The First Victory of the American Revolution
Maine
Four months before the shots at Lexington and Concord, New Hampshire colonists struck the first military blow of the American Revolution right here on the Piscataqua River.
On December fourteenth and fifteenth, seventeen seventy-four, two groups of raiders attacked Fort William and Mary, the British garrison at the mouth of Portsmouth Harbor. Captain John Langdon led the first assault and carried off nearly one hundred barrels of gunpowder. The following day Major John Sullivan returned with a larger force and seized cannon and muskets.
The stolen powder and arms were hidden in towns across New Hampshire and later used at the Battle of Bunker Hill. The British never recovered them. No one was killed in the raid, but the colonists had seized a royal fort and walked away with its arsenal. The commemorative marker here was placed in nineteen oh two, calling the event what historians still call it: the first victory of the American Revolution.
