the American Revolutionary War. In addition to sitting in the provincial congress, Sullivan was a leading organizer of colonial defenses in York County, sitting on its committee of correspondence and other bodies. He was sent in 1775 as part of a commission to inspect the troops and facilities at Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, which was nominally under the control of Benedict Arnold, who had been issued a Massachusetts colonel's commission and succeeded in capturing it with the assistance of Ethan Allen. The arduous journey made Sullivan ill for several months afterward. In late 1775 Sullivan was a member of the committee that drafted legislation establishing the Massachusetts State Navy. Under its terms, three positions were established for admiralty judges; Sullivan was appointed to be the admiralty judge for the eastern district (i.e. Maine) in addition to his other duties. During his period of service in the provincial congress he drafted a large amount of legislation and was tireless in his activities on many committees. He resigned this post when in March 1776 he was offered a seat on the Superior Court of Judicature (as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was then known). Judicial service and postwar activities At the time of his appointment to the bench, the position was seen as particularly risky, because it was a clear representation of anti-British authority whose placeholders were thought to be risking their lives should the British succeed in putting down the rebellion. The most noteworthy case Sullivan sat on was a preliminary hearing in Commonwealth v. Nathaniel Jennison, one of the Quock Walker cases where the court in 1783 decided that slavery was incompatible with the state constitution. Sullivan publicly expressed opposition to slavery, and predicted in his writings that the issue would become contentious in the future. Sullivan participated in the 1779 convention that drafted the new state constitution. Between 1780 and 1782 he and the rest of the court were active in harmonizing the state's laws with the document, revising and discarding old statutes, and assisting in the drafting of new ones. In 1779 Sullivan was awarded an honorary degree from Harvard College. He served on the court until 1782, when he resigned because his salary was insufficient to meet his expenses, and he could no longer afford to cover the difference. He opened a law office in Boston, and moved into a house in Menotomy (now Arlington,