"And who were these people?" - Edward Burgett Welsh (1881-1968)

"... And who were these people? Huguenots from France; men of Reformed faith—continental Presbyterians, that is, from the Palatinate and Switzerland and the Low Countries; Lutherans who remembered the agonies of the Thirty Years' War; German Baptist groups who had suffered at the hands of all the others in Europe; Presbyterians and Seceders (who also were ultra-Presbyterians) from Scotland and Ulster. To a lesser degree the same was true of the Congregationalists from England. Of all those who came to America as victims of religious persecution and settled outside New England, the Scots from Ulster were by far the most numerous.

In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, they were either predominant or holding a balance of power when the Revolution came on. The events following the killing time in Scotland, which ended in 1688, and those following the siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne, 1689 and 1690, started a flood of emigration to America.

This went on in increasing volume for half a century, and after a lull it started again in 1773. The great port of entry for the Scotch-Irish was not Boston, New York, Baltimore, Charleston, or even Philadelphia, though many did land at each of these places, but little old Newcastle, Delaware. There are old tombstones here in Allegheny County on which the proud inscription, "landed at Newcastle on the Delaware," can still be deciphered.

These American Presbyterians of 1776 were at most only three generations removed from the hideous miseries of Londonderry and of Lord Claverhouse and his dragoons. By every fireside the hate and fear of religious and civil oppression was kept alive. My mother was born in Ohio in 1843. Her mother had come from County Down as a little child. Yet even my mother was fed in her childhood with those stories of the killing time, and to her the names of Claverhouse and Satan were then synonyms. The defiance John Knox had flung in the face of Queen Mary, and those brave words of his spoken in behalf of his people, "if princes exceed their bounds, Madam, they may be resisted and even deposed," had had no little to do with shaping the convictions and nerving the arms of rough backwoodsmen on the American frontier.

And stung by the lash of the Stamp Act, the closing of Boston harbor, and the like, convictions began to shape themselves into words and deeds..."

- From Some Presbyterian Backgrounds of the Declaration of Independence (1941; online here)

Tad Stoermer on nationalistic "mythology dressed up as education"

 He's speaking about America, but it could be any western entity, including Ireland...

The Greenwich Tea Burning of 1774 – and the Ewing sword from the Boyne

Boston gets all the attention, but almost exactly a year after the Boston Tea Party, there was another almost identical event, this time at Greenwich in New Jersey, on 22 December 1774. Wikipedia page is here.

One of those who took part, disguised as a Native American, was Dr Thomas Ewing (1748-1782). 

"There is record of one James Ewing who was born at Glasgow, Scotland about 1650. His son Findley removed to Londonderry, Ireland in 1690 and there married Jane Porter. 

Findley Ewing was a staunch Presbyterian and an ardent advocate of liberty. For his distinguished bravery at the battle of the Boyne, a notable struggle between William III and James II, he was presented with a sword by King William. 

This token of military merit, afterward found its way to this country and was worn during our Revolutionary War by Dr. Thomas Ewing an army surgeon and great grandson of its original owner. 

By him it was bequeathed as a highly prized family treasure to his son Dr. William Belford Ewing".

• Photo of the Greenwich Tea Burning monument from this website; among those named on it are Thomas Ewing and James Ewing.

 

The Fort Gower Resolves, Virginia Gazette, 5 November 1774

A group of militia officers returning from Dunmore’s War composed the Fort Gower Resolves in the relative remoteness of the western bank of the Ohio River, on 5 November 1774. These were published in the December 22, 1774, issue of the Virginia Gazette. As you'll see below, theses Resolves, like all of the community documents which predate the Declaration of Independence, proclaim loyalty to King George III - while also asserting the officers’ preparedness to defend their rights. This is seen as the first time colonists expressed in writing their willingness to take up arms in defence of their liberties. 

It's a covenant – we give the King our allegiance, as long as he gives us our liberty.

Of course, it was the King's government, then a Tory Party government, which had withdrawn the colonists' liberty. And thanks to the 1689 Bill of Rights, the King could not override Parliament.

Also, I wonder if the men in Fort Gower appreciated the historical, revolutionary, significance of the date of 5 November...

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At a Meeting of the Officers under the Command of his Excellency the Right Honourable the EARL of DUNMORE, convened at Fort Gower, November 5, 1774, for the Purpose of considering the Grievances of BRITISH AMERICA, an Officer present addressed the Meeting in the following Words:

GENTLEMEN,

Having now concluded the Campaign, by the Assistance of Providence, with Honour and Advantage to the Colony, and ourselves, it only remains that we should give our Country the strongest Assurance that we are ready, at all Times, to the utmost of our Power, to maintain and defend her just Rights and Privileges. We have lived for about three Months in the Woods, without any intelligence from Boston, or from the Delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless Reports of designing Men, that our Countrymen may be jealous of the Use such a Body would make of Arms in their Hands at this critical Juncture. That we are a respectable Body is certain, when it is considered that we can live Weeks without Bread or Salt, that we can sleep in the open Air without any Covering but that of the Canopy of Heaven, and that our Men can march and shoot with any in the known World. Blessed with these Talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our Country in particular, that we will use them to no Purpose but for the Honour and Advantage of America in general, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us then, for the Satisfaction of our Country, that we should give them our real Sentiments, by Way of Resolves, at this very alarming Crisis.

Whereupon the meeting made Choice of a Committee to draw up and prepare Resolves for their Consideration, who immediately withdrew; and after some Time spent therein, reported, that they had agreed to and prepared the following Resolves, which were read, maturely considered, and agreed to, nemine contradicente, by the Meeting, and ordered to be published in the Virginia Gazette.

• Resolved, that we will bear the most faithful Allegiance to his Majesty King George III, whilst his Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free People; that we will, at the Expense of Life, and every Thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in Support of the Honour of his Crown and the Dignity of the British Empire. But, as the Love of Liberty, and Attachment to the real Interests and just Rights of America outweigh every other Consideration, we resolve, that we will exert every Power within us for the Defence of American Liberty, and for the Support of her just Rights and Privileges; not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous Manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous Voice of our Countrymen.

• Resolved, that we entertain the greated Respect for his Excellency the Right Honourable Lord DUNMORE, who commanded the Expedition against the Shawnese; and who, we are confident, underwent he great Fatigue of this singular Campaign from no other Motive than the true interest of this Country.

Signed by Order, and in Behalf of the whole Corps.

BENJAMIN ASHBY, Clerk.

"No Kings"? 1776 was a Revolution against Parliament

Pic above from this website.

The "No Kings" protests in the USA over the past months are a curious contradiction. It's a great present-day slogan, but it's not historically true. Thanks to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, almost a century before, in 1776 King George III was pretty much just a figurehead. The problems and tyrannies that the Colonists faced were because of the London Parliament, which from 1770-83, had a Tory Party majority.

Which is why, for a decade, in multiple documents – from The Stamp Act Congress of 1765 to the Second Continental Congress which began in 1775 – the Colonists listed their grievances against what Parliament was doing and appealed to the King to intervene. But even if he'd wanted to, he couldn't. He had no executive power. Since 1689 Britain had been a limited monarchy. Parliament had all the power.

• The timeless preamble to the eventual Declaration of Independence made six comments about Government, and then turned its attention to "the present King of Great Britain". It then listed a series of 27 grievances against him, saying that "our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people".

As James Wilson would say in 1787, “The people of [America] did not oppose the British King but the parliament—the opposition was not [against] a unity but a corrupt multitude.”

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In The Royalist Revolution; Monarchy and the American Founding (Harvard University Press, 2015) Professor Eric Nelson explains this essential point, especially in the current "No Kings" protest era. As the Amazon summary says – The Founding Fathers were rebels against the British Parliament, not the Crown. Here's an intelligent review of the book from the Harvard Law Review.

"No Kings" is potent and relevant for our day, but it inverts the history.

Kings can be tyrants – but Parliaments can also be, and have been, tyrannies.

• Excellent article from September 2025, entitled On the Law of the Declaration of Independence by Professor Adam Tomkins of the University of Glasgow, is online here

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PS – 1776 was primarily a rebellion against a London government that the Founding Father John Ja described as  “wicked Ministers and evil Counsellors”. It is no coincidence that the 1688 Declaration of William Henry Prince of Orange spoke of "evil counsellors" on 20 occasions, and of "wicked Counsellors" with "wicked designs" and "wicked ends".

Edward Rutledge, First Continental Congress, 28 September 1774 – "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights."

His father was from Ulster, some say County Tyrone. Rutledge was just 24 or 25 when, at the First Continental Congress on 28 September 1774, he said "I came with an idea of getting a Bill of Rights". On 14 October, Congress issued its Declaration and Resolves, written by John Dickinson (Wikipedia here).

The eventual Bill of Rights (the amendments to the new United States Constitution) would't be created until 15 years later in 1789. Rutledge had been reading Sir William Blackstone's recent volume Commentaries on the Laws of England written between 1765-69 (Wikipedia here). John Adams' personal copy is online here on Archive.org.

Livingston, Smith & Scott – it sounds like a law firm and it pretty much was. New York, 1765.

They were known as the "Presbyterian Whig Triumvirate" – Williiam Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott. They founded the New York Society Library in 1754, and produced a publication, the Independent Reflector.

Scott was (perhaps) the first to entertain the possibility that one day "Great Britain and her colonies" might separate – "the connection between them ought to cease". A 1765 article, anonymously attributed to "Free Man", was thought to be the handiwork of Scott. George Bancroft, in his History of the United States, quotes extensively from the article, and concludes with this –

"... There never can be a disposition in the colonies to break off their connection with the mother country, so long as they are permitted to have the full enjoyment of those rights to which the English constitution entitles them. They desire no more ; nor can they be satisfied with less." 

Such were the words in which the sober judgment of New York embodied its convictions. They were caught up by the impatient colonies; were reprinted in nearly all their newspapers; were approved of by the most learned and judicious on this continent; and even formed part of the instructions of South Carolina to its agent in England.

Thus revolution proceeded. Virginia marshalled resistance; Massachusetts entreated union; New York pointed to independence.

• The Whigs of Colonial New York is online at JSTOR, here. 

"Gallant Resistance made by their Forefathers " – The Pennsylvania Gazette, 17 June 1756

Recommended reading in America in 1756, almost exactly 20 years before the Declaration of Independence.

John Locke, Algernon Sydney, The Bible, Smollet's A Complete History of England, Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights, the 1701 Act of Settlement. As it says in the article extract below, "every Briton has the happiness to be born free". That's almost a straight lift from Rutherford's Lex Rex of 1644 – "every man is born free".

Thomas Jefferson & co didn't invent liberty in 1776. They reclaimed it and recharged it. As Professor Gordon S. Wood says, 1776 was a revolution on behalf of the liberties of the British constitution against the rogue government of the Tory Party who came to power in 1770 (previous post & podcast clip of Professor Wood is here).