As part of our celebration of America at 250, we’ve started a weekly newsletter by historian Jonathan Horn. Learn what happened this week in American history, why it matters, and what else you should see and read in The Free Press and beyond. This week Jonathan looks at how Henry Knox earned his job as artillery commander and the gratitude of all patriots. To get this newsletter in your inbox every week, sign up here.
—The Editors
Opportunity Knox
In our era of credentialism, 25-year-old Henry Knox would never have made it to the interview stage for the position of artillery commander in the Continental Army. A look at his résumé would have shown he had dropped out of school, joined a street gang, gotten wrapped up as a witness in a prominent trial for soldiers accused of firing into a crowd (the Boston Massacre), worked as a bookseller, gone parading in a militia uniform, and wed the daughter of a high-ranking British official. If all that wasn’t enough to kill his chances, there was also this: He had ballooned to more than 250 pounds and accidentally shot off two of his own fingers.
Fortunately for America, General George Washington filled the opening based on talent rather than HR dictates or Pentagon mandates against “fat” commanders. On January 18, 1776—250 years ago this week—the trust in Knox paid off when he arrived at the Continental Army’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in advance of what he called a “noble train of artillery” carrying what many had thought immovable: the guns of Fort Ticonderoga.
