Henry Knox Read Online Free Page B

in all languages, arts, and sciences along with a complete line of stationery. He competed with seven other bookstores in Boston and was inventive in advertising books using the novel idea of including blurbs from the literary magazine
Critical Review
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    When he was not tending his shop, Henry continued his military training. During periods of peace, colonists maintained militia companies ready toprotect the frontiers against American Indian attacks and in anticipation of another war with France. In the case that such a war occurred, Henry believed colonists should be prepared. In 1772, he cofounded the Boston Grenadier Corps, an offshoot of Paddock's Train. Knox was second in command. The company designed and ordered tailors to make splendid uniforms, and Knox and orderly sergeant Lemuel Trescott drilled the men in the evenings, choreographing their movements and training them to load and fire cannons and perform battle maneuvers as well as to use a sword, bayonet, and musket. The Grenadier Corps literally stood above the rest; all of its members were taller than five foot ten inches and shorter than six foot two inches, which was Henry's height. By June 8, 1772, the corps was ready to parade its colors before Boston. The men marched before admirers who were impressed by their military bearing. Knox, at the head of the parade, stood tall, broad-shouldered, and dashing.
    Knox also kept up his military training through a careful study of books, determined to take an analytical approach in spite of his love for pomp and parade. Not only did he continue to order textbooks on military science, he asked questions of those British officers who frequented his shop.

    Knox felt somewhat cloistered in the bookstore and spent his leisure in daily exercise and outdoor activities. He was close to his brother, and they often went hunting or fishing. Henry was a dedicated angler. The day before his twenty-third birthday, he boarded a small boat with his musket for a hunting expedition on Noodle Island in Boston Harbor. As he was exploring, his shotgun accidentally discharged, sending a blast of shot pellets through the fingers of his left hand. Knox winced in pain and gritted his teeth before summoning the strength to open his eyes to examine the wound, which was bleeding profusely. The pinky and ring fingers on his left hand were gone. His heart sank; one careless moment had left him with an irrevocable loss that could never be undone. He bound the wound and rowed back across the harbor to find two doctors to sew it up. Knox paid one of the physicians three guineas and the other five. He believed they had saved his life. He expressed his gratitude in a thank-you note, comparing himself to a mariner who had weathered a storm and who had emerged with "a firm respect and esteem for the means of his existence. So, Sir, gratitude obliges me to tender you my most sincere thanks for the attention and care you took of me in a late unlucky accident.“ 13
    He spent his birthday nursing the wound and trying to bear the pain. He was horrified to look at the injury and felt self-conscious about it. He took out a handkerchief and experimented with ways to hold it so as to veil his wound. For the rest of his life, Knox—even in portraits—would always be seen with a handkerchief wrapped around his left hand.
    A few weeks after the accident, he appeared in another parade with the Boston Grenadier Corps as they marched through town in sharp military order to the staccato beat of drums. Henry's friend Burbeck noticed that "Lieutenant Knox appeared with the wound handsomely bandaged with a scarf, which of course excited the sympathy of all the ladies.“ 14
    Among those sympathetic was Lucy Flucker, one of the most fashionable young Tory women in Boston, who just days before had celebrated her seventeenth birthday. Watching the parade, she was transfixed by the tall, robust figure of Henry in uniform leading the column, and she immediately inquired about