Knox was a corpulent, indulgent young man who had been a bookseller in Boston, and whose life style consisted of unshakable loyalty to and adulation of his commander in chief. His relationship to the few cannon that remained to the Continentals was like a father’s relationship to his surviving children after others have perished. Knox had always proved a thorn in Glover’s side; the loading and unloading of cannon every time they crossed a river, with Knox scolding and petulant, tried Glover sorely and left his men frustrated and angry. The British dealt with an army of trained men under possibly the most severe discipline in the military world of that time; Washington, on the other hand, led an army of untrained volunteers in which perhaps thirty percent of his men were already serving past their enlistment term. In other words, he had hundreds of men in his command whose contract of service had expired and who remained with him only because of his personal persuasiveness or because of the persuasiveness of hometown officers under whom they served.
