Guns for General Washington by Seymour Reit

About This Book
    Paul Revere’s midnight ride . . . Washington crossing the Delaware . . . the winter crisis at Valley Forge . . . Some events of America’s War for Independence are known to us all. But there are other episodes, just as dramatic, that seem to have been lost in the dusty pages of history.
    The subject of this book—the great cannon trek of 1775—is one of those remarkable events. It played a vital part in the early months of the revolution, but few people seem to know much about it. What you’re about to read is factual and accurate. All the dates, times, and places are real. The people who took part in it are also real. And now, for the first time, the full account is being told.
    Material for our drama came from many places. Colonel Henry Knox, the central player, kept a diary for part of the long journey. He also sent regular reports to General Washington. Another participant was a young boy named John P. Becker. Years later, in the 1830s, he wrote about his boyhood adventure for a newspaper called the
Albany Gazette
. The story was also mentioned in many histories, though not in detail.
    This author is grateful for the accounts of historians who helped him to put the exciting pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together. Among those noted writers are Donald Barr Chidsey, North Callahan, Clay Perry, Howard H. Peckham, and Esther Forbes, author of a major biography of Paul Revere.
    Others who deserve thanks for their kind help include William H. Hooks of Bank Street College; Harris Colt, proprietor of the Military Bookman in New York City; and Linda Russell, singer, musician, and authority on colonial songs and ballads. Thanks must also go to Margaret Peet for her excellent secretarial work.
    Most of our country’s history comes to us on printed pages. But there was a time before those pages were written, when people actually experienced the adventures we read about. To make past events truly come to life, the people involved must also come to life. We must really know how they felt and what they may have thought. To do this, the author has tried to “re-create” various speeches and thoughts for his characters. All of these inventive touches have been done with great care, in order to keep them true to the characters and true to their times.
    As you read these pages, you may agree that Colonel Knox’s great adventure was indeed a stirring, suspenseful, and important event in American history. It is a tale of courage and bravery—an episode that gave young America its first real victory, paving the way for the future of a great democratic nation.

 
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From the east to the west
    blow the trumpet to arms;
Through the land let
    the sound of it flee;
Let the far and the near
    all unite with a cheer
In defense of our Liberty Tree!
 
  — THOMAS PAINE (1775)

1
The Restless Rebel
    Crack! Crack! Crack!
    The sound of musket fire cut through the stillness of the sleeping camp. Colonial soldiers, bleary-eyed, tumbled out of their shelters with their weapons ready and raced toward the palisade. One of these men was a trooper named William Knox, who had been hoping to see action. Excited, he joined the others on the firing line and peered into the gray mist.
    The news spread quickly among the waiting men. Hidden by morning fog, a British patrol had slipped across Mill Creek in an attempt to probe the rebel defenses. But an alert sentinel had spotted them in the marshes and opened fire. Others had joined in and the redcoats, giving up, had raced to their barge and escaped. The immediate crisis was over.
    With shrugs and yawns, the soldiers trudged back to their warm beds. But Will Knox was too keyed up to go back to sleep. Unloading his musket, he walked across the drill grounds and climbed a rise called Prospect Hill. From here he could see his beloved Boston, locked in the hands of the enemy to the southeast. The