To George Washington from Henry Knox, 15 January 1797
From Henry Knox
Boston 15 January 1797
My dear sir
Possessing as I do a thousand evidences of your friendship, I am persuaded that you will readily beleive me, when I say that my silence of late, has been the effect of my unwillingness to intrude, lest I should for a moment prevent the consideration and different views, you give to the important subjects incessantly before you.
Although the same cause continues to prevent my interruption, yet I am apprehensive sometimes, that you may think me unmindful of your kindnesses, especially after the receipt of yr affectionate letter by Mr Bingham, the last summer.1 The loss of two lovely children on which, you condoled in that letter, has been recently revived and encreased by the death of our son of seven years of age, bearing your name. His health has always been delicate, having been born prematurely. We flattered ourselves that his constitution would mend with his years, but we have been disappointed.2 Unfortunate indeed have we been in the death of eight of our children, requiring the exercise of our whole stock of Philosophy and Religion.3 We find ourselves afflicted by an irresistible but invissible power to whom we must submit. But the conflict is almost too great for the inconsolable Mother who will go mourning to her grave.
We have lately come from St Georges to pass the Winter in this Town. Indeed this is our general plan. We may however as we grow older find it inconvenient. We are distant about two hundred miles by land, which we may easily ride in six days the snow being on the ground, or with wheels with a little improvement of a small portion of the road. The taverns on the route are as good as on any other two hundred miles on the continent.
I am beginning to experience the good effects of my residence on my lands. I may truly say that the estate is more than double in its value since I determined to make it my home. The only inconvenience we experience is the want of Society. This will probably lessen dayly. Our communication by Water to this Town is constant and cheap. We can obtain the transportation of any article from this Town to St Georges, cheaper than the same can be called from any store to the Vessel.4 This egotism would require an apology to any other person than yourself.
For your own sake I rejoice at the near approach of your retirement. In it, I pray God that you may enjoy all the felicity of which the human condition is susceptible. The consciousness of having acted well, would under any circumstances, have elevated your soul above the peltings of storms raised by Malice and envy—But in addition to this consciousness, the consecration of your retirement, by the unlimited gratitude of your Country, must present in the decline of your life the most perfect reward.
I flatter myself before you leave the helm you will have dissipated the clouds rais⟨ed⟩ by the causeless jealousy of the french administration. If not, we must appeal from them mad and drunk with power as they may be, to the time when they shall have recovered their senses. We have not injured them, but have only taken, those due precautions which our own happiness required. If they madly continue to war against our innocent and rightful commerce,5 we must make an account thereof, and look for compensation through all the events of ages, and we shall assuredly find it at some period or other with full interest. But I hope we shall not under any circumstances at present attempt reprisals. Their fit of insanity cannot last long. St Domingo is, and will be in the course of this Winter, the victim of the villany of its administration. The Whites will either be starved or murdered by the blacks.6
It cannot be expected that there will be any danger of the french attempting an invasion of our country—But if they should, we must resist. And this appears to be the only case in which we should suffer ourselves to be dragged into the war.
What an eventful Winter this will be at Paris! especially if the Army of Italy should be arrested or defeated in addition, to the retreat of the two armies of Jourdan and Moreau from Germany.7
From information generally circulating here, and particularly from a person who has the last autumn arrived from France in which he resided for several years, no doubt rests in my mind but the measures of the french administration towards this Country have been excited by the americans in Paris in consequence of letters received from persons of the same opinions in the United States.8
I had not intended to intermix any politics in this letter, which I meant solely as the recognition of a grateful heart—But they have thrust themselves in unawares. Mrs Knox unites with me in presenting Our respectful and affectionate attachments to You and Mrs Washington and I am my dear Sir Your ever devoted friend
H. Knox
ALS, DLC:GW; ADfS, NNGL: Knox Papers. GW replied to Knox on 2 March.
1. GW’s letter to Knox of 8 June 1796 had been carried by U.S. senator William Bingham, who traveled to Boston to see Knox.
2. The Boston Gazette, and Weekly Republican Journal for 2 Jan. 1797 reported the death of “Master Washington Knox,” Henry Knox’s son George Washington Knox (1790–1797). Knox’s other son of the same name had died in 1789 (see Knox to GW, 17 Aug. 1789 [first letter], and n.3 to that document). For the recent deaths in April 1796 of two of Knox’s other children, Augusta Henrietta and Marcus Bingham Knox, see GW to Knox, 8 June 1796.
3. In addition to Augusta Henrietta, Marcus Bingham, and George Washington, Knox had five other deceased children by this time: Julia (d. 1779), Marcus Camillus (1781–1782), Marcus Camillus (1783–1791), Caroline (1786–1787), and George Washington (1787–1789).
4. Knox and his family returned to Boston from his estate Montpelier, located in present-day Thomaston, Maine.
Situated on the St. George River, the mansion at Montpelier was completed by June 1795, when Knox and his family arrived there from Philadelphia. Designed by architect Ebenezer Dunton, the white, rectangular, four-story mansion was adorned with a portico and twenty-four fireplaces. On his estate, Knox established sawmills, a lime works, and other projects. Heavy debts forced him to sell part of his land and mortgage Montpelier by 1798. Montpelier nevertheless served as the site of Knox’s funeral in 1806 (see , 218–26, 246; and , 171, 179–85).
5. The French Directory’s decree of 2 July 1796 subjected neutral vessels bound for British ports to capture. Franco-American relations further deteriorated after then-French minister Pierre-Auguste Adet wrote letters of 27 Oct. and 15 Nov. 1796 to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering, which criticized U.S. policies (see GW to Alexander Hamilton, 2 Nov. 1796, and n.2 to that document; and Hamilton to GW, 19 Nov. 1796, and n.5).
6. The rise of François-Dominique Toussaint L’Ouverture as lieutenant-governor of Saint Domingue in 1796 had marked the beginning of black rule there. Furthermore, French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax’s efforts to incite the massacre of whites by blacks contributed to a Saint Domingue ravaged by civil war. The French commissioners there also had issued a decree declaring whites, mulattos, and slaves to be citizens of the French Republic (see Philadelphia Gazette & Universal Daily Advertiser, 3 June 1796). The Federal Gazette & Baltimore Daily Advertiser for 7 Dec. 1796 printed a report that relayed intelligence of “the massacre of 150 whites at Aux-Cayes.” The same report added: “Thirty one American captains whose vessels had been condemned, had taken passage for the states on board one vessel.” For more on the rise of black rule in Saint Domingue, see Scott and Rothaus, Historical Dictionary of the French Revolution, 1789–1799, 860–63.
7. Napoleon Bonaparte’s Army of Italy campaigned against the Austrians in Italy and won a key victory at the Battle of Rivoli on 14–15 Jan. 1797. Jean-Baptiste Jourdan, commanding the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, had been defeated in September 1796 by the Austrians at Würzburg, Germany. Also, Jean-Victor Moreau, commander of the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, sustained defeats near Freiburg at the hands of the Austrians in October 1796. He was forced to withdraw from Germany into France, despite having won earlier victories in southern Germany. For other French defeats, see Charles Cotesworth Pinckney to GW, 25–28 Jan., and n.11.
In December 1796, Jean-Victor Moreau (1763–1813) assumed joint command of both the Army of the Rhine and Moselle, and the Army of the Sambre and Meuse. He continued to serve in the French army until 1801. After conspiring against Napoleon and falling into disfavor with him, Moreau was imprisoned. He went into self-imposed exile in the United States from 1804 to 1813. He later returned to Europe, where he died.
8. According to personal and newspaper accounts from 1796 and 1797, Americans in Paris who held pro-French attitudes and sympathies skewed the French government’s perception of public opinion in the United States regarding France. In August 1796, John Quincy Adams had informed his father that there was “at present in Paris one if not more of the South Carolinians who accepted the Commissions of [Edmond Charles] Genet [to drive the Spanish out of Florida]. … He has made himself very conspicuous among the Americans, by every species of censure upon the President, and the Government of the United States. He has probably too much encouragement for such conduct and conversation, which by means of him and other similar characters is so industriously spread among the Americans in Paris, as to make the french naturally conclude it must be the general public opinion in America” (John Quincy Adams to John Adams, 13 Aug. 1796, MHi: Adams Papers). The Massachusetts Mercury (Boston) for 20 Jan. 1797 printed an article that reads in part: “As the Americans in Paris have done their utmost to pursuade the French Directory that the people here abhor the [Jay] treaty.” Also, pro-French correspondence had been sent to former U.S. minister to France James Monroe. For instance, on 29 Sept. 1796, Virginia congressman James Madison wrote Monroe: “the valedictory address of the president [Farewell Address] … shews that he [is] compleatly in the snares of the British faction … as to remove every facility to an improvement of our commercial relations with France” (, 4:103–4).