In the winter of 1776, a 25-year-old Boston bookseller reported to Gen. George Washington in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with news that would change the course of the Revolutionary War. Col. Henry Knox had just completed what historians call one of the most stupendous feats of logistics in American military history, hauling 60 tons of captured British artillery 300 miles through winter wilderness to break the siege of Boston. The journey that Knox estimated would take 16 or 17 days had taken 40.