“I would that the task of voicing our sentiments upon this occasion, the impressions of this hour, had fallen to other and to abler hands than mine. I wish that some peerless orator, born of that great race from which he sprang, might tell us here whence came the greatness, the nobility, the grace and loveliness which were so gloriously his, and, in telling that, might teach our children how he came to that high state of manly quality which all the world now knows was his.
“But, friends of this great Society, whose well-bent efforts have done so much to give deserving heroes the credit which was rightly theirs, I know you will not let the awakened and quickening memories of this great soul for one moment hesitate in their progress toward wider and better appreciation.
“I know that my own shortcomings will be more than complemented by your larger opportunity of bringing within the circle of his admirers every patriotic citizen of this Republic. Nay, more, I hope the day will come when every State House in the land shall hold a tablet such as this, when every schoolboy shall read lessons from his life, when every human being who seeks partnership and title in the freedom of his kind shall, in his memory, cherish the name of Major General John Sullivan as one who deserves a niche unshadowed and a fame unscarred among the scanty array of those great souls whom the genius of Liberty proudly calls her own.
“This is not the fulsome word of hyperbole; it is not the sounding tinkle of rhetoric or idle eulogy. It is the measured testimony of those who have read aright the history of the great struggle for Independence, and have found therein no light or shadow in which the great soul of Major General Sullivan did not sparkle with the luster of a flawless diamond. And in this hour, beneath the lofty dome henceforth to shadow this memorial, in this free atmosphere which seems even now to echo with the guns he fired against his country’s foes, in this bright light, not purer than the soul he wore upon his sleeve, let us trace out a few of those strands of character which made him what he was, and, in our speaking, draw some inspiration from a few of the many debts which Liberty and our common country owe to him.
“Ah, my friends, the account is long. We find him early trained as a lawyer, and at the age of 32 Major of the New Hampshire Regiment; in the spring of 1774, a member of the Provincial Assembly of New Hampshire; in September of the same year and in 1775, a delegate to the Continental Congress, by which he was in June, 1775, appointed a Brigadier-General, and in 1776 a Major-General.
“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.’