“Yet even while he was, at 34, only a New Hampshire Major, he had accomplished perhaps the most daring personal feat of the Revolution in the seizure of the powder and arms at Fort William and Mary in Portsmouth Harbor. Do you realize what that meant? Little more than a boy, anticipating, as he always anticipated, troubles to come, he dealt a crushing blow to the greatest power on earth, a boy with a dozen companions, and he sounded in that one daring act the keynote of that grand chorus of Liberty whose majestic final chords were heard in the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. “I challenge the world to find a busier or more useful life than his for the five years from 1774 to 1779. No wonder, my friends, that no memorial can do justice to this. We find him on Winter’s Hill at the siege of Boston, working with all the energy of a vigorous manhood and high purpose; again at Portsmouth to advise and assist in warding off a menaced attack from the British fleet; thence hastily ordered to New York to aid General Putnam with a powerful detachment. “The pressing needs of the imperiled American army in Canada caused General Washington, in the spring of 1776, to hurry him off with six regiments to join its Commander at the earliest possible moment. Do you realize, my friends, what a journey to Canada with six regiments—a hasty journey—meant in those days? Yet Sullivan was there, only to see the death of the Commander whom he had been ordered to assist, from a malignant attack of smallpox; and himself suddenly succeeded to the place of Chief Commander of the entire expedition. “Nothing could exceed the vigor and discretion of his work as Commander of this most difficult expedition. Washington wrote of him at this time—and I love to quote of this man who has always been my historical ideal the words of the greatest mind in war and peace this country has ever known—Washington wrote of him at this time: ‘He is active, spirited and zealously attached to the cause. His wants are common to us all. He wants experience to move upon a grand scale, for the limited and contracted knowledge which any of us have in military matters stands in very little stead.’ “But Washington’s most competent biographer, Washington Irving, declares with emphasis and truth: ‘This want was overbalanced on the part of General Sullivan by sound judgment, some acquaintance with men and books, and an enterprising genius.’