Sullivan was not a liar, and he himself says that his health was failing. If we care to plow through the many diaries kept by officers under him we can well believe that he told the truth, for with the spoiling of the provisions sent to the expedition most of the soldiers did suffer from chronic intestinal troubles, and it would be strange if the commander who takes the same fare as his subordinates should not suffer in the same manner.
And to back up this we must remember that even after he retired he never lost the confidence or the love of the greatest of them all, General Washington. Much has been written of General Sullivan's fallibilities, and fallibilities the greatest have.
We should remember that Sullivan was a Kelt. And through the centuries the Kelts have given us the lordliest orators and golden artists, but for tenacity of purpose no one has celebrated them.
General Sullivan when he was taken prisoner and fell under the influence of the British military power, and contrasting them with the meagerness that he had been accustomed to, for once his heart failed him and his soul sank within him, and it is no sorrow to his name to say that for the moment he thought the liberty of mankind in the Western continent was doomed.
He came from the British to us seeking peace, but after he was exchanged and in his old environment his true native Keltic courage returned and his after life was the life of an ardent patriot.
I do not think we give enough credit to the perceptions of the ignorant.
Suppose to ten thousand ignorant people this entirely hypothetical question should be stated: Around the globe is a people who for three hundred years had been fighting a tyrannical power and well nigh achieved success. Would it be right for a republic to step in and take them away from the power they were in rebellion against, and then this republic by force of arms prevent them from becoming an independent republic? State to ten thousand ignorant people this question, and they will shout with one voice "that it is not right." State this question to ten thousand college professors, and they will back and fill, debate and re-debate, and finally be fogged by their very knowledge and at last come to no conclusion at all.
It has never been sufficiently made clear that the classes fought the Revolutionary war. The educated, the elegant, the conservative, the well-to-do, in short the "better elements," were practically all with the British. While the broken, the ignorant, the discouraged, "the rabble," were the ones that won our liberty. Every single Tory that was expatriated could read and write, while I believe if the muster rolls of my own county, inhabited at that time by the educated Dutch, not one-third of those who enlisted could sign their names. So coldly did the wealthy Dutchman look upon the war that it was a common trick for him to send a slave to serve in the ranks instead of himself.
Sullivan by birth and position belonged among the former class, and yet in spite of position, broke with his own class and gladly took up the sword with the ignorant because he saw clearly that all social progress must from very necessity spring from the discontent of the Hoi Polloi. He was a true patriot for he lost his all by giving his attention to public rather than private affairs, and though respected by all and honored by his State, his last years were the years of gloom and the gathering clouds, for his life was beset by heartless creditors. The last scene is the saddest of all, for at his funeral his creditors tried to seize his body and would have done so, except that an old army general drew his pistols and drove off the bailiffs of the law. So was buried one of America's greatest patriots, a constant friend, a brave and good soldier, and a man who, take him ail in all, it is not an exaggeration to call "Great."