Henry Knox

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

So . . the situation in November of 1775 was that the British occupied Boston, and General George Washington had taken leadership of the colonial forces. He had a position on the highlands overlooking the British fleet down in Boston harbor.

But his troops were short on cannon and artillery. A 25-year-old bookseller, Henry Knox, suggested a daring solution to the problem. 

Fort Ticonderoga (a British garrison) on Lake Champlain had cannons and had been taken by Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys. 

Knox volunteered to take some men up there to present-day Vermont and drag the captured British cannons on sleds--300 miles through mountains and forest--down to Boston. In the winter.