Sullivan Campaign
Forks Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
This major expedition of the Revolution aimed at the Indian-Tory alliance in New York, was organized at Easton under Gen. John Sullivan. Over a month''s preparations preceded the first day''s march, begun near here June 18, 1779.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
In the summer of 1779, Easton became the staging ground for one of the Revolution's largest offensives against the Native and Loyalist alliance harrying the New York and Pennsylvania frontier. Under General John Sullivan, the army spent more than a month gathering men and supplies before beginning its march on June 18, 1779. The campaign that followed would drive deep into Iroquois country to the north.
Why it matters
The Sullivan Campaign was a pivotal and devastating chapter in the Revolution's frontier war, breaking the power of the Iroquois Confederacy and reshaping the future of the region for both Native peoples and settlers.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the summer of 1779, the American Revolution had settled into a long, grinding war, and its most brutal edge was not on the coast but on the frontier. Along the borders of New York and Pennsylvania, raids had left settlements burned and communities terrified. It was against this backdrop that a major expedition took shape — and Easton, in eastern Pennsylvania, became its staging ground.
Easton sat at a strategic meeting of rivers and roads, a natural gathering point for men and supplies. Organizing an army was no small thing: it meant assembling soldiers, food, wagons, boats, and munitions, and doing so took more than a month of painstaking preparation before a single mile was marched.
The marker records that the first day's march began near here on June 18, 1779 — the moment months of planning finally turned into movement, and one of the Revolution's largest offensives set out.
People & events
The expedition was placed under General John Sullivan, and it bears his name to this day. His task was daunting: to strike deep into the frontier at the alliance of Native and Loyalist ("Tory") forces whose raids had been devastating the northern borderlands.
Much of the Revolution is remembered as a clash of formal armies, but this was a different kind of war — a campaign aimed at breaking the power of an alliance operating far from the coastal battlefields. The month of preparations at Easton reflects how serious and deliberate the undertaking was.
From this starting point the army would march northward into the country of the Iroquois Confederacy. What happened there was harsh, and its consequences fell heavily on the Native peoples in the expedition's path — a dimension of this history that deserves to be remembered honestly alongside the military story.
Its place in the American story
The Sullivan Campaign was one of the largest offensive operations of the entire Revolution, and it reveals a side of the war often overlooked: the fierce struggle for control of the frontier. The outcome of independence was decided not only at places like Saratoga and Yorktown but also in these contested borderlands.
The campaign is widely understood to have broken the military power of the Iroquois Confederacy and reshaped the future of the region for generations — with lasting and often devastating consequences for the Native nations who lived there. It is a chapter that carries both strategic significance and real human cost.
That such a far-reaching operation was organized and launched from this ground gives the site genuine national weight. The war's frontier chapter has a beginning point, and this marker stands near it.
If you visit
You are in Forks Township, in the countryside near Easton where the Delaware and Lehigh rivers come together — the kind of well-placed crossroads that made the area a natural gathering point in 1779. The landscape today is quiet, which makes the scale of what began here all the more striking to imagine.
Stand at the marker and picture the effort behind a single word like "organized": weeks of wagons, provisions, and men converging on this region before the long march north could begin. It is a place that rewards a little imagination.
For travelers interested in the Revolution, this makes a thoughtful stop — a reminder that the war reached far beyond the famous battlefields. Give a moment, too, to the Native peoples whose homeland lay at the end of that march; understanding this site fully means holding both sides of its history in view.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · John Sullivan
Related events
- · Sullivan Campaign
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Sullivan Road (PLAQUE)
Forks Township, PA · est. 1929
This plaque marks the road over which Sullivan's army began its advance on June 18, 1779. Cutting and following such roads was itself a feat, as thousands of men, horses, and wagons of supplies moved through country with few improved routes. The path set the direction of a campaign that would carry deep into the lands of the Six Nations.
First Reformed Church
Easton, PA · est. 1953
Easton's First Reformed congregation gathered in 1745, and by 1776 — the very year of independence — its members had built and enlarged this church. In 1777 it hosted an Indian treaty council, one of the diplomatic gatherings that shaped relations between the young nation and Native peoples on the Pennsylvania frontier. During the Revolution the building also served as a military hospital, its pews and floors given over to the sick and wounded of the Continental cause.
Sullivan Expedition Against the Iroquois Indians, 1779 - Heller's Tavern (PLAQUE)
Wind Gap, PA · est. 1929
On June 18, 1779, Sullivan's troops set out on the first day of their long march toward Iroquois country, covering twelve miles before halting at Heller's Tavern. Wayside taverns like this were the natural waypoints of the era, offering the only fixed shelter along frontier roads. The plaque marks where the campaign's opening day came to a close.
Sullivan's March
Wind Gap, PA · est. 1947
On June 18, 1779, the first day's march of General Sullivan's expedition ended at Heller's Tavern near Wind Gap, where his weary army camped for the night. Stirring at four the next morning, the troops pressed on to cross the Blue Mountains through the natural pass at Wind Gap. Their route traced old paths through the ridges as they moved north toward the Iroquois heartland.