Free Henry Knox by Mark Puls Page B

sacrificed so much to achieve during the war. Realizing this, Henry carefully crafted his appeal by prodding Washington with an almost irresistible temptation: "It would be circumstance highly honorable to your fame, in the judgment of the present and future ages, and doubly entitle you to the glorious epithet—Father of Your Country."
    This is believed to be the first time that anyone of significance referred to George Washington as the "father of his country." It is likely that Knox was drawing parallels between Washington and other historical figures who had been given paternal homage, such as Cicero in 64 B.C. and Peter the Great in 1721. 26
    To Knox's satisfaction, Washington informed him in a letter dated Friday, April 27, that he would attend the convention. Knox was genuinely concerned for the fate of his country, but his own personal fortunes were also completely tied up in the success of the nation and its government. He was deeply in debt, in part because he and Lucy loved to entertain and were unable to curtail their spending. As one of the handful of individuals who held a national office, he needed the federal government to become effective for his own prosperity. The waning state of the confederation troubled him on a visceral level; an American collapse threatened all that he had worked for during the agonizing hardships of the war, the sacrifice he made in giving up his most energeticyouthful years to public duty as well as the promise of a future basking in the honors due a leader of a new nation.
    Without a stable government, his army pension was in jeopardy. American dollars would remain nearly worthless unless a federal government could back the currency and stabilize the economy. Knox seemed to internalize the national troubles. In April he wrote to Winthrop Sargent, his former artillery captain and fellow Cincinnati member, that he felt like "the most wretched man on earth . . . the poverty of the public is so great that all national operation might soon cease.“ 27
    Knox received regular updates from Constitutional Convention delegates working in the sequestered sessions of the secretive deliberations, including notes from George Washington, Elbridge Gerry, and Rufus King. On May 27, King notified Henry that Washington had been named president of the convention, as he had predicted. 28
    In July, he received a letter from an exasperated King: "I wish it was in my power to inform you that we had progressed a single step since you left us.“ 29
    Henry and Lucy's life then took another downward spiral in August when their one-year-old daughter, Caroline, died from an infection. From Philadelphia, Washington wrote an August 19 letter of condolence: "[I] am sure, however severe the trial, each of you have fortitude enough to meet it. Nature, no doubt, must feel severely before calm resignation will over come it."
    In the same letter, he confessed that the deliberations at the Constitutional Convention were proving tedious: "By slow, I wish I could add and sure, movements, the business of the Convention progresses; but to say when it will end, or what will be the result, is more than I can venture to do.“ 30
    The slow process came to a successful conclusion by Monday, September 17, when delegates adjourned with a draft of a completely new Constitution.
    Knox received the news with joy. The proposed system for a federal government was not dissimilar to the plan that he had outlined in his letter to Washington earlier in the year. Although he did not believe the new Constitution was perfect, he believed that it would create a more vigorous government and cement the union. Much of the language of the draft had been composed by Pennsylvania's Gouverneur Morris, whom he had written four years earlier with the strong suggestion that just such a convention be held.
    Although Knox had not been a delegate to the constitutional convention, he had played a major role in rounding up support for the proceedings