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Henry Knox's Noble Train: The Story of a Boston Bookseller's Heroic Expedition That Saved the American Revolution
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About Henry Knox's Noble Train: The Story Of A Boston
Product Description The inspiring story of a little-known hero's pivotal role in the American Revolutionary WarDuring the brutal winter of 1775-1776, an untested Boston bookseller named Henry Knox commandeered an oxen train hauling sixty tons of cannons and other artillery from Fort Ticonderoga near the Canadian border. He and his men journeyed some three hundred miles south and east over frozen, often-treacherous terrain to supply George Washington for his attack of British troops occupying Boston. The result was the British surrender of Boston and the first major victory for the Colonial Army. This is one of the great stories of the American Revolution, still little known by comparison with the more famous battles of Concord, Lexington, and Bunker Hill. Told with a novelist's feel for narrative, character, and vivid description, The Noble Train brings to life the events and people at a time when the ragtag American rebels were in a desperate situation. Washington's army was withering away from desertion and expiring enlistments. Typhoid fever, typhus, and dysentery were taking a terrible toll. There was little hope of dislodging British General Howe and his 20,000 British troops in Boston--until Henry Knox arrived with his supply convoy of heavy armaments. Firing down on the city from the surrounding Dorchester Heights, these weapons created a decisive turning point. An act of near desperation fueled by courage, daring, and sheer tenacity led to a tremendous victory for the cause of independence.This exciting tale of daunting odds and undaunted determination highlights a pivotal episode that changed history. Review A retelling of an iconic episode in the American Revolution. Early in the revolution, still-good-guy Benedict Arnold teamed up with Ethan Allen to take the remote British fort at Ticonderoga, where hundreds of cannons were among the booty. Not many were serviceable, and then there was the matter of getting them to George Washington's forces outside Boston. Enter Henry Knox (1750-1806), a young bookseller who, writes popular historian Hazelgrove, "simply could not read enough about what men constructed during times of war." Knox was gifted at logistics and was an early convert to the cause of independence, and he managed to pull together a "noble train" of oxen, horses, and sledges to haul the useable cannons over ice-covered rivers, mountain ranges, and what the author calls "unchartered wilderness." It was a formidable undertaking, full of peril, as Hazelgrove repeats in various formulations--e.g., "hours of painstaking effort in freezing water, ice, and snow"; "so they trudged on, men fighting the cold and the terrain as they bedded down at night with tents and warmed themselves by fires, drinking whiskey and smoking pipes.... Kirkus Reviews "Love it. He keeps supplying my bookshelf with things that I love. William Hazelgrove is prolific and he becomes, with each book, a better writer!" Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune, WGN h The author of Wright Brothers, Wrong Story (2018) does an impressive job of sifting through frequently contradictory primary and secondary sources to piece together an engaging account of Henry Knox's "noble train"--an astonishing assembly of people and animals that brought the artillery to Boston just in time to avert the possible derailment of the American Revolution. It was an arduous and danger-fraught expedition, and Hazelgrove makes readers feel as though they were a part of it. This is a fine example of dramatic, immersive history.
