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Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution
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$ 13.26
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| Item Number |
932304 |
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Item Description...
Mark Puls delivers a compelling portrait of the Revolutionary War general who played a key role in all of George Washington's battles. During the Siege of Boston, Henry Knox's amazing 300 mile transport of forty nine cannons from Ticonderoga saved the city. Building upon his talent for logistics, Knox engineered Washington's famous Christmas night passage to safety across the Delaware River. And it was the general's tactical successes that made the final victory at Yorktown possible. With riveting battle scenes, inspiring patriotism, and vivid prose, Puls breathes new life into the American Revolution and firmly re-establishes Knox in his deserved place in history. |
Item Specifications...
Pages 288
Binding Softcover
Release Date May 11, 2010
ISBN 0230623883
EAN 9780230623880
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Availability 5 units.
Availability accurate as of May 30, 2012 04:12.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Henry Knox a true Visionary General Aug 6, 2009 |
This first-rate biography of Henry Knox serves as an excellent introduction to the study of one of George Washington's most exceptional generals. I was first motivated to read a life of Knox after I had traveled several times between Boston and Albany and read how he led a winter expedition to retrieve artillery pieces from old forts north of Albany. The terrain in western Massachusetts is very hilly, the winters are cold and nasty and even today the area is sparsely populated. Overcoming these obstacles the Knox's expedition dragged fifty-nine cannons and mortars 300 miles during a New England winter from the Crown Point and Fort Ticonderoga to Cambridge. Once the cannons were in place the British evacuated Boston. Thus began a string of military accomplishments that materially contributed to the eventual triumph of the American Revolution.
This excellent biography we help the reader understand the key role Knox played in securing our freedom from England.
It was refreshing to find out that Knox was far from perfect. In his retirement years he, quite frankly, rubbed a lot of folks the wrong way and appears to have become something of a cantankerous Yankee crank. This in no way diminished his considerable accomplishments but add a spicy coda to a very remarkable life.
| | | | "If George Washington was the indispensable man of the Revolution, then Henry Knox was his indispensable man" (Puls, p. 251) Nov 27, 2008 |
Perhaps not unlike most successive generations of Americans, I knew not the particular credentials of Henry Knox. Our high schools, undergraduate and graduate educational institutions not really teaching much if anything about the "supporting casts" of the less recognizable American Revolutionary players.
Yet, as author Mark Puls remarks, "...The contributions of soldiers standing in the field are no less signficant than those of the delegates who penned their names to the Declaration...Knox's career crosses the traditional boundaries between soldier and statesman, and his contribution is difficult to categorize" (p. 257).
Importantly, Puls observes, "...It is easy to take for granted his [Knox] efforts simply because success is often quiet while failure is conspicuous, and it can be tempting to view the projects he guided as mystically destined for glory. Yet an examination of the historical record shows that his achievements were anything but foregone conclusions. He took great risks and remained a relatively obscure figure to historians because his endeavors were not plagued with problems" (p. 256).
In my opinion, Puls has written a fine book; one that was most informative, well researched and providing ample citations that allow the reader to tailor their individual interests further (mine being, maternal family member, then NJ militia Captain Daniel Bray and others, work to locate and situate the boats used by Knox to prepare Washington's troops to cross the Delaware). It was a book that I rarely put down, turning the pages at a solid if not increasing pace, and was written so well it made me feel like I had been transported to innumerable, historically relevant locations where Knox's life unfolded.
As Joseph Ellis has assessed this work by Mr. Puls, "...This is unquestionably the authoritative biography." I look forward to reading his work on Samuel Adams next!
| | | | Excellent Introduction to General Knox Sep 18, 2008 |
Henry Knox was one of those men who lives in the shadows. He was, in his time, a memorable individual: a fat man with a booming voice and an ebullient personality, a wonderful friend with a hale-fellow-well-met personality. He was also one of the people more instrumental in the success of the Continental army during the American Revolution. So it's a bit surprising that other than the fort named after him, and the city in Tennessee, he's largely unknown. The author of this book, Mark Puls, aims to correct this.
The author writes a short, concise, informative account of Knox's background and upbringing. One chapter suffices to get the reader to the beginning of the Revolution, though it should be pointed out that this isn't that long a period of time: Knox was in his 20s for much of the revolution, something that surprised me. I knew he was young, but not *that* young. Knox took charge of the artillery train that had to be moved from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, a distance of several hundred miles across very difficult terrain, and did it during early winter, often waiting for the frost to harden the mud on the roads. Knox then was appointed to command Washington's artillery, a position he held from that point until the end of the war.
This means that for all of the major battles of the Revolution that Washington fought, Knox was there with him, directing the guns. He also served as an engineer and logistics chief, and on more than one occasion Washington entrusted the army's safety to Knox, assigning him to ensure the army's crossing of the Delaware to Trenton, for instance. By the end of the Revolution, when the French army joined with the Continental army to besiege the British at Yorktown, the French army's engineers and artillerists were pleasantly surprised to discover that Knox, a young man with no formal training as a soldier, was nonetheless very skilled and knowledgeable.
Knox didn't really leave public service at the end of the war. Instead, he wound up succeeding Washington as commander-in-chief of the army, then served as Secretary at War for the Continental Congress during the period running up to the ratification of the Constitution. Knox supported the constitution, and advocated to Gouveneur Morris a government constructed rather like the one that emerged from the convention; Knox wrote his letter to Morris six months before Morris helped write the Constitution. Knox then served Washington as Secretary of War, among other things constructing the army and founding the modern American Navy, an action for which he usually isn't remembered. The Humphreys frigates ("Constitution", "United States", "President", "Constellation", etc.) were constructed at Knox's direction, though of course Humphreys himself gets the majority of the credit for the idea. These warships were large enough that they could defeat single British frigates in single combat, and fast enough they had a chance of outrunning any larger ships they encountered. Knox deserves some credit for their success, and for the founding of the Navy. He left Washington's cabinet several years before the end of the administration, serving in various capacities in the Massachusetts legislature and government before retiring from public life.
But his signal achievement, probably, was his advocacy of the establishment of a military academy for soldier cadets. As early as the last years of the Revolution he argued that something along these lines be done, and he even established a school for army officers (especially artillerists) in his military camp. He pretty much tirelessly argued for the establishment of a permanent academy at West Point, and finally, after 25 years of advocacy, succeeded in 1803 when the United States Military Academy was established. Knox died three years later, a victim of a chicken bone that lodged in his throat, the wound becoming infected.
The author does a good job of outlining Knox's life without getting into details too much. This is appropriate for a short biography of a soldier of the American Revolution. This book is very comparable to Terry Golway's biography of Nathaniel Greene, "Washington's General", which was released a few years ago, and was, to my mind, very successful. This is a highly recommended account of the life of a very interesting, and little-known, American soldier, and it belongs on the shelf of any military history buff who studies the American Revolution. | | | | The strategist behind the charismatic General Washington Sep 2, 2008 |
Our hero George Washington was able to achieve the key Revolutionary War battles with the incredible foresight, creativity, and persistence of his General, Henry Knox - a self taught man. He was with General Washington from the beginning in Boston, through the battles in NYC, engineered the crossing of the Potomac, and finally victory in Yorktown.
George Washington said "There is no man whom I love more or have a stronger friendship." | | |  | Good read, some inaccuracies Aug 24, 2008 |
| This is a very readable and much needed history of a forgotten founder of our country. I'd never read much of anything about Knox except that he got the cannons from Ticonderoga to Boston at the start of the revolution. It never occurred to me to think much about why Washington put so much trust in him and named him to his cabinet. There are a few minor errors, such as Puls statement that Hamilton wasn't able to run for President due to his foreign birth (false - per Article II, anyone a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution was eligible), but they don;t detract much from the whole. | | | Write your own review about Henry Knox: Visionary General of the American Revolution
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