Captain John Parker And Colonel Henry Knox: Leaders Of The Revolutionary War

Leaders of the Revolution

Just imagine five-hundred redcoats marching in perfect unison toward your untrained and unprepared fighting force with nothing more than just the families’ rifles. This is what was occurring in the American Revolutionary War. The Revolutionary War lasted about eight years from 1775-1783. During these eight years, the colonies were fighting for their independence from Great Britain. It was very bloody throughout the war and the colonies struggled because they did not have the numbers of the British or the training and supplies. Two important leaders in the Revolution, however, did help the cause: Captain John Parker and Colonel Henry Knox.

One important hero in the Revolutionary War was Captain John Parker. He was

Before the revolution he was just a man who owned a bookstore. It all began in the middle of November when General George Washington informed Knox he had been nominated by the Continental Congress to be the head of the army artillery. John Adams was the one who suggested Knox to be given the rank of colonel and chief of the Continental army artillery but there was very little artillery. Six months before Benedict, Arnold, Allon, and the Green Mountain Boys captured a huge cache of weapons at Fort Ticonderoga in New York, 300 miles from Boston. So Knox had the idea of traveling to Fort Ticonderoga where the British had left the weapons behind. The journey was very hard. Knox brought his brother and on the way they crossed Lake George and made it just in time as the lake was beginning to freeze. They arrived the first week of December. Henry chose 59 of the best weapons weighing between 100 and 5,500 pounds, ranging in length between one and eleven feet. Most of the trip back Knox traveled ahead of his caravan making a route and arrangements. Several pieces fell into the water and men dove into the icy cold to retrieve them. Henry Knox and his men finally made it back and on March fourth several thousand Americans maneuvered the artillery up Dorchester Heights and constructed emplacements, they even painted logs to look as if they had even more firepower.