History has not done justice to the subject in telling flie story of Sullivan's expedition. There are few if any equally important events in our history of which the great majority of our people know so little. It was the most important military event of 1779, fully one-third of the Continental army being engaged in it. The campaign was carried on under great difficulties, was brilliantly successful, and executed with but small loss of life. It is possible that the movement would have received more attention from the historians had the loss of life been much greater, even if the results had been of less importance. The chief result was the practical destruction of the Iroquois Confederacy. While the Six Nations were very active on the frontier the following year, the Confederacy as an organization had received its death blow. The massacres at Wyoming, along the New York frontier, especially in the Mohawk, Scihoharie and Susquehanna valleys, had so aroused the people that the Continental Congress felt called upon to take action and on the 27th of February, 1779, passed a resodution directing Washington to take effective measures to protect the frontier. It was decided to send a strong expsdition against tlie Iroquois settlements, and utterly destroy their towns and crops, more especially in the territory of the Senecas and Cayugas. It was no small task to equip a large force and traverse an almost unknown, and altogether unmapped, wilderness whidh was wholly without roads, in the face of an active and vigilant as well as relentless foe. The command of the expedition was tendered to Genei'al Gates because of his rank. In reply to the tender of the command Genso NEW YORK STATE HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION.