This year, we’re marking America at 250 with a celebration of the ideas that define this country. That includes looking back at the moments that shaped them. In a new weekly newsletter, historian Jonathan Horn describes what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else we should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. Today, Jonathan reflects on Christmas of 1775, and the challenges George Washington and our other revolutionary heroes faced during that harsh winter at the very beginning of the war. To get this newsletter in your inbox, every week, sign up here. —The Editors
The First Christmas of the War
Colonel Henry Knox was hoping for a white Christmas but not a whiteout. Some snow would ease the way for the 120,000 pounds of cannons and other artillery that he had promised to transport from Fort Ticonderoga in northern New York to his fellow patriots besieging the British in Boston. It was December 25, 1775, and the 25-year-old Boston bookseller-turned-artillery officer was en route to round up sleds in Albany. But if the snow kept falling this hard, the trails through the woods would vanish from view. Knox would have no path to follow and, like everyone in the field that first Christmas of the Revolutionary War, no way of knowing what lay ahead.
