John Witherspoon's American Revolution

“Mailer’s tour de force of research has produced a cornucopia of insights into a key but underappreciated leader of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. With careful probing of Witherspoon’s Scottish career and painstaking examination of his central role in the colonial break from Britain, Mailer corrects what other historians, including myself, have written about this influential minister, educator, and public servant. A special contribution is Mailer’s demonstration that Witherspoon, although with some ambiguity, sustained foundational evangelical convictions in his career on both sides of the Atlantic.”—Mark A. Noll, University of Notre Dame

“A valuable and ambitious work on the life, thought, and career of the minister, educator, and Revolutionary political leader John Witherspoon. Mailer revises portrayals of Witherspoon’s principal significance as that of purveyor of Enlightenment philosophy rather than religious leader and uncovers a specifically Scots Presbyterian dimension to the political and moral culture of Revolutionary America.” — Ned Landsman, Stony Brook University

“In this fresh biography of John Witherspoon, Mailer explores the rich philosophical origins of the Revolutionary War, American education, and the United States’s distinctive civil religion. Mailer skillfully integrates intellectual and religious narratives to demonstrate how evangelicalism, presbyterianism, and Scottish history formed the new American Republic. This work transforms our understanding of the only minister to sign the Declaration of Independence and his most influential student, James Madison.”—Kate Carté Engel, Southern Methodist University

“Readers interested in placing one of the Garden State’s favorite sons in a transatlantic world of ideas will not find a better book about the only minister to sigh the Declaration of Independence.” — New Jersey Studies

“A landmark in Scottish-American historiography.” — Eighteenth-Century Scotland

“This thoroughly researched work is best suited for scholars of Enlightenment history and the American Revolution.” — Library Journal

“Thoroughly researched. . . . [A] detailed investigation. Recommended.” — CHOICE

“Mailer does more than urge scholars to look at Witherspoon anew; he makes a compelling case for them to use Witherspoon’s experience as a lens through which to more accurately gauge the interplay of religious conflict and Enlightenment philosophy in the founding of the United States.”—American Historical Review