When the first Chief Justice,
John Jay, left the bench, his successor, John Rutledge, was an
Ulster-Scot. Washington's first cabinet contained four members--two of
them were Scotch and the third was an Ulster-Scot. Out of the
fifty-six members who composed the Congress that adopted the
Declaration of Independence eleven were of Scottish descent. It was in
response to the appeal of a Scot, John Witherspoon, that the
Declaration was signed; it is preserved in the handwriting of an
Ulster-Scot who was Secretary of the Congress; it was first publicly
read to the people by an Ulster-Scot, and first printed by a third
member of the same vigorous body of early settlers.
George Bancroft will hardly be accused of holding a brief for the Scot
in American history but, with all his New England predilections, he
frankly records this conclusion: "We shall find the first voice
publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great
Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of
New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians." It was Patrick Henry, a Scot, who kindled the popular
flame for independence. The foremost, the most irreconcilable, the
most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were
those whom the bishops and Lord Donegal & Company had been pleased to
drive out of Ulster.
The distinguished place which men of Scottish or of Ulster origin had
asserted for themselves in the councils of the Colonies was not lost
when the Colonies became independent States.
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