- Title: Henry Knox
- Author: Johnson, Fry & Co.
- Date: c.1861
- Condition: A crisp steel engraving on a very clean sheet. Superb.
- Inches: 8 1/4 x 10 3/4 [Paper]
- Centimeters: 20.95 x 27.30 [Paper]
- Product ID: 308727
From Boston Bookseller to Artillery Mastermind
Steel-engraved portrait from National Portrait Gallery of Eminent Americans, after a painting by Alonzo Chappel. A fine steel engraving printed on wove paper, issued as part of Johnson, Fry & Co.’s ambitious patriotic series celebrating notable figures in the nation’s political and cultural history.
Henry Knox (1750–1806) rose from a self‑educated Boston bookseller to become George Washington’s chief of artillery and one of the key architects of American victory in the Revolutionary War. Born in Boston to Irish immigrant parents and forced by his father’s early death to leave school and apprentice in a bookshop, Knox absorbed military history and artillery science from the volumes he sold, eventually organizing a local grenadier militia and coming to Washington’s attention during the siege of Boston in 1775. His most famous wartime feat was the “noble train of artillery,” the grueling winter expedition that hauled some sixty tons of captured cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston, allowing Washington to fortify Dorchester Heights and force the British evacuation of the city. Promoted through the ranks to major general, Knox oversaw artillery at Trenton, Princeton, the Philadelphia campaign, and Yorktown, remaining Washington’s senior artillery officer and trusted confidant throughout the conflict.
In the new republic Knox continued to shape American military institutions, serving as the last secretary of war under the Articles of Confederation and the first secretary of war in George Washington’s presidential cabinet. He advocated for a permanent military academy at West Point, helped establish the nation’s first arsenal at Springfield, and played a leading role in the Society of the Cincinnati, cementing his influence on both the symbolic and practical structures of American defense. Though he retired to a Maine estate (then still part of Massachusetts) and died unexpectedly in 1806, his name survives in forts, counties, and towns, and in 19th‑century engraved portraits that present him as the archetypal Continental general—imposing, uniformed, and surrounded by the artillery that defined his career.