Why Did Knox Stop His Guns at Framingham?

In response to my Wednesday posting about Col. Henry Knox’s arrival in Cambridge on 18 Jan 1776 (a week or so earlier than the traditional date), Boston 1775 friend Charles Bahne commented:

I still wonder how the town of Framingham fits into Knox’s route. The direct route to Boston (and Cambridge) from the west was the Boston Post Road, which in this area is basically today’s U.S. 20 with some minor detours. That road passes through Marlborough, Sudbury, Wayland, Weston, and Waltham. All of these, except Wayland, existed as towns in the 1770s; Wayland was still part of Sudbury. It would have been a significant detour — with all those heavy cannon! — to go to Framingham.

It’s more logical for John Adams and Elbridge Gerry to have passed through Framingham on their way from Cambridge to Philadelphia, since there was another road — today’s “Old Connecticut Path” — which branched off the Post Road at the Weston-Wayland line and headed directly to Hartford, bypassing Worcester and Springfield.

So we have a question of space as well as time. As part of my possible project on Knox, I’m reexamining the traditional stories about him. Among the most visible of those stories is his progress through New York and Massachusetts; the Knox Cannon Trail has been marked with large roadside stones starting in 1926. Yet much of that trail is based on assumptions about where Knox and his cargo passed because the records of his trip are incomplete. Some marker stones have had to be repositioned.

Following the first Knox biography, we assumed Knox brought his artillery from Springfield (a town he mentioned in a letter to Gen. George Washington) to Cambridge, arriving 24 January. And we assumed he took the straightest, most traveled route, which was the Boston Post Road. But that timetable is wrong. What if the route is an unsupported assumption as well—at least for the guns?

As shown in the map above (a detail from the 1775 “Seat of War in New England” map), the Boston Post Road leads east from Marlborough through Sudbury to Watertown. At Marlborough another road diverged southeast into Framingham toward Natick. It seems likely that Col. Knox directed his “noble train” along that second road. But why?

Gen. William Heath wrote in his diary that Knox “came to camp” on 18 January while the guns “were ordered to be stopped at Framingham.” To me that wording implies the order came from above—i.e., from Gen. Washington.

Another clue comes from the Gershom Foster orderly book at the Anderson House library of the Society of the Cincinnati. That’s an orderly book for the artillery regiment. The orders start to come from Col. Knox (in a big, dramatic way) on 28 January. So even though he was in Cambridge on 18 January and presumably received his commission as colonel then, Knox didn’t start directing the regiment for another ten days. What was keeping him busy?

I suspect Knox went ahead of the guns to meet with his commander-in-chief in Cambridge on 18 January, then hurried back west to meet the guns and stop them at Framingham, or divert them to that town. Why? Knox’s papers have a big gap at this point, and Washington’s surviving headquarters papers don’t mention him or the new artillery. (Notably, however, “Framingham” is one of the passwords of the day on 22 January.)

One possibility is that Knox always planned to take that road because he was aiming to deliver the cannon to Roxbury, not Cambridge. He had worked on the big fort in Roxbury. He might have expected to mount most of the guns in that part of the siege lines. In that case, the route through Framingham to Natick and thence to Dedham might make sense.

But it also seems likely that those cannon needed to be mounted and equipped for use in the siege. Washington may well have decided that Framingham was the place to do that work, far enough from the lines to be safe from the enemy. I haven’t found any mention of such work in Framingham, however.

It appears that Knox’s heavy cannon remained in Framingham for a month or so. On 26 February Ezekiel Price, a Boston official and businessman who collected many threads of gossip from his refuge in Stoughton, wrote in his diary:

It is said that the heavy cannon which were left at Framingham are brought down to Cambridge; the mortars are fixed in their new beds; the fort at Lechmere’s Point nearly finished; fascines going constantly to Dorchester; and every thing getting in readiness to make a push by our army.

Not all the gossip Price wrote down was that reliable (I’ll talk about that tomorrow). But it seems unlikely that he would have been wrong about the heavy cannon being left in Framingham for weeks.  And while it’s not clear what Price meant by saying they were brought “down to Cambridge” (Allston was still part of Cambridge then), this diary entry does suggest some of Knox’s artillery did indeed travel into that town. So there’s still a case for some of those markers.

Henry Knox’s “Grand machine”

Here’s another striking entry from Col. Henry Knox’s earliest regimental orders, preserved in the Gershom Foster orderly book at Anderson House in Washington, D.C. These words come from a long entry on 11 Feb 1776:

Whereas there have been some misapprehentions how far an officer of Artillery is under the command of an officer of Superiour Rank in any other Regt. while on duty in In the beginning of a war disputes of this kind may arise owing to a very Obvious reason, (viz) the want of experience but then a good Officer will endiver immeadiatly to be better informd and never assert [?] a dispute where a little honour is to be Obtained and which will always expose his want of knowledge.

In the nature of military discipline there cannot be two separate commanders in one Army every Order must be implissitly Obeyd from the Commander in Chief down to the Lowest Sentinal. All parts must perform their proper officers [sic] like a Grand machine when good regulation depends on a A number of nice wheals the Least of which being wrong disorders the whole. So in an army if the orders issued by the commander in Chief are interrupted by ignorance wrong instructions Casuality [?] from being communicated to the parts intended the whole must suffer in a vary total manner.

That the Regt. of Artillery may not Lay under the imputation of not properly understanding their connection with the Army, The Colo. desires them to attend to the following directions.

That no officer of artillery on duty presume to dispute the command of any other officer of Superiour Rank excepting in case of notorious cowardice in said officer.

That in a post all guards are under the immeadiate direction of the officer who commands in that post It is not to be supposed that an officer so commanding will take upon himself the direction on pointing the cannon—this is none of his business It is the perticular duty of the Artillery the Purpose for which they were selected Although he has the undoubted right to Order when they shall begin or when they shall seace to fire

The above is to be understood only when on duty the Oeconomy and discipline of the Regt. are under the special direction of the commander of the Artillery.

Knox’s strict order indicates that he had learned about artillery officers defying nearby colonels and other superiors, insisting that they answered only to their own colonel. He didn’t want to hear any more complaints of that sort.

This passage also shows how Knox viewed the ideal army: as “a Grand machine” with “A number of nice wheals” working in sync. I don’t think of Knox as the best engineer or field-artillery commander in the Continental Army, but he proved to be an excellent military administrator who could keep that machine running.

To my knowledge, Knox’s regimental orders on taking over the Continental artillery have never been published. The Gershom Foster orderly book, just one item of the Society of the Cincinnati’s collection of Revolutionary War military documents, is a vital resource for anyone studying that transition.

Generational Tension within the Artillery Regiment

The change at the top of the Continental artillery regiment that Gershom Foster’s early-1776 orderly book documents may have brought up some generational friction.

In his first regimental orders on 28 Jan 1776, the new colonel, Henry Knox, made a point to say:

The Colnl. is fully persuaded the officers of the Artillary Regt. will not loose the present opportunity. He wishes harmony to prevail in Every Company that the officers of Experience would Chearfully communicate their Knnowledg to the Younger and unexperienced Breathen that all the officers in their Respective spheres would inculcate to the noncommisioned officers & Soldiers the duty of their Stations & the advantage & necessity of a proper Subordination.

This message to “officers of Experience” came from a man in his mid-twenties who had just replaced a sixtysomething veteran of two wars, Col. Richard Gridley.

Furthermore, Knox now commanded Lt. Col. William Burbeck, who would turn sixty in 1776, and Lt. Col. David Mason, who would turn forty. Both those men had fought in wars against the French. Knox’s only military experience before 1775 was as a junior lieutenant in Boston’s militia grenadier company. Of course, he had won Gen. George Washington’s favor by helping to design fortifications in Roxbury and then cemented it by bringing more heavy artillery from Lake Champlain.

On 29 January, Knox’s regimental orders said, “the posts at prospect and Winter hills...are to be fired and directed by Colonel Mason.” Two days later Knox designated told all the artillery officers on the northern wing of the siege to report on their ordnance to Mason. The officers elsewhere in Cambridge were to report directly to Knox, and those at Roxbury to Maj. John Crane.

So where was Lt. Col. Burbeck in that arrangement? The Foster orderly book doesn’t mention the regiment’s second-highest ranking officer after the one regimental order he issued on 3 January. (It does mention “Capt. Burbeck at the Laboratory” on Cambridge common; that must have been one of the lieutenant colonel’s sons.)

Burbeck left the Continental Army when it moved south in April 1776, insisting that his contract was with Massachusetts. But perhaps he was already withdrawn from the regiment, or at least stopped behaving “Chearfully” around the new commander.

That’s another question scholars can investigate with the Gershom Foster orderly book, part of the archive at the Society of the Cincinnati’s Anderson House in Washington, D.C.

TOMORROW: Artillery officers versus infantry officers.

[The thumbnail above is Sharon Zingery’s photograph of William Burbeck’s gravestone in the Copp’s Hill Burying-ground, courtesy of Find-a-Grave.]

A Peek at Gershom Foster’s Orderly Book

While I was at Anderson House in Washington, D.C., last week, I spent a couple of days in the Society of the Cincinnati’s library. Like the David Library of the American Revolution in Pennsylvania, it’s tightly focused on Revolutionary America and its cultural legacy. There’s a solid endowment for acquiring books and hiring helpful staff, an excellent collection of published material, and an archive of rare books and manuscripts that scholars should be aware of.

One of the items I looked at was the orderly book of Gershom Foster from the Continental artillery regiment in early 1776. This document shows the arrival of Henry Knox as the regiment’s new colonel; the Continental Congress had voted on his appointment in the fall of 1775, but he was away from the siege lines in New York until the end of January.

Each daily record in Foster’s orderly book starts with the orders coming down from Gen. George Washington’s headquarters. Every day, Foster left space to write the parole and countersign words, but about half those entries are blank—i.e., the security information never seems to have reached him.

Orderly books are also supposed to record the brigade or regimental orders from the officers overseeing the company. On 3 January, Foster recorded this directive from Lt. Col. William Burbeck, acting commander:

That every orderly Sergent of the Artillary Quarterd in or near Cambridge do attend at the Ajudants Room at 2 oClock every day there to Receive Orders.

There’s no further word from Burbeck. It’s not clear how the lieutenant colonel expected orders to reach the artillery companies spread out in the southern wing of the siege lines.

Everything changed on 28 January. Foster penned a big headline: “Regimental Orders.” And we hear the voice of Col. Knox:

It is of the utmost Importance the Regt. of Artillary in the Service of the United Colonies Should be well Regulated & well disciplined. The great number of [sites] which we are Oblge to occupy: necesary occasion the Regt. to be dispersed or detached in consequence of this, the Commanding officers of the artillary at the Differnt posts have a much greater Call for the exercise of every Millitary abillity then if the Regt. was together they will have the praise if their detachments are perfect in their proper Exercise & they will have the blame if on the Contrary they either neglect their duty or behave in an unsoldierlike manner.

Perhaps their never was a period of time in which a good officer could better obtain the greatefull applause of his Country then the present—

Knox’s emphasis on order, hierarchy, and discipline matched Washington’s priorities. The remarks on praise, blame, and “greatefull applause” seem to reflect his own aspirations to gain honor and rise in society. I don’t believe those regimental orders from Knox have ever been published.

TOMORROW: More of Col. Knox’s new orders.