Autographs
Extremely Rare 1783 Major-General Henry Knox Signed Partially-Printed Continental Army Honorable Discharge
HENRY KNOX (1750-1806). Revolutionary War Military Officer in the Continental Army, secured Canon from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston; directed Rebel cannon fire at the Battle of Bunker Hill; later the First Senior Officer of the United States Army; served as the First United States Secretary of War from 1789 to 1794 being appointed by George Washington.
December 31, 1783-Dated Revolutionary War, Partly-Printed Document Signed, "H Knox M Gen'l" (Henry Knox Major General), officially discharging Joseph Bales after Three Years of service, from Continental Army service in the 4th Massachusetts Regiment, Very Fine. This extraordinary official reads, in full:

“BY THE HONOURABLE - MAJOR-GENERAL KNOX, - Commanding the AMERICAN FORCES on Hudson’s River. -- Joseph Bales Soldier in the Fourth Massachusetts Regiment, being inlisted for Three Years, is hereby honourably DISCHARGED from the Service of the United States. -- Given in the State of New-York, - the Thirty first Day of December 1783. -- By the Gereral’s Command, (Signed) H Knox M Gen'l”.

Below Printed: REGISTERED in the Books of the Regiment, - (Signed by his Adjutant)

Document measures 7” x 9”, (by sight), matted together with an engraved print of Henry Knox, measuring 2.5” x 3.75” to an overall size of 9.75” x 16.75”. Small spot at upper left reverse with light show-through, text typeset in black on fine quality laid period paper with the signature of General Knox easily readable written in brown ink, short separation at horizontal fold, docket on verso. Matte has a 6.75” x 4.75” opening on its reverse showing the docket and signatures on back of document, ready for display in a double-sided frame. This is the first example of this specially produced Continental Army Discharge Document we have seen and offered.
Henry Knox (July 25, 1750 – October 25, 1806) was a military officer of the Continental Army and later the United States Army, who also served as the first United States Secretary of War from 1789 to 1794.

Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, he owned and operated a bookstore there, cultivating an interest in books on military history and joining a local Artillery company.

When the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1775, he befriended General George Washington, and quickly rose to become the chief artillery officer of the Continental Army. In this role he accompanied Washington on most of his campaigns, and had some involvement in many major actions of the war. He established training centers for artillerymen and manufacturing facilities for weaponry that were valuable assets to the fledgling nation.

As the siege wore on, the idea arose that cannon recently captured at the fall of forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point in upstate New York could have a decisive impact on its outcome. Knox is generally credited with suggesting the prospect to Washington, who thereupon put him in charge of an expedition to retrieve them even though Knox's commission had not yet arrived.

Reaching Ticonderoga on December 5, Knox commenced what came to be known as the noble train of artillery, hauling by ox-drawn sled 60 tons of cannon and other armaments across some 300 miles of ice-covered rivers and snow-draped Berkshire Mountains to the Boston siege camps.

The region was lightly populated and Knox had to overcome difficulties hiring personnel and draft animals. On several occasions cannon crashed through the ice on river crossings, but the detail's men were always able to recover them.

In the end, what Knox had expected to take just two weeks actually took more than six, and he was finally able to report the arrival of the weapons train to Washington on January 27, 1776. Called by historian Victor Brooks "one of the most stupendous feats of logistics" of the entire war, Knox's effort is commemorated by a series of plaques marking the Henry Knox Trail in New York and Massachusetts.

Upon the cannon's arrival in Cambridge they were immediately deployed to fortify the Dorchester Heights recently taken by Washington. So commanding was the new battery over Boston harbor the British withdrew their fleet to Halifax.

With the siege ended, Knox undertook the improvement of defenses in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York City in anticipation of British attack there. In New York he met Alexander Hamilton, commander of the local artillery. The two men formed a close friendship that lasted until Hamilton's death in 1804. During his military service Knox also established a close friendship with fellow Massachusetts native (later General) Benjamin Lincoln.

Following the adoption of the United States Constitution, he became President Washington's Secretary of War. In this role he oversaw the development of coastal fortifications, worked to improve the preparedness of local militia, and oversaw the nation's military activity in the Northwest Indian War. He was formally responsible for the nation's relationship with the Indian population in the territories it claimed, articulating a policy that established federal government supremacy over the states in relating to Indian nations, and called for treating Indian nations as sovereign. Knox's idealistic views on the subject were frustrated by ongoing illegal settlements and fraudulent land transfers involving Indian lands.

He retired to what is now Thomaston, Maine, in 1795, where he oversaw the rise of a business empire built on borrowed money. He died in 1806 from an infection received after swallowing a chicken bone, leaving an estate that was bankrupt.