Roger Williams
• Pastor of Plymouth Bay Colony
• Author of "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution"
• Author of "The Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy"
• Founder of Rhode Island colony
• Founder of Providence, Rhode Island
• Roger Williams University is named in his honor, a statue of Williams stands in the U.S. Capitol and the Roger Williams Memorial is in downtown Providence
Henry Knox
• Sons of Liberty member
• Continental Army artillery chief
• Veteran of Bunker Hill, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth and Yorktown
• Senior Officer of the U.S. Army
• First U.S. Secretary of War (under Articles of Confederation and Washington Administration)
• A Fort Knox in Kentucky and Maine, as well as Knoxville, Tennessee, and nine states’ Knox Counties, are named in his honor
Roger Williams (1603-1684) was a theologian and preacher in Massachusetts Bay Colony when he was exiled for protesting mandatory church tributaries and oaths of allegiance to the King and to God. He founded Providence in 1636 with other Separatists and penned The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution in 1644 and The Bloudy Tenet Yet More Bloudy in 1652.
Rhode Island colony flourished, despite being called "a sewer" by Puritan New England. Anne Hutchinson and other banished Separatists arrived in 1637. Under its first government in 1640 and then again in 1647 under a united Rhode Island government, a "liberty of conscience" was proclaimed. In 1652, Rhode Island became the first entity in North America to abolish slavery.
Williams’ principal thesis in The Bloudy Tenet was clear: "God’s people since the coming of the King of Israel, the Lord Jesus, have openly and constantly professed, that no civil magistrate, no king or Caesar has any powers over the souls or consciences of their subjects ..." and mingling the Church and civil governments was sinful and contradictory to Scripture; this wrongful innovation started with Emperor Constantine in AD 315, he argued. Two "mountains of crying guilt" have burdened those who used Christ’s name in vain, he stipulated, including "irreligious and inhumane oppressions and destructions" and "the blasphemies of their idolatrous inventions, superstitions and most unchristian conversations." Thomas Jefferson may have envisioned a "wall of separation" between church and state but Williams described a "hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world." The Ten Commandments, Williams reasoned, did not automatically apply to all human governance, but the "first tablet" should apply to the clergy and the "second tablet" should apply to secular government. In Yet More Bloudy, Williams heatedly argued, "The truth is, that herein all the priests in the world, Mahumetan, Popish, Pagan and Protestant, are the greatest peace-breakers in the world as they ... never rest stirring up princes and people against any ... that shall oppose their own religion and conscience ..." The introduction to The Bloudy Tenet includes a section addressed to Parliament where Williams argues that "the greatest yokes yet lying upon English necks" are spiritual statutes and acts passed over the centuries. He wrote, "All former Parliaments have changed these yokes according to their consciences (Popish or Protestant). ‘Tis now your Honors turn at helm, and ... so I hope your resolution, not to change ... but to ease the subjects and yourselves from a yoke . . ."
A statue of Williams is in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol and there is a Roger Williams National Monument in downtown Providence.
Henry Knox (1750-1806) of Massachusetts was the Continental Army’s chief artillery officer and the United States’ first Secretary of War. He participated in every major battle in the Northern Theater of the war.
He was a self-educated bookstore owner and learned everything he knew about artillery through reading. Knox was a member of the radical Sons of Liberty and a witness to the Boston Massacre in 1770. After joining the Boston Grenadier Corps in 1772, he experienced his first taste of warfare at the Battle of Bunker Hill (Breeds Hill) three years later. It was during the subsequent siege of Boston that Knox and Gen. George Washington became good friends.
To drive the British from Boston, Knox — just 25 years old — led an epic two-month-long expedition in winter 1775-1776 to bring dozens of artillery pieces from the captured Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York across mountains, frigid terrain, blizzards and frozen lakes to Dorchester Heights in southern Boston Harbor. "It appeared to me almost a miracle that people with heavy loads should be able to get up and down such hills," Knox wrote. "It is not easy to conceive the difficulties we have had." However, Knox anticipated snowfall and used it to his advantage by having the artillery pulled with sleds. With the artillery in place, the British fleet was forced to evacuate a few weeks later on March 17. Washington promoted Knox to Colonel of Artillery and later wrote about him that he "has deservedly acquired the character of one of the most valuable officers in the service ..." Yet, Knox’s wife, Lucy, would remain essentially homeless throughout the Revolution after her Loyalist parents fled Boston to England.
Knox was with the Continental Army during the defeat at New York in late 1776 but helped lead the army to victory at Trenton and Princeton that winter, being promoted to brigadier-general. "... the bulk of the officers of the army are a parcel of ignorant, stupid men," Knox said about the losses at New York, and he declared that new military academies should be established to "teach the art of war and every other encouragement possible to draw persons into the army that may give luster to our arms." He then fought at Brandywine and Germantown a year later and at Monmouth after enduring the winter encampment at Valley Forge in 1778, but he did take a brief furlough to see his family. Knox’s artillery was a vital key to victory at Yorktown in 1781, and he ended his stint in the war at the rank of major general, stationed at West Point.
After the war, Knox was selected Secretary of War by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation in 1785. On Sept. 12, 1789, he assumed duties as Secretary of War in the Washington Administration. As secretary, he urged and presided over the formation of a standing navy and the short-lived Legion of the United States to protect the frontier from Indians. Knox resigned his post and retired from public life in 1794 to help care for his family.
A Fort Knox in Kentucky and Maine, as well as Knoxville, Tennessee, and nine states’ Knox Counties, are named in his honor.
FORGOTTEN FOUNDING FATHERS TOURNAMENT BRACKET
Round 3
Washington Bracket
1. George Mason 58%
- William Penn 42%
Jefferson Bracket
1. Nathanael Greene 74%
- Richard Henry Lee 26%
Madison Bracket
- Roger Williams
- Henry Knox
Franklin Bracket
- John Jay
- Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben
FFFs and match-ups are determined by my interpretation of who I believe were the 32 greatest FFFs. Personal politics, favoritism and reader response was NOT a factor in selection or seeding. As for the tournament itself: each match-up will be conducted every 24 hours with a synopsis written by yours truly and readers can determine using the poll function who the winner should be for that match-up; there is no #1 overall seed; FFFs retain their seeds throughout; the winner of the Washington bracket will face the winner of the Jefferson bracket, and the winner of the Madison bracket will face the winner of the Franklin bracket; after having the first tie, I've decided the higher seed will win ties. I am not voting nor will I pick sides in discussion. I wish I could somehow do a more rigid time duration period for each round but there’s no guarantee I’ll be on a computer or awake at that time so I’m gonna say polling lasts until I post the next match-up, or roughly 24 hours later. Readers may choose whichever FFF contestant they wish, but the point of the tournament is to select the greatest Forgotten Founding Father — the most influential, most important, most impactful, who contributed the most to the Revolution and/or seeds of American liberty. Please read the original diaries in addition to the information provided above so you have all the information before voting. Have fun!