Every state except Delaware would build at least one gunpowder mill, but only a third of the powder burned by American troops in the past two years had been made domestically, and much of that required imported saltpeter, the critical ingredient. Happily, resourceful smugglers from Holland, Spain, and France slipped through the British cordon to stock American magazines, including seven tons recently brought into Boston aboard the sloop Republic and another fifty tons from Nantes that arrived in New Hampshire in mid-May, aboard Mercure. Each month powder brigs, schooners, and sloops from St.
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