PRESBYTERIAN FOUNDERS
of
the United States of America
by
William J. Skinner
Presbyterians were among the immigrants
to the American Colonies during the 1600s and 1700s.
They came from England,
Ireland, Scotland and other places to help settle the United States.
There also were Episcopalians/Anglicans, Congregationalists, Lutherans, Quakers, Dutch Reformed and fewer numbers of Huguenot, Unitarian, Methodist and Calvinists in the population. There were even a few Jews in New York escaped
from Brazil expecting problems from the Spanish and others. In
2019 the Presbyterians have splintered like other denominations and they no
longer bear an outsized part in governmental affairs. Nevertheless, their success in helping to found
the USA should be remembered as an example to follow as temptations always challenge
the country.
This summary review concerns only those who were known to be Presbyterian. The religion of many participants in
the
Founding of the United
States was not known
and cannot now be determined without
more extensive research
than has been done. “So strong was
the power of religious orthodoxy to compel uniformity in eighteenth-century America that the Founding
Fathers obsessively concealed their religious opinions,
if tinctured ever so slightly by the unconventional. The result has been a
cottage industry among historians trying to puzzle out the religious convictions of the Founders,
leading to a
stream of publications on
such
topics as ‘Was Alexander Hamilton a Christian
Statesman?’” 1
The
religion of
many
Founders is unknown, probably because they preferred it that way. Remember the old saying, “Religion and politics
should not be discussed at the dinner table.” This played a
much larger role in etiquette
in the 18the century. But there were also evangelists among the population causing Enlightenment, revivals and conversions during the years leading
to the founding of the United States.
What is
known about Presbyterians comes from multiple sources. These sources are attributed in this paper when possible. While most of the Presbyterians who took part in the Revolutionary
War and the several
first meetings were men, the women played a very large part in taking care of the home and children
while the men attended the meetings
and fought the subsequent Revolutionary War. Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, the only minister
to sign the Declaration of Independence, for example had two wives, the first
gave him five children as did the second.
Only five children survived.
We know that Martha Washington was with George Washington in Valley Forge before the battles became favorable to the Colonial
Army. Abigail
Adams was home with the boys while John Adams was in England
as Ambassador. Other women were at home doing their part during all of Revolutionary
period. Some of
the Founders (men and women) did not survive the conflicts
and founding of our Nation.
The Founders were people who were elected to be delegates
from individual Colonies, signers of documents at special
meetings, and those
at home who arose to the occasion and supported
the groundswell to establish a new and
independent nation.
Founders include those who struggled
for years against the British.
With the Revolutionary War, starting
in 1776, through
the War of 1812, ending in 1814, there were hundreds
of members of the Continental Congress, under the Confederation,
and the Congress under the Constitution. This also means there were hundreds
and probably thousands in each state for all those
years that should be considered Founders.
Some of these people had roles and made efforts that we will never know. But all are saluted and remembered as we can in order to do justice
to their participation
in a great experiment of founding a Government of, by and for the people
for the first time in the history
of the world.
Partly because of what others say about your religion is enough of a reason
to keep it private.
For example, John Adams wrote to Alexander Johnson,
March 24, 1824 to comment on Presbyterians. “I can not concur, however, in your
preference in Presbyterianism. The presbytery have too much priestly
Authority in matters of faith like that which is claimed
by the Episcopal Church.
And the doctrine
of
both the Churches
are too Calvinistical for me as well as too hierarchial.” Adams Papers (microfilm) reel 124, Library
of Congress. 2
Another example is Thomas Jefferson’s writings about Presbyterian clergy. “The Presbyterian clergy are the loudest, the most intolerant of all sects, the most tyrannical, and ambitious; ready at the word of the lawgiver,
if such a word could
now be obtained, to put the torch
to the pile, and to rekindle in this virgin hemisphere, the flames which their oracle Calvin consumed the poor Servetus,
because he could not find in his Euclid the proposition which has demonstrated that three are one, and one is three, nor subscribe
to that of Calvin that
magistrates have a right to exterminate all heretics
to Calvinistic
creed. They pant to reestablish by law that holy inquisition, which they
can only now infuse into public
opinion.” Thomas Jefferson to William Short,
April 13, 1820. 3
One website (www.adherents.com) study of
these men assigns the title “Founding
Fathers” to 204 unique
individuals. 4 Some had multiple roles. This number is
the size of a medium sized Presbyterian church in 2010.
Today there are many smaller churches and a few mega churches.
These 204 people did one or more of the following:
-
Signed the Declaration of Independence
-
Signed the Articles
of Confederation
-
Attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787
-
Signed the Constitution of the United States of America
-
Served as Senators in the First Federal Congress (1789-1791)
-
Served as U.S. Representatives in the First Federal Congress
Of the 204 there were 35 Presbyterians (about 1/6th of the total) which
was more than any other group except Episcopalians/Anglicans with 88 persons.
Many of the Colonies supported the Anglican
Churches with taxes, a practice that ended after the founding
of the country. Presbyterians were supported by
personal contributions and missionary donations from Europe
and no evidence
has been found that colony or state taxes ever supported them.
Among the Signers
of the Declaration
of Independence and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention the religious affiliations of all are identified. However, among signers of
the Articles
of Confederation there are 18 protestants with their denomination unknown. Among the
first U.S. Congress the religious
affiliations of 5 Senators
and 20 House members is unknown.
Listed below are the 35 Presbyterians among
the 204 Founders defined above.
Signers of
the Declaration of Independence indicated with an asterisk * listed in different signing categories
James Wilson
of Pennsylvania (also Episcopalian and Deist) *Lawyer
- Died 8/21/1798
Thomas McKean of Delaware* Lawyer -
Died 6/24/1817
Mathew Thornton of New Hampshire – Physician – Died 6/24/1803
Abraham Clark of New Jersey – Lawyer/Surveyor – Died 9/15/1794
John Hart of New Jersey
– Land Owner – Died 5/11/1779
Richard Stockton of New Jersey – Lawyer – Died 2/28/1781
John Witherspoon of New Jersey –
Minister – Died 11/15/1794
William Floyd of
New York – Land Speculator – Died 8/4/1821
Phillip Livingston of New York – Merchant
– Died 6/12/1778
James Smith of
Pennsylvania – Lawyer – Died 7/11/1806
George Taylor of Pennsylvania – Merchant – Died 2/23/1781
Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania – Physician – Died 4/19/1813
Signers of the Articles
of Confederation
Thomas McKean of Delaware* - Lawyer - Died 6/24/1817
John Witherspoon of New Jersey*- Minister - Died 11/15/1794
John Walton of Georgia - Planter
– Died 1783
Nathaniel Scudder of New Jersey – Physician
– Died 10/17/1781
Delegates to
the Constitutional Convention Signing Delegates
Abraham Baldwin of
Georgia (also a Congregationalist) – Minister5/Lawyer – died 3/4/1807
William Samuel
Johnson of Connecticut (also an Episcopalian) – Lawyer
– died 11/14/1789
William Blount of North Carolina
(also an Episcopalian) – Politician –
Died 3/21/1800
.James Wilson
of Pennsylvania (also an Episcopalian and Deist)* -Lawyer –Died 8/21/1797
Gunning Bedford, Jr. of
Delaware – Lawyer
– Died 3/30/1812
James McHenry of Maryland
– Physician – Died 5/3/1816
William Livingston
of New Jersey –
Lawyer – Died 7/25/1790
William Paterson of New Jersey – Lawyer – Died 9/9/1806
Hugh Williamson of North
Carolina – Educator – Died 5/22/1819
Jared Ingersoll of Pennsylvania – Lawyer – Died 10/31/1822
Alexander Hamilton of
New York (also was raised as a Huguenot (Presbyterian) and
was also an Episcopalian) – Lawyer – Died 7/12/1804
Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey (also an Episcopalian) - Lawyer
– Died 10/9/1824
John Blair of Virginia
(also an Episcopalian) - Lawyer – Died 8/31/1800
Non-Signing Delegates
James McClurg of Virginia – Physician – Died 7/9/1823
William C. Houston of New Jersey – Teacher – Died 8/12/17
William R. Davie of North Carolina –
Lawyer – Died 11/29/1820
Alexander Martin of North Carolina – Politician –
Died 11/2/1807
First U.S. Congress
Senators
Jonathan Elmer of New Jersey – Physician
– Died 9/3/1817
William Paterson of New Jersey*
- Lawyer – Died 9/9/1806
House of Representatives
Benjamin Bourne of
Rhode Island – Lawyer – Died 9/17/1808
William
Smith of Maryland –
Merchant – Died 3/27/1814
Hugh Williamson of North
Carolina*– Educator – Died 5/22/1819
Elias Boudinot of New Jersey -- Lawyer – Died 10/24/1821 ** See Footnote 4, above.
Other Presbyterian Founders
Second President of Continental Congress under Articles of Confederation
Elias Boudinot of New Jersey a Delegate
and a Representative from New Jersey; born in Philadelphia, Pa., May 2, 1740; received a classical
education; studied law; was admitted to the bar in 1760 and commenced
practice in Elizabethtown, N.J.; member of the board of trustees
of Princeton College 1772- 1821; member of the committee of safety in 1775;
commissary general of prisoners in the Revolutionary Army 1776-1779; Member of the Continental Congress in 1778,
1781, 1782 and 1783, serving
as President in 1782 and 1783, and signing
the treaty of peace with England;
resumed the practice
of law; elected as a Pro-Administration candidate to
the First, Second, and Third Congresses (March 4, 1789-March 3, 1795); was not a candidate
for renomination
in 1794 to the Fourth Congress; Director of the Mint from October 1795 to July 1805,
when he resigned; elected first
president of
the American
Bible Society, in 1816; died
in Burlington, Burlington County, N.J., October 24, 1821; interment in St. Mary’s Protestant Episcopal
Church Cemetery. 6
“The Huguenot progenitor [Elias’ grandfather] of the Boudinot
family in this country
left his ancestral home in Marans, near La Rochelle, famous in the wars of the League, immediately upon the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes,
and settled with his family in the city of New York, in 1687, where he was one of the founders of the French church, and its first elder. It is a suggestive incident that among the acts of hostility to which he had been subject before
his emigration, was a judicial prosecution for employing a private tutor of the Reformed
faith in the education
of his children.”
“Elias Boudinot, third in
direct descent
from this ancestor, was born in 1740,
and was baptized by the Rev. George Whitefield. He studied law at
Princeton with Richard Stockton, signer of the Declaration
of Independence, who had married his elder sister. At the age of twenty he commenced the practice
of his profession at
Elizabethtown, where, two years after, he
married the sister of Mr. Stockton.
Attached to the Presbyterian Church, he was made president
of its board of trustees when only twenty-five years of age. Elizabethtown was at this time the home of William
Peartree Smith, William
Livingston, and other eminent Jersey men, leaders in the stirring strife of the times, and through them it [the town] had become the center of the patriotic
movement throughout New Jersey. Into this movement Boudinot
entered with enthusiasm, and began that career of public service which lasted nearly
to
the close of his life.” From the website: www.americanbiblehistory.com/boudinot- tablet.html
This man did some interesting things during his career. “On September 25, 1789, the day after the House of Representatives
approved the Bill of
Rights in its final form, the pious Elias Boudinot,
president of the Congress,
1782-83, announced to his colleagues that he could not ‘think of letting the session pass over
without offering an
opportunity to all of the citizens of the United States
of joining, with one voice,
in returning to Almighty
God their sincere
thanks for the many blessing that He poured down upon them.’ Boudinot, therefore, moved that the House and Senate
request the President to ‘recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be
observed by acknowledging, with grateful
hearts, the many signal favors
of God.’”
“Only two congressmen went on record as
opposing Boudinot’s motion, Aedanus Burke of South
Carolina (1743-1802) and his colleague
Thomas Tucker (1745- 1828), who took the ‘strict
separationist’ position
that proclaiming a
national day of
thanksgiving ‘is a business
with which Congress
have nothing to do; it
is a religious
matter, and, as such, is proscribed to us.’ Tucker was answered by Roger Sherman (1721-1793), who observed that the ‘practice of thanksgiving [was] warranted by
a number of precedents in Holy Writ,’ which
he mentioned, and were an ‘example … worthy of Christian
imitation on the present occasion.’ Boudinot
concluded by citing ‘further precedents from the practice of the late Congress’ which, of course, had
approved a whole series
of thanksgiving and first day proclamations. Boudinot’s motion
pass both houses of Congress with only
two recorded objections, and
on October 3, 1789, George Washington issued a proclamation
recommending that the
American people, on November 26, thank God
for his ‘signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable
impositions of his providence’ as well as to beseech
Him ‘to pardon
our national and other transgressions’.” 7
Washington, Franklin and others encouraged Thomas
Paine to write about the transgressions of the British
in his booklet Common Sense which spread the word about reasons to fight for independence during 1776.
Paine used Biblical arguments in Common Sense that did not
hint of criticism
of the Bible or suggest that Paine was a
Deist. Paine used the “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s”
argument, he
used Matthew 22:21, and he used Judge 8:22-23 describing the King of Heaven being Israel’s
proper sovereign. However, later in life Paine became a thorn in the side of
Christianity and his views about it changed. Paine wrote another
book, Age of Reason,
in 1794, after the drafting and passage
of the Constitution
and Bill of Rights. Jefferson, Adams, Benjamin Rush, John
Jay and Benjamin Franklin did not support Paine’s
publication of this new book. Paine in late life expressed
a request
to be buried in a Quaker
cemetery, but the Society
of Friends denied his
request. Paine
had fallen out of
favor in his last years.
After a few years of waiting
for a real Biblical scholar to write a
refutation
of Paine’s book, Boudinot who was Director
of the U.S. Mint and still
on the Board at Princeton
University where he had also taught some courses, decided that he must write to refute Paine’s
book. Boudinot wanted to explain
the “essential
facts of
the Gospel, which are contradicted, or attempted to
be turned into ridicule, by” Paine. “I have endeavored
to detect his falsehoods and misrepresentations, and to
show his extreme ignorance of
the divine
scriptures, which he makes the subject of his animadversions – not knowing that ‘they are the
power of God
unto salvation,
to everyone that believeth.’” 8 Boudinot’s book is a theological dissection of
Paine’s new
book – Age of Reason.
Boudinot knew and loved the Bible.
Working
with several of the Founders, Boudinot
donated $10,000 to the American Bible
Society (ABS) and served
as its first president from 1816 to his death in 1821. John Jay was a vice president
of the ABS under Boudinot and became president
of ABS in 1821 at Boudinot’s death. Jay was the first chief justice
of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1789 to 1794 when Jay was selected by Washington to negotiate a treaty with Great Britain. Interestingly, Francis Scott Key, the writer of the United
States’ National Anthem, was a
Vice President of the
organization from 1817 until his death in 1843. So Boudinot, Jay, and Key
were among the supporters of spreading the Gospel with Bibles.
Ministers
James Caldwell born
in Cub Creek,
Virginia, in April 1734 and graduated from the College
of New Jersey (later became Princeton University) in 1759 9.
He inherited 500 acres in Cub Creek, but became pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He was active
for the patriots and was known
as the “soldier parson.”
His church and house
was
burned by Loyalists
in 1780. His wife
Hannah was at home with
a 3 year-old and
a toddler when she was shot through a
bedroom window on June 7 by British
gunfire. James Caldwell was with the military at Morristown at the Battle
of Connecticut Farms (now Union, New Jersey)
at the time.
During the climactic
Battle of Springfield, in New Jersey, 6000 Crown forces
attacked from Staten Island,
via Elizabethtown. A force of 2000 Continentals and New Jersey Militia
stopped Gen. Knyphausen with a defense bolstered by James Caldwell. When Caldwell joined the battle, the British were being given a sound beating,
but one of the
patriot companies ran out of
paper wadding. James called
for the company to retreat back to the Presbyterian Church where he ran in and grabbed
all of the Isaac
Watts hymnals. He rushed back outside and began slinging the hymnals
to the soldiers
saying “fill the British
with doctrine
from the hymnals”
and “Give ‘Em Watts, Boys!” “Put Watts into ‘em, Boys!”
Caldwell was killed
by a sentry when he refused to open a package
in Elizabethtown. The
sentry, James Morgan,
was hanged for murder on January
29, 1782. There were nine orphaned children raised by friends. Source: http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James
Caldwell_ (clergyman)
Other Ministers
There was a religious
fervor immediately after the new government was established. The western states held revivals
in the forests that were called camp meetings. Presbyterian ministers were some of the biggest promoters of these events. Cane Ridge in Bourbon
County, Kentucky, was the site of 25,000 people coming together in August 1801 with eighteen Presbyterian ministers and several
Baptist and Methodist
ministers using stumps and logs for
pulpits.
Like Rev. George Whitefield, the Anglican who started
the earlier revival in the middle of the 18th Century, these men were seeking more conversions than membership in denominations. Presbyterian ministers were puzzled about
all of the physical
manifestations that these events caused among the
people – wringing of
hands, becoming pale as death, lying on the
ground and lifting up their
eyes to Heaven and crying for mercy,
the head “jerks,”
the “barking” to chase the devil up
a tree. Some of this caused enough bad publicity that the Presbyterians and Baptists discontinued the camp meetings, but the Methodists continued and took them all the way to the eastern
coast.10
Leaders Before the Revolution
“Samuel Davies (1723–1761) was President of Princeton University, then
known as the College of New Jersey. Born to Baptist parents in New Castle County, Delaware,
Davies received his early education under the tutelage of Rev. Samuel Blair at the academy he conducted
in Faggs Manor, Londonderry Township, Chester
County, Pennsylvania. He was ordained a Presbyterian by the New Castle presbytery in 1747.”
“At the
request of religious dissenters in Hanover, Virginia,
the newly ordained
23-year-old Presbyterian minister headed south to be the
pastor of four congregations which had been licensed
by the Colonial government in 1743.
As the first non- Anglican minister licensed to preach in Virginia, Davies advanced the
cause of religious and civil liberty
in
colonial Virginia. Davies’s
strong religious convictions led him to value the ‘freeborn
mind’ and the inalienable ‘liberty
of conscience’ that the established Anglican Church in Virginia often failed to respect in the days before independence. By appealing to British
law and notions of British
liberty, Davies agitated in an agreeable
and effective manner for greater religious tolerance and laid the groundwork for the ultimate separation
of church and state in Virginia that was consummated by the Statute for
Religious Freedom in 1786.”
“At the same time that Davies was starting his ministry in Virginia, six students began their studies in Elizabeth, N.J., at the
College of New Jersey,
which had been established in 1746 to educate ‘those of every Religious Denomination.’ In 1754 the trustees of the college
persuaded Davies,
whose work in Virginia
had been favorably
noted, to go to Great Britain
to raise money
for the fledgling school. The journey was at
times harrowing, but Davies confided to his diary that ‘To be instrumental of
laying a foundation
of extensive benefit
to mankind, not only in the present
but in future generations, is
a most animating
prospect.’ In the end, Davies and a friend,
Gilbert Tennent, spent eleven months in Great Britain and raised
substantial
support, enough to
build Nassau Hall as the first permanent building on the new campus in
Princeton.”
“After
his return from Great Britain, Davies’ prominence in
Virginia grew during
the French
and Indian War as he implored
men to do their part ‘to secure the inestimable blessings of
liberty.’ Governor Dinwiddie declared Davies to
be the best recruiter in the colony. Davies’ rhetorical gifts were renowned. Patrick Henry, who as a child
often heard Davies preach, told his biographer before his death that Samuel Davies had taught him what an orator should be.”
“Musicologists credit Davies with being the first American-born hymn writer, and his poetry was published in Williamsburg
in 1752.”
“Davies also spent his
time in Virginia pioneering the literacy
of the colony’s slave
population, whom he felt were equally deserving of direct access
to the word of God.”
“In 1759, four years after he had returned from his trip to Great Britain on behalf of the College
of New Jersey,
the trustees of the college called on Davies
w again – this time to become the school’s fourth
president. Davies succeeded Jonathan Edwards,
who died just six weeks after
his inauguration. Unfortunately, Davies’s term as president was also cut short
when he died in 1761
at the age of 37. He was buried
alongside his predecessor in Princeton Cemetery.”
“Despite his relatively short life, Davies accomplished much and lived the creed to which he exhorted
the Princeton
Class of 1760 in his baccalaureate address and which has
been echoed by the presidents of Princeton throughout its history: ‘Whatever be your place,
imbibe and cherish
a public spirit. Serve your generation.’” 11
After the Revolution and Beginning of the Republic
During the period of 1810-1830, revivals and evangelism activities abounded
the entire country
and this coincided with the time that the states began to drop
tax support for religion. Massachusetts held out until 1833 and finally voted to discontinue support for churches.
This signaled the disappearance of the “nursing
father” concept from Isaiah of government aiding the churches.
Some information was extracted from: www.adherents.com/gov/Founding_Fathers_Religion.html; http://www.adherents.com/gov/congress_001.html; www.usconstitution.net/declarsigndata.html www.usconstitution.net/artsigndata.html; www.usconstitution.net/constframedata.html; Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/If you have information about
any of the individuals
If you see any information in this paper
that differs from your understanding, please
share it with the author to allow him to make corrections.
Prepared Originally in August 2010 and
Revised February 17, 2019 by William
J. Skinner, Lake Worth,
Florida Tele: 561-433-1170
Copyright 2019. All Rights Reserved. Permission
to reprint
is Freely given to
all Church Ministers and
Elders for use in their
Christian Education and
church activities.
END
NOTES
1. Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,
James A. Hutson, 1998, Library of Con- gress citing Douglas Adair, “Was
Alexander Hamilton a Christian Statesman?”, Trevor Colbourn, Ed. Fame and the
Founding Fathers (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), 141-159
2.
“The Founders on
Religion: a book of quotations” by James
H. Hutson, Princeton University Press, 2005
3.
Ibid. Adams
Extracts. 393
4.
In reviewing the members of the First House of
Representatives Elias Boudinot is listed as Episcopalian, not Presbyterian. But
he was elected to office in the Presbyterian Church in Elizabethtown, New
Jersey at the age of 25 and his family acknowledged that he was Presbyterian
when they wrote to Princeton University during the time Woodrow Wilson was
president of Princeton to describe a bronze plaque they wanted to erect to his
memory of his long service as a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton
(established as the College of New Jersey by Presbyterians. Boudinot was buried
in an Episcopal church cemetery in Philadelphia. Perhaps in his last years he attended that
Episcopal Church. In the 1820s there was
the emergence of a Western Revival brought to eastern cities by the Methodists.
These were held in New York in 1808, and in Philadelphia, Baltimore and
Providence in the next decade. See
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, 105. Presbyterians had a New Side – Old Side split
and reunion into the more evangelical New Side church in the 1700s. The New
Side won this battle because of the log colleges where they trained their
pastors. The Presbyterian Church was having difficult financial times in
Philadelphia in the early 1800s. “In 1812 Elias Boudinot gave the [Second
Presbyterian] Church four brick homes at the northeast corner of Ninth and
Cherry Streets, to provide homes for widows and their children.
It was known as the Widows Asylum.” See Presbyterian
Historical Society documents on 2nd Presbyterian Church, Records, 1759-1940 (bulk: 1786-1899) Finding Aid to Record Group 33, 8.5 cubic
feet. Found
at: http://www.history.pcusa.org/collections/findingaids/ fa.cfm?record_id=33
5.
Baldwin was educated at Yale College in
theology. He tutored at Yale and in 1779
became a chaplain in the Revolutionary War. Later founded the University of
Georgia. His biography does not say he was a lawyer. See
www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article. jsp?id=h-2710
6. Biographical Directory of the United States
Congress, http://bioguide.congress.gov/
7. Religion and the Founding of the American Republic, Id. at 79-80
8. The Age
of Revelation: The AGE OF REASON Shewen to be an Age of Infidelity,
Elias Boudinot, 1801,
Philadelphia, and reprinted by American Vision
Press, Powder Springs, Georgia, 2010, Forward by
Gary DeMar, xi, xxi
9. James Madison was attracted to attend
the College of New Jersey, partly because of the fame of John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian
Minister. Madison graduated from the
College of New Jersey in 1771, so he would not have met James Caldwell at the College. Madison finished his junior and senior years
in one year, but he stayed on longer to read some law and for tutoring in
Hebrew by John Witherspoon. Source:
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/CampusWWW/Compan- ion/madison_james/html
10. Religion
and the Founding of the American Republic, p. 101
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Davies_(Presbyterian_educator)
Acessed August 3, 2010
