Henry Knox
American general and Secretary of War (1750-1806) · United States · On the map · Politicians · Died at 56
Henry Knox was an American military officer, politician, bookseller, and a Founding Father of the United States. Knox, born in Boston, became a senior general of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, serving as chief of artillery in all of George Washington's campaigns.
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This 1771 advertisement for Knox's shop was engraved by Nathaniel Hurd.
Newspaper advertisement for Knox's bookshop, Boston, 1771
An ox team hauls cannon toward Boston as part of the 1775-76 "Noble train of artillery"
Men are visible behind Washington working to unload cannon in Thomas Sully's 1819 The Passage of the Delaware (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Steel engraving of Henry Knox by Alonzo Chappel
Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, c. 1784 (Philadelphia Museum of Art)Awards
About this person
Following the war, he oversaw the War Department under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1789. Washington appointed him the nation's first secretary of war, a position which he held from 1789 to 1794. He is well known today as the eponym of Fort Knox in Kentucky, which is often conflated with the adjacent United States Bullion Depository.
