Before Lexington: The First Strike

John Sullivan received Revere's warning on December 13, 1774, and had eighteen hours to decide what to do with it. The British were sending ships to reinforce the garrison at Fort William and Mary and lock down the powder stored there. Once that happened, the stores would be inaccessible. The fort's garrison was a captain and five soldiers. The powder inside was potentially invaluable to a militia that had very little of it. The practical opportunity might not come again.

Sullivan organized the raid in hours. On December 14, several hundred men moved toward New Castle Island. The garrison could not stop them. After the briefest exchange, the British captain lowered his colors and allowed the colonists to remove approximately one hundred barrels of gunpowder. A second group returned the next day for the cannon. Wentworth protested to London. The reinforcement came too late.

The powder from Fort William and Mary traveled to Bunker Hill. The men who planned those December raids understood exactly what they were doing. They were not yet calling it a revolution. But they were already fighting one.