Jeffry H. Morrison offers readers the first comprehensive look at the political thought and career of John Witherspoon a Scottish Presbyterian minister and one of America s most influential and overlooked founding fathers. Witherspoon was an active member of the Continental Congress and was the only clergyman both to sign the Declaration of Independence and to ratify the federal Constitution. During his tenure as president of the College of New Jersey at Princeton, Witherspoon became a mentor to James Madison and influenced many leaders and thinkers of the founding period. He was uniquely...

George Washington is revered as the father of his country, a clever and skilled general, and a man of restrained principle--but not as a political thinker. This short introduction to Washington's political philosophy reveals him as a thoughtful public intellectual who was well equipped to lead the young United States.

Though Washington left little explicit writing on political philosophy, Jeffry Morrison examines his key writings, actions, education, and political and professional lives. He finds that Washington held closely to a trinity of foundational principles--classical...

This interdisciplinary volume brings together essays on eleven of the founders of the American republic--Abigail Adams, Samuel Adams, Oliver Ellsworth, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Thomas Paine, Edmund Randolph, Benjamin Rush, Roger Sherman, and Mercy Otis Warren--many of whom are either little recognized today or little appreciated for their contributions. The essays focus on the thinking of these men and women on the proper role of religion in public life, including but not limited to the question of the separation of church and state. Their views represent a wide range...