Henry Knox

Major General Henry Knox
Portrait by Gilbert Stuart, 1806
1st Senior Officer of the U.S. Army
In office December 23, 1783 – June 20, 1784
Appointed by	Confederation Congress
Preceded by	George Washington (Commander-in-Chief)
Succeeded by	John Doughty
1st United States Secretary of War
In office March 8, 1785 – December 31, 1794
President	George Washington
Preceded by	Benjamin Lincoln (as Secretary at War)
Succeeded by	Timothy Pickering
Personal details
Born	(1750-07-25)July 25, 1750 Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay, British America
Died	October 25, 1806(1806-10-25) (aged 56) Thomaston, District of Maine, Massachusetts, U.S.
Resting place	Thomaston Village Cemetery Thomaston, Maine, U.S.
Political party	Federalist
Spouse	Lucy Flucker ​ (m. 1774)​
Children	3
Relatives	Henry Thatcher (grandson)
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	United States
Branch/service	Continental Army United States Army
Years of service	1772–1785
Rank	Major General
Commands	Chief of Artillery
Battles/wars	American Revolutionary War Battle of Bunker Hill Siege of Boston Knox Expedition Fortification of Dorchester Heights Battle of Long Island Battle of Trenton Battle of the Assunpink Creek Battle of Princeton Battle of Brandywine Battle of Germantown Battle of Monmouth Siege of Yorktown

Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806) was an American military officer, politician, bookseller, and a Founding Father of the United States.^[1] Knox, born in Boston, became a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in all of George Washington's campaigns. Following the war, he oversaw the War Department under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1789. Washington appointed him the nation's first Secretary of War, a position which he held from 1789 to 1794. He is well known today as the namesake of Fort Knox in Kentucky, which is often conflated with the adjacent United States Bullion Depository.

Knox was born and raised in Boston where he owned and operated a bookstore, cultivating an interest in military history and joining a local artillery company. He was also on the scene of the 1770 Boston Massacre. He was barely 25 when the Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, but he engineered the transport of captured artillery from New York's Fort Ticonderoga, which proved decisive in driving the British out of Boston in early 1776. Knox quickly rose to become the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army. In this role, he accompanied Washington on all of his campaigns and was engaged in the major actions of the war. He established training centers for artillerymen and manufacturing facilities for weaponry that were valuable assets in winning the war for independence.

Knox saw himself as the embodiment of revolutionary republican ideals. In early 1783, as the war drew to a close, he initiated the concept of the Society of the Cincinnati,^[2] authoring its founding document and establishing the organization as a fraternal, hereditary society of veteran officers that survives to this day.^[3]

In 1785, the Congress of the Confederation appointed Knox as Secretary of War, where he dealt primarily with Indian affairs. Following the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1789, he became President Washington's Secretary of War. In this role he oversaw the development of coastal fortifications, worked to improve the preparedness of local militia, and directed the nation's military operations in the Northwest Indian War. He was formally responsible for the nation's relationship with the Indian population in the territories that it claimed, articulating a policy which established federal government supremacy over the states in relation to Indian nations and calling for treating Indian nations as sovereign. Knox's idealistic views on the subject were frustrated by ongoing illegal settlements and fraudulent land transfers of Indian lands.^[4] He retired to Thomaston, District of Maine in 1795, where he oversaw the rise of many inventive business ventures built on borrowed money. He died in 1806 just as his financial situation began to reverse.^[5]