Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/United States/Knox, Henry

Knox, Henry, major-general in the American revolutionary army, was born at Boston, July 25, 1750. Beginning life as a bookseller, he commanded an independent company in Boston, and was made an engineer and artillery officer by Washington at the opening of the revolution. Under his charge the artillery arm of the service came to be of essential value. He was made secretary of war in 1785, and Washington, on becoming president in 1789, gave him the same office under the new Government. He resigned in 1794, and retired to private life in Maine. He died at Thomaston, Me., Oct. 25, 1806.—See Drake's Life of Knox (1874).