[1] He attended Albany Law School, where he studied alongside several other prominent lawyers of his era, including Rufus W. Peckham, Redfield Proctor, and William Freeman Vilas.

[2] At the start of the war, Knight was one of the first young men in Dover to respond to President Abraham Lincoln's call for 75,000 volunteers for three months service.

The regiment was assigned to guard duty in Baltimore, but Knight was part of a detachment which joined the federal forces participating in the First Battle of Bull Run.

When his three month term expired, he was commissioned a captain and appointed assistant adjutant general of volunteers by President Lincoln.

[2] In the spring of 1862, he accepted commission as captain in the regular army and joined the 18th U.S. Infantry Regiment a few days after the conclusion of the Siege of Corinth.

The 18th U.S. was attached to the Army of the Cumberland and participated in their retreat from Mississippi and Alabama, through Tennessee and Kentucky, to Louisville, then engaged in maneuvers culminating in the Battle of Perryville.

[2] He returned to his regiment after their defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga, and met them at Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the union forces under William Rosecrans were effectively surrounded.

The day after the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Knight, whose medical conditions were well known, was ordered to proceed to Detroit for duty as assistant to the provost marshal general of Michigan.

In 1969, President Grant persuaded him to accept a final appointment as Indian agent to the Lake Superior Chippewa in northern Wisconsin.

After about a year serving as Indian agent, he resigned his commission and returned, after a decade of military service, to the practice of law.