statement that, at the outbreak of the Revolutionary War one-third of
the entire population of Pennsylvania was of Ulster-Scottish origin. A
New England historian, quoted by Whitelaw Reid, counts that between
1730 and 1770 at least half a million souls were transferred from
Ulster to the Colonies--more than half of the Presbyterian population
of Ulster--and that at the time of the Revolution they made one-sixth
of the total population of the nascent Republic. Another authority
fixes the inhabitants of Scottish ancestry in the nine Colonies south
of New England at about 385,000. He counts that less than half of the
entire population of the Colonies was of English origin, and that
nearly, or quite one-third of it, had a direct Scottish ancestry.

These conclusions find powerful support in the number of distinguished
men whom the Scots and the Ulstermen contributed to the Revolutionary
struggle, and to the public life of the early days of the United
States. Out of Washington's twenty-two brigadier generals, nine were
of Scottish descent, and one of the greatest achievements of the
war--the rescue of Kentucky and the whole rich territory northwest of
the Ohio, from which five States were formed--was that of General
George Rogers Clark, a Scottish native of Albert County, Virginia.
When the Supreme Court of the United States was first organized by
Washington three of the four Associate Justices were of the same
blood--one a Scot and two Ulster-Scots. 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