John Witherspoon’s American Revolution

In 1768, John Witherspoon, Presbyterian leader of the evangelicalPopular party faction in the Scottish Kirk, became the College of NewJersey’s sixth president. At Princeton, he mentored constitutional architectJames Madison as a New Jersey delegate to the Continental Congress, hewas the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence. AlthoughWitherspoon is often thought to be the chief conduit of moral sense philosophyin America, Mailer’s comprehensive analysis of this founding father’swritings demonstrates the resilience of his evangelical beliefs. Witherspoon’sPresbyterian evangelicalism competed with, combined with, and even supersededthe civic influence of Scottish Enlightenment thought in the BritishAtlantic world.

John Witherspoon’s American Revolution examines the connectionbetween patriot discourse and long-standing debates—already central to the1707 Act of Union—about the relationship among piety, moral philosophy,and political unionism. In Witherspoon’s mind, Americans became differentfrom other British subjects because more of them had been awakenedto the sin they shared with all people. Paradoxically, acute consciousness oftheir moral depravity legitimised their move to independence by making ita concerted moral action urged by the Holy Spirit. Mailer’s exploration ofWitherspoon’s thought and influence suggests that, for the founders in hiscircle, civic virtue rested on personal religious awakening.