HENRY KNOX'S NOBLE TRAIN
The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution
by William Hazelgrove
A retelling of an iconic episode in the American Revolution. Early in the revolution, still-good-guy Benedict Arnold teamed up with Ethan Allen to take the remote British fort at Ticonderoga, where hundreds of cannons were among the booty. Not many were serviceable, and then there was the matter of getting them to George Washington’s forces outside Boston. Enter Henry Knox (1750-1806), a young bookseller who, writes popular historian Hazelgrove, “simply could not read enough about what men constructed during times of war.” Knox was gifted at logistics and was an early convert to the cause of independence, and he managed to pull together a “noble train” of oxen, horses, and sledges to haul the useable cannons over ice-covered rivers, mountain ranges, and what the author calls “unchartered wilderness.” It was a formidable undertaking, full of peril, as Hazelgrove repeats in various formulations—e.g., “hours of painstaking effort in freezing water, ice, and snow”; “so they trudged on, men fighting the cold and the terrain as they bedded down at night with tents and warmed themselves by fires, drinking whiskey and smoking pipes. The author takes some curious detours, as when he opens one chapter with the news that “ice, of course, is frozen water. A water molecule is composed of one oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms,” and there are too many set-piece clichés: “Knox felt tears come to his eyes. None other than His Excellency George Washington himself was coming to greet the pilgrim at the end of his long journey.” Such prose would be perfectly fitting for the Landmark Books for young readers of the 1950s and ’60s, but it doesn’t quite work today. Readers seeking a better-written treatment will want to consult Mark Puls’ Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution, which is cited dozens of times in Hazelgrove’s notes section. A well-intentioned but undercooked account of the significance of Knox’s contributions.