J.L. Bell
Henry Knox, Loyalist?
Most biographies of Henry Knox describe him as a fervent Whig in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, but that picture seems to be based on hindsight. Knox’s name actually appears in no records of political groups before the war. Contemporaries in the early 1770s viewed Knox as a young man who could go either way politically—and whose family connections were solidly on the side of the royal government. That left him privy to sensitive information, both in his London Book-Store and in the family home. It also meant Knox’s contemporaries viewed his decision to leave besieged Boston in May 1775 as a great sacrifice which positioned him well for his career in the Continental Army.
J.L. Bell (boston1775.blogspot.com) is the author of The Road to Concord: How Four Stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War, the National Park Service report Gen. George Washington’s Home and Headquarters—Cambridge, Mass., and numerous articles. He maintains the Boston 1775 website, offering daily postings of history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about Revolutionary New England. Bell is slowly working on a book about the troubled first year of the Continental artillery regiment, including Henry Knox’s rise to command.
