There’s no plaque or sign indicating that the four grand bookcases lining the Boston Athenaeum’s fourth floor are anything unusual. Yet these volumes once belonged to the nation’s first Secretary of War, Henry Knox.
Knox, who made history by transporting tons of artillery from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston in the winter of 1776, relied on books for his self-directed education from an early age. He began as a humble Boston bookseller, and his store wasn’t far from the Old State House.
On a recent Tuesday, Robert Allison, who teaches American history at Suffolk University, reviewed the Knox collection. One volume caught his eye.
“Volney was a French philosopher who travels through Syria and Egypt,” said Allison. “He’s really reflecting how come these places once had great civilizations, and now they’re barren. These are very serious questions.”
The books provide a glimpse into the curiosities and influences of a nation’s founder.
Knox was largely self-taught. His father abandoned the family, forcing him to his drop out of Boston Latin School when he was nine. Over the course of his life, he would turn to books for his education.
John Buchtel, the Athenaeum’s curator of rare books, said Knox’s volumes here cover the gamut.
“He has the works of Francis Bacon. He has books on hydraulic architecture in French. A book on rhetoric,” Buchtel said.
The collection was sold to the Athenaeum by Knox’s widow in 1807, but for over a century and a half, those books were just mixed in with the circulation.
In the 1960’s, Buchtel said, a curator decided to search for clues and discovered an ornate “K” inscribed on the title pages.
“(He) figured out that that an early librarian marked those books that way because they were Knox’s,” said Buchtel. “It’s a biblio-mystery, and we biblio-detectives solved it.”
Buchtel opened one of the Knox bookcases for Allison and slid out a leather bound volume titled “Field Engineer,” printed in 1776.
The book could have conceivably been used by the Continental Army as they fortified Dorchester Heights, Buchtel said.
“Imagine Americans trying to figure out how to defeat a powerful, powerful army with much better training,” he said. “And it’s books like these that they’re studying intensely in camp, as opposed to the British soldiers who were just reading light stuff or playing cards. The Americans were studying hard.”
Buchtel then unfolded another treasure to show Allison. The American Pocket Atlas was printed in England for British troops; its highly detailed color maps were essential to the King’s army.
The atlas is inscribed to Knox in 1778 by the famed General Nathaniel Green of Rhode Island.
“That means that they have basically captured some British intel in the middle of the war,” said Allison. “Who knows when Green actually got the map, but he wasn’t buying it from a London bookseller, I’ll tell you that. This is probably spoils of war.”
Knox’s post-war legacy
Knox’s legacy is tied to exploits of the Revolutionary War. But the first Secretary of War left behind a complex post-war legacy, as well.
As the young United States looked toward the frontier, Knox was placed in charge of Indian Affairs. It was a role that forced him to balance the hunger for westward expansion with his own Enlightenment ideals.
Allison said he became an early advocate for the notion of Native American sovereignty.
“(Knox) tries to create a more humane policy toward Native Americans, recognizing them as sovereign entities with whom the United States will make binding treaties,” he said. “That’s a policy that is really squashed by the subsequent administrations.”
Knox was also the main force behind an organization that operates an archive and museum devoted to the American Revolution called the Society of the Cincinnati, named after the Roman general, Cincinnatus
Ellen Clark, who ran the library for the Society in Washington DC, said Knox and his comrades chose that name carefully.
“When offered the dictatorship, Cincinnatus declines and goes home to his farm,” said Clark. “And so Cincinnatus represents this idea of selfless public service, and would have been well understood by Knox and his contemporaries.”
