nine others wounded.
Knox's heart sank. The war so long anticipated had begun. He could no longer stay out of the conflict. He would have to abandon his business and sacrifice everything he had built and all that he owned. Lucy wanted to accompany him if he left the city. William agreed to stay and watch the bookstore, to try to prevent looters and vandals from destroying the shop.
By Thursday morning, British troops, many wounded, straggled back into Boston. A significant battle had erupted the previous evening in Lexington and Concord as the troops destroyed munitions, spiking two field pieces and throwing 500 pounds of cannonballs and 60 barrels of flour into the river. Samuel Adams and John Hancock had escaped capture. Almost 500 militia-men rushed to Concord's defense and fired at the British soldiers from every direction. After two hours, the king's troops were forced to retreat. On the way back to Boston, they were ambushed by a group of 150 colonists from the line of trees flanking the road. The British suffered nearly 300 casualties. The American loss was 90 men, including 8 killed.