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 sufiiciently 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 d'iscour-

22 NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.

aged, " the rabble," were the ones that won our Hberty. 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.