Fall 1776. Knox’s Vision for West Point

Fall 1776. Knox’s Vision for West Point. “The General [Washington] is as worthy a man as breathes, but he cannot do everything nor be everywhere. He [lacks] good assistants. There is a radical evil in our army—the lack of officers. We ought to have men of merit,” Henry Knox writes to his brother. Without naming names, Knox expresses his disappointment in the army’s officers. “Instead of which, the bulk of the officers of the army . . . make tolerable soldiers, but bad officers. . . We ought to have academies, in which the whole theory of the art of war shall be taught. . As the army now stands, it is a receptacle of ragamuffins.” http://ow.ly/i/eEQPb