Although the American Revolution was primarily planned and led by aristocrats and philosophers, it also depended for success upon local leaders, many of whom rose as best they could to the demands of the times. One of these little-known leaders was John Sullivan, a brigadier in Washington's army, called by Abigail Adams and "a man of sense and spirit, and " and by Thomas Burke of North Carolina and "the Marplot of our Army. and " Sullivan was at once a determined, courageous, and hard-working patriot, and an arrogant, ambitious man, so hypersensitive that Washington once wrote to him: and "No other officer of rank, in the whole army, has so often conceived himself neglected, slighted, and illtreated, as you have done, and none I am sure has had less cause than yourself to entertain such ideas. and " John Sullivan was the first lawyer to settle in the small New Hampshire town of Durham, and he built up his fortune by successfully collecting debts from his neighbors while still a young man. Because of his position and his legal training, he was a natural choice as a delegate from New Hampshire to the First Continental Congress in 1774, and there he met many of the men who were to become leaders of the Revolution. When the Second Continental Congress reluctantly took on the regulation of the army forming in Massachusetts, the fiery and radical Sullivan was the seventh brigadier selection. HIs controversial career in the Continental Army, to which the major portion of this study is devoted, lasted until the last months of 1779. He was involved in the campaigns near Boston, was sent to Canada just as the Canadian campaign was collapsing, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Long Island in 1776.