Not Your Father's Founders (15 page)

Boston, Massachusetts
July 25, 1750–October 25, 1806
Call in the “Big Guns”

Although he'd been a quiet bookseller in Boston for four years, when the Revolutionary War began Knox quickly became involved in the fighting. He did not have an army commission at the time, yet he directed the American artillery at the Battle of Bunker Hill and helped General Artemas Ward develop fortifications around Boston. Later, Knox was appointed a colonel in the army's artillery regiment.

After British troops and Massachusetts patriots exchanged fire at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the New England Army, as it was called, established a ring around Boston to contain the British army in the city. George Washington came to Boston to direct the siege, which lasted for eleven months. He recognized that more cannons could help turn the tide in the patriots' favor. In May 1775, rebels led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured numerous cannons and other weapons at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point in New York, but they were 300 miles away. Washington couldn't just call a trucking firm to transport the guns to Boston. Knox said he would do the job. He did, despite the numerous obstacles in his way.

Knox relied on winter weather to transport the equipment between Ticonderoga and Boston, using ox-drawn sleds to do the job.

Knox had to hire workers and buy or rent animals along the route. Occasionally, guns broke through the ice and had to be retrieved. The journey took six weeks, instead of the two he had anticipated, but his tenacity paid off.

On January 25, 1776, Henry Knox reported to Washington in Boston with forty-five cannons and sixteen mortars. He and Washington placed them adroitly on Dorchester Heights, above the British troops. British General William Howe realized that the artillery put Washington at a distinct advantage. The “rumpus” Washington expected did not materialize because Howe and his troops left Boston and sailed to Nova Scotia. Knox and Washington, destined to become close friends and military leaders, departed to fight other battles. Washington took his troops to New York. Knox helped set up defensive positions in Rhode Island and Connecticut before joining him there.

The Continental Army had a bad year in 1776. The British chased them from New York to New Jersey. Washington's raggedy army escaped the enemy by crossing the Delaware River on December 8, 1776. They had the foresight to seize all the boats along the river so the British could not follow them. The Americans did not stay on their side of the river for long, though. On Christmas night, they recrossed the river and captured 1,000 Hessian mercenaries fighting on the side of the British, along with their supplies. Knox directed the operation, which was a turning point in the war. It raised the troops' confidence and morale and bode badly for the British.

There were a few skirmishes after Christmas, during which Knox and his troops performed admirably. He earned a commendation from Washington for his exploits—but not a rest. In fact, he almost lost his position.

Silas Deane, the American minister to France, connived to have a French officer named Philippe Charles Tronson du Coudray (sometimes spelled Ducondray) replace Knox as Washington's chief artillery officer. He recruited du Coudray in France and sent him to General Washington with a recommendation that the Frenchman be appointed chief of artillery and the engineering corps. Du Coudray interviewed with Washington and then presented his credentials to Congress. Washington appealed to Congress and saved Knox's job. Congress compromised; on August 11, 1777, it appointed du Coudray to a position as an inspector general.

Washington's army crossed the Delaware River again and set up a winter camp at Morristown, New Jersey. Knox returned to Massachusetts to raise a battalion of troops and establish an arsenal at Springfield that proved valuable to the Americans for the rest of the war. Then his role changed. He became a fundraiser.

There was one thing Washington needed five years into war more than guns: money. He asked Knox to raise funds for him. Knox completed his mission successfully—and displayed his versatility once again.

In 1782 he was posted at West Point, where he remained until the British finally agreed to leave New York and the war ended. Knox then returned to Boston to continue his service to the United States.

Congress appointed Knox to a position as secretary of war in 1785. He continued in that position until 1794, when he resigned due to the time-honored excuse of family obligations. His claim was not too far-fetched: Knox and his wife Lucy had thirteen children, of which only one survived to adulthood. And he was building a new house in Thomaston, Maine, to which he wanted to retire. The house was actually a mansion, and it created tension between Knox and the residents of Thomaston.

Knox and his family moved to Thomaston, Maine, in 1796, where he returned to his business roots. He dabbled in ventures such as brickmaking, cattle raising, shipbuilding, lumbering, and local politics. He served for a short while in the state's General Court and Governor's Council. Tragically, his life was cut short.

While visiting a friend on October 22, 1806, he swallowed a chicken bone, which led to an infection and his subsequent death.

Knox left behind an estate that was in dire financial arrears, a pile of debts, and a bad reputation among the local citizenry, who considered him a tyrant. Local people accused him of exploiting workers to enrich himself and of flaunting his wealth. They even threatened at one point to burn him out of what they felt was an ostentatious mansion.

But that did not detract from the fact that Henry Knox was one of the Revolutionary War era's unsung heroes.

Westmoreland County, Virginia
December 20, 1740–December 12, 1792
Provocateur Extraordinaire

Arthur Lee, who was born and reared in Virginia, traveled to London (the date is unknown) to study law. While he was living in London, Congress authorized him to gather information on the feelings of European governments regarding the Americans' cause. Even then, government lived by poll results.

Although Lee had never set foot in Massachusetts, he represented the province in England. Consequently, Samuel Adams kept him apprised of events in Massachusetts.

Lee struck up a friendship with a French playwright named Pierre Augustin Caron, who wrote under the name of Beaumarchais. Caron was a secret agent for the French monarchy and arms supplier to the Americans during their rebellion. On June 12, 1775, Beaumarchais advised Lee in a letter that he was forming a company to “send help to your friend in the shape of powder and ammunition in exchange for tobacco.”

Lee was in no position to do anything about procuring goods on behalf of his “friend,” clearly the colonies, at the time. Besides, he was not a particularly skilled negotiator, as his record in soliciting foreign governments' aid proved.

Lee no sooner returned to the colonies in 1776 than he was asked to go back that same year to Europe, this time to France, as part of a diplomatic mission with Silas Deane and Ben Franklin.

Deane and Beaumarchais apparently worked out an arrangement regarding Beaumarchais's supplying materiel to the United States. Lee was under the impression, based on what Beaumarchais had told him in London, that the supplies were a gift. Deane was under the impression that they were part of a business deal that Congress was paying for with produce or money at some unspecified date. After the war, Beaumarchais insisted that the United States government owed him 3.6 million livres. (The franc did not become the official French currency until the French Revolution occurred.) The government held back on payment after reviewing the receipts the American commission had given the French government. Discrepancies revealed the French had already paid Beaumarchais one million livres for the materiel.

After several reviews of the accounts, Lee claimed that Beaumarchais owed the United States 1.8 million livres, since he had already been paid by the French government. The convoluted situation led Lee to claim that Deane and Franklin were cooking the books in France, and at least one of them, Deane, was making a few livres of his own.

Because Lee suspected Deane of skullduggery and he just did not like Franklin, he notified Congress that they were not helping the Americans much. Deane did not have too high an opinion of Lee, either.

Just for good measure, Lee observed in his November 27, 1777, journal that Deane favored an alliance with Britain. Franklin, he noted, thought just the opposite.

Lee decided that removing Deane from the commission was in America's best interest.

Congress recalled Deane based on allegations of misconduct that Lee filed with them. John Adams arrived to replace Deane. He discovered quickly that nothing would get done unless he did it.

Franklin could not be found most of the time, and Lee seldom arrived at the commission's office before 11
A.M.
Somehow, they wrapped up the treaties with the French and Lee moved on.

Congress dissolved the commission in France late in 1778 and sent Lee to Madrid, where he negotiated unsuccessfully for help from the Spanish.

Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the furor over the Deane affair and gossip about the hatred between Franklin and Lee tarnished Lee's reputation at home and abroad.

Eventually, Lee returned to the United States and a hostile reception from Congress, which had separated into quarreling factions as a result of the Deane debacle. Lee returned to Virginia in 1780, where he served in the Virginia General Assembly, in 1781–83, 1785, and 1786, and as a member of the Continental Congress in 1782–84. (The House of Burgesses was renamed the Virginia General Assembly in 1776.) He completed his government service from 1784–89, when he served as a Treasury board official.

Being on the wrong side of an issue did not bother Lee. He simply wanted to serve his government, opposing views notwithstanding.

Finally, Lee, disillusioned and embittered, went home to Virginia to live out his final years. He outlived Deane and Franklin, but he could not outlive the damage to his reputation that he incurred due to his personal differences with them. His heart had been in the right place, but it overruled his head. Arthur Lee was proof that good intentions did not always lead to good results, but he supported his country nonetheless.