Before 1775 he was acknowledged as leader at the bar in all of those counties, where John Adams, the second president of the United States, was for several years one of his competitors; not only was he a great lawyer but he also engaged extensively in business, owning several mills and much real estate; at the opening of the war it was estimated he was worth £40,000; most men with such holdings would have hesitated much before rebelling against the king of England; John Sullivan did not hesitate; he took the lead and was commander of the expedition which committed the first overt act of war in the Revolution, by capturing and removing the gunpowder from Fort William and Mary at Newcastle, Dec. 14, 1774; of course you all know the story; the hundred barrels of powder were taken up the river to Durham and hid in various places; a larger part was placed in the cellar of the old church near General Sullivan’s residence; the monument to his memory now stands on the spot. Some of that powder was used at the battle of Bunker Hill; all of it was used in the Revolutionary War, except a small bottleful which Maj. John Demeritt of Madbury now has, being handed down to him as an inheritance from his ancestors; this capture of the powder was four months before the Lexington and Concord affair. While attending to his law business and his sawmills and lumbering, he had taken a hand in the local military affairs, and in 1774 was major of the regiment of militia in his section of the province; Governor Wentworth could not persuade him to hold it after the little affair at Fort William and Mary; he was delegate to the first Continental Congress in 1775; he was appointed brigadier-general in the Continental army in 1775; a major-general in 1776; commanded the New Hampshire troops at Germantown and Brandywine; commander-in-chief in the Rhode Island campaign in 1778; commander-in-chief in the great and hazardous expedition against the Six Nations in 1779, which resulted in the overthrow of the most complete organization of the Indians ever effected on this continent. To commemorate this great service of General Sullivan the state of New York has erected costly tablets on the spots where the most important encounters took place.