Major General John Sullivan was surrounded in a Brooklyn cornfield at the Battle of Long Island, firing a pistol in each hand rather than surrender. This episode traces his unpredictable life, from the son of an Irish schoolmaster whose family lost its standing under the penal laws to a despised foreclosure lawyer in Durham, New Hampshire, and then a militia leader who raided Fort William and Mary in 1774.

We follow his failed Quebec campaign, the decoy duck episode that angered John Adams, his key role at Trenton, the fog at Germantown, and the public letter that insulted the French admiral after the failed siege of Newport. We also examine the 1779 Sullivan Expedition against the Iroquois and the historical debate over how to label it, his secret loan from the French minister, and his later career leading New Hampshire.

• Why Washington kept trusting Sullivan despite repeated military and political blunders
• How his division held the Assunpink Creek bridge to trap the Hessian garrison at Trenton
• The destruction of 40 Iroquois villages and the thousands of refugees who fled to Fort Niagara
• How the town of Horseheads, New York got its name from the expedition’s packhorses
• His role as New Hampshire president, his push to ratify the Constitution, and his federal judgeship