34. Spotlight on District Court Judge Sullivan

Spotlight on District Court Judge Sullivan

In 1789, John Sullivan was appointed by President George Washington to serve as the first District Judge for the District of New Hampshire. A prominent patriot and statesman, Sullivan brought high esteem to the stature of the newly established court. Nonetheless, Sullivan is much better known for his contributions to the American Revolution than for his service on the bench.

The unlikely accomplishment of American independence required leaders who were skilled in political discourse as well as brave men suited for waging war. John Sullivan satisfied both of these requirements. The son of Irish immigrants (his father a schoolmaster), Sullivan’s intellect and confidence were evident from an early age. Employed at age 18 by Portsmouth lawyer Samuel Livermore to care for his horse and property, one evening a defendant came to the house when the lawyer was not at home. Figuring that anyone from the office would do, the defendant asked the teenager to take his case, and Sullivan agreed. When his employer returned home and learned where his hired hand had gone, he hurried to the Deacon Penhallow House and slipped into an adjoining room to hear Sullivan plead the man’s defense and secure an acquittal. The next morning, Mr. Livermore told his young caretaker that the kitchen was no place for him, and took him on as a student of the law.

Within a few years, Sullivan settled in Durham. An ambitious lawyer and mill owner, he was variously described by his contemporaries as bold, hot headed, oversensitive, generous, and -- due to time away from home during the Revolution -- often out of money. Early in his career he was friendly with Royal Governor John Wentworth, who awarded Sullivan a Major’s commission in the New Hampshire militia in 1772. He took a seat as Durham’s representative in the Provincial Assembly of New Hampshire in the spring of 1774, coinciding with Parliament’s promulgation of the Coercive Acts that countered the defiance of Boston Tea Party instigators. Sullivan’s fiery temperament and affinity for argument perfectly fit the rebellious cause. As a litigator he was already well known for persistently needling the opposition. In politics, he soon took obvious pleasure in challenging British colonial rule.

In August 1774, New Hampshire’s unsanctioned Provincial Congress sent Sullivan to Philadelphia as a delegate to the First Continental Congress, where his abilities were immediately put to use. By mid-October, the Congress adopted “Sullivan’s Draught”: a Declaration of Rights and Grievances that boldly proclaimed the rights of the American colonists “by the immutable laws of nature,” to “life, liberty, and property, [and] they have never ceded to any sovereign power whatever, a right to dispose of either without their consent.” The document decried Parliament’s imposition of taxes and other enactments “formed to enslave America.” (John Adams would later note: “[D]rawn by Mr. John Sullivan of New Hampshire, … these two declarations, the one of rights and the other of violations, … were two years afterwards recapitulated in the Declaration of Independence on the 4th of July, 1776.”). The document concluded with a resolution for the “peaceable measure” of a major trade boycott against the mother country.

Returning to New Hampshire, Sullivan pressed for popular support of the trade boycott. He held weekly training exercises for the Durham militia, defying a provincial limit of four times a year. In mid-December 1774, Sullivan led a brazen, late-night raid of munitions from Fort William & Mary on Newcastle Island, which Sullivan and his cohorts then managed to transport up the icy Piscataqua River for safekeeping from the British.

The convening of the Second Continental Congress in May 1775, just after the battles at Lexington and Concord, brought Sullivan back to Philadelphia. Although reconciliation with the Crown was still favored by some, the Congress recognized the need for a properly formed Continental Army. George Washington was named Commander-in-Chief, and other top officers were selected. One of eight men tapped as Brigadier, Sullivan immediately traded his private career and political posts for the rigors of active military service.

Sullivan dove headfirst into the conflict, at times attracting the criticism of politicians who considered him impulsive and brash. Eager for respect as a military commander, Sullivan traded barbs with his detractors and often lobbied Washington for assignments of distinction in which he could prove his worth.

By August 1776, anticipating a massive fight for New York City, Washington promoted Sullivan to Major General and placed him in command of a flank near Long Island’s Brooklyn Heights. Their battle plan was doomed when British scouts ambushed a patrol guarding a woodland pass behind Sullivan’s division. In the midst of the main fight, Sullivan’s men were suddenly surrounded and outnumbered by enemy troops. Accounts confirm Sullivan’s bravery and selflessness in combat: As turmoil reigned, he fought valiantly to secure a safe retreat for his troops. Riding between enemy formations with a pistol in each hand, he directed the action until he was eventually captured.

A prize hostage, in September he was paroled to convey an offer to Congress for negotiations to end the conflict. Following the unproductive peace conference (the Americans were not about to forego the independence they had just declared), Sullivan was exchanged for a captured British general.

Later that autumn, Washington’s beleaguered troops were in dire need of reinforcements at camp near Trenton Falls, Pennsylvania. Sullivan was serving under General Charles Lee, who, despite Washington’s requests, was in no hurry to move his troops from northern New Jersey. On the morning of December 13, the British nabbed Lee while he lounged in a tavern three miles from camp. Upon hearing this news, Sullivan promptly led Lee’s 2,000 soldiers to join Washington. Their early arrival made possible the famed Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River and surprise attack on Hessian troops in Trenton, where the Americans secured a much needed win. They crossed the river again on December 29th for a routing of British troops at Princeton, where Sullivan accepted surrenders in the college yard.

Sullivan saw combat numerous times in 1777, and wintered with Washington’s troops at Valley Forge. In 1778, after complaining that he deserved an independent assignment “where there was even a probability of acquiring honor,” Sullivan took command of the post at Rhode Island, where he was the first American officer to work with the Marquis de Lafayette’s French forces. (It was rumored that the Marquis, whose ambition rivaled Sullivan’s, challenged Sullivan to a duel at one point, but in the end their differences were worked out).

Sullivan’s final military assignment came in 1779, when Washington tasked him to lead an expedition against British-allied Iroquois tribes that were responsible for repeated, deadly raids on frontier settlements. From July through September, Sullivan’s men tackled the rough terrain and waterways of western New York in an extensive campaign to destroy tribal settlements throughout the region. Capped by a ferocious battle at Newtown, Sullivan’s army effectively robbed the British of both their allied fighters and a major food resource.

In weakened health and financial straits, Sullivan retired from the Army in the fall of 1779, and came home to New Hampshire. He revived his law practice (one notable client being Captain John Paul Jones) and reopened some millworks. The legislature returned him to the Continental Congress in 1780. He served as the state’s Attorney General (1782–1786) and Speaker of the House (1785). He was elected to three terms as President (Governor) of New Hampshire (1786, 1787 and 1789). In 1788 he played an essential role in securing New Hampshire’s ratification of the United States Constitution, and relished narrowly beating Virginia as the ninth state to do so, thereby establishing the constitutional republic.

John Sullivan welcomed President George Washington to Portsmouth in October of 1789, and accompanied the President in touring the town and harbor. This much-celebrated Presidential visit occurred just weeks after Washington had appointed Sullivan to the first judgeship for this District Court. By 1792, Sullivan’s rapidly declining physical and mental health made work impossible, and judges from other districts filled in for him. Perhaps in return for the patriotic devotion shown by Sullivan throughout the Revolution, there is no indication that his removal from the bench was ever considered. Sullivan died in 1795 at the age of 55.