These were generously brought out in great profusion.

From 1776 by David McCulough. Page 85.  Henry Knox was one of the great leaders in the American Revolution, often little paid attention to in current accounts.  Was in charge of artillery of which there was very little at the beginning of the war.  Fort Ticonderoga up towards Canada had fallen to a small American expeditionary force.  Knox proposed, and was appointed to lead, an expedition to Ticonderoga to retrieve abandoned British artillery there.  This was in the middle of the winter.  He delivered under remarkable circumstance.

“News of the advancing procession raced ahead of the lead sleds, and, as Knox had imagined, people began turning out along the route to see for themselves the procession of the guns from Ticonderoga.

“Our armament here was a great curiosity,” wrote John Becker of the reception at the town of Westfield. “We found that very few, even among the oldest inhabitants, had ever seen a cannon.” Becker, at age twelve, had never known such excitement.

We were the great gainers by this curiosity, for while they were employed in remarking upon our guns, we were, with equal pleasure, discussing the qualities of their cider and whiskey. These were generously brought out in great profusion. 

At Springfield, to quicken the pace, Knox changed from oxen to horses, and on the final leg of the journey the number of onlookers grew by the day.

The halt came at last about twenty miles west of Boston at Framingham. The guns were unloaded, Knox, meantime, having sped on to Cambridge.

Knox’s “noble train” had arrived intact. Not a gun had been lost. Hundreds of men had taken part and their labors and resilience had been exceptional. But it was the daring and determination of Knox himself that had counted above all. The twenty-five-year-old Boston bookseller had proven himself a leader of remarkable ability, a man not only of enterprising ideas, but with the staying power to carry them out. Immediately, Washington put him in command of the artillery.

To those who rode out from Cambridge to Framingham to look over the guns, it was clear that the stalemate at Boston was about to change dramatically.