Ulster-Scot who was Secretary of the Congress; it was first publicly
read to the people by an Ulster-Scot, and first printed by a third
member of the same vigorous body of early settlers.

George Bancroft will hardly be accused of holding a brief for the Scot
in American history but, with all his New England predilections, he
frankly records this conclusion: "We shall find the first voice
publicly raised in America to dissolve all connection with Great
Britain, came not from the Puritans of New England, or the Dutch of
New York, or the planters of Virginia, but from Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians." It was Patrick Henry, a Scot, who kindled the popular
flame for independence. The foremost, the most irreconcilable, the
most determined in pushing the quarrel to the last extremity, were
those whom the bishops and Lord Donegal & Company had been pleased to
drive out of Ulster.

The distinguished place which men of Scottish or of Ulster origin had
asserted for themselves in the councils of the Colonies was not lost
when the Colonies became independent States. Among the first of the
thirteen original States two-thirds were of either Scottish or
Ulster-Scottish origin. Of the men who have filled the great office of
President of the United States, eleven out of the whole twenty-five
come under the same category. About half the Secretaries of the
Treasury of the Government of the United States have been of Scottish
descent, and nearly a third of the Secretaries of State.

But it is perhaps in the intangible things that go to the making of
national character that the Scottish contribution to the making of
America has been most notable. In 1801, the population of the whole of
Scotland was but little over a million and a half, and behind that