Cannons Dashed Through the Snow to Victory

Squat blocks of stone, nearly anonymous markers in mostly public places, trace a wobbly path from the rugged edge of the Adirondacks to the urban fringes of New England.

This is the Knox Trail, the 250-mile route taken by a young American officer to deliver much-needed artillery to Gen. George Washington during the first winter of the Revolutionary War, 225 years ago this month.

No battles were fought along the trail, no blood stained the snow, no glory was accorded the farmers and teamsters who accomplished this feat of arms.

But the “noble train of artillery” that was pulled, pushed and floated from New York’s frozen mountains to the outskirts of Boston, where the British held the city, ranks among the most significant--and overlooked--events in U.S. military history.

“There was no great epic battle, there was no one great moment,” said William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. “The Knox accomplishment was a steady, steady march, and a steady, steady march doesn’t draw the same amount of attention, but it certainly won the battle for Boston.”

Despite heavy loses at the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the highly trained British army held the upper hand against Washington’s inexperienced militias, Fowler explained. The Redcoats were bottled up in Boston, but they had good defenses, their navy kept them well supplied, and the Americans lacked the heavy guns needed to dislodge them.

Then a 25-year-old officer named Henry Knox stepped forward and offered his services.

Knox, a former bookstore clerk and self-taught artillery officer, befriended Washington after the Virginian arrived in Massachusetts in 1775 to command the Continental Army.

Late that fall, Washington sent Knox on a mission. Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had captured 59 cannons from the British at Ft. Ticonderoga in northeastern New York. Washington, holding the Dorchester Heights outside Boston, intended to use the guns to blast the British out of the city.

Guns Crash Through Ice of Hudson River

Knox arrived at the fort in early December 1775. The task before him was daunting: to haul tons of cannons through a wilderness where roads were few, obstacles plenty and resources scarce. The plan was to hire farmers and teams of oxen along the way.

Transporting the guns 32 miles down Lake George on barges took more than a week. They were further delayed when snow proved too scarce for their ox-drawn sleds. During the wait, Knox wrote to Washington, saying he hoped “to be able to present your Excellency a noble train of artillery.”

On Christmas Day, 2 feet of snow fell across the region. The snow helped speed the march, but in early January, “a cruel thaw,” as Knox described it in his wartime diary, hindered efforts to get the cannons across the Hudson River.

Some sleds crashed through the ice, sending their cargo to the river bottom. One cannon was recovered, Knox wrote, “owing to the assistance the good people of the City of Albany gave. . . . “

From Albany, the artillery train slogged east to the snowy Berkshires in western Massachusetts. Once through the mountains, long-established roads linking the villages of New England eased the journey.

“If you’re going to move heavy things at a time when the roads are poor, winter works for you,” Fowler said. “In a way, moving in the wintertime, particularly moving heavy guns, was sensible. Of course, they didn’t have any choice. They couldn’t wait for spring or summer.”

After arriving in Cambridge, Mass., on Jan. 24, 1776, Knox deployed the 50-plus artillery pieces on the heights overlooking Boston. But he never got the chance to fire them.

The outgunned British decided against assaulting the American positions. On March 17, 1776--St. Patrick’s Day--the British evacuated Boston via the sea. Washington’s troops entered the city the next day. The birthplace of the Revolution was once again in the hands of the patriots.

“It was Washington’s first major victory,” Fowler said. “Washington was untried, really untested, and if this had not happened, I doubt the Revolution would have continued.”

In December, almost 225 years to the day that the Ticonderoga guns began their journey, two dozen Revolutionary War reenactors commemorated the anniversary of Knox’s accomplishment by using a team of oxen to haul a single cannon over a stretch of the Knox Trail that winds through Schuylerville, 35 miles north of Albany.

“Just thinking about going through the Berkshires with these artillery pieces, it’s absolutely an amazing feat,” said reenactor Sean Kelleher of Albany.

In the mid-1920s, at the 150th anniversary of the American Revolution, New York state officials used Knox’s wartime diary to place monuments along his route.

By 1927 a series of 30 stone monuments dotted the countryside from the southern shores of Lake Champlain to the New York-Massachusetts line. The Bay State then completed the trail, with 26 similar monuments located from Afford to Watertown, just west of Boston.

That installation of monuments across two states represented one of the earliest heritage trails created in the United States, said Philip Lord Jr., director of services at the New York State Museum in Albany.

Hero Became First Secretary of War

Lord spent a couple of days last summer traveling the length of the Knox Trail, photographing all 56 monuments for the museum’s Knox Trail Web site.

“The thing that impressed me was how incredibly long that trip is, even in a car driving 55 miles an hour,” Lord said.

“I kept thinking how easy it would have been for Knox to be discouraged by the whole thing. Just getting to Albany from Ft. Ticonderoga was an amazing undertaking.”

Knox wasn’t easily discouraged, and his success in getting the guns to Boston was an early indication of his resolve, Fowler said.

Knox served as Washington’s artillery commander throughout the Revolution, and later became the first president’s secretary of War.

“He’s one of these men who’s steady, loyal and able,” Fowler said. “He’s a superb commander and a superb organizer. He’s one of those men who were truly the backbone of the American Revolutionary Army.

“We couldn’t have won without him.”

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https://New York State Museum’s Knox Trail Web site: www.nysm.nysed.gov/srv/KnoxTrail/index.html