John Witherspoon

John Witherspoon was born in 1723 in Gifford, Scotland, educated at Edinburgh, and served as a Presbyterian minister before he was called, in 1768, to be president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton. He strengthened the college, taught moral philosophy, and trained a generation of American leaders. In May 1776 he preached a widely heard sermon, The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men, arguing that the cause of liberty stood under God's providence. He was elected to the Continental Congress, signed the Declaration of Independence—the only active clergyman among the signers—and later signed the Articles of Confederation. Witherspoon worked on wartime committees and, after the peace, on organizing the Presbyterian Church in the new nation. He held people in slavery while at Princeton, a fact that sits beside his teaching on liberty and must be told with it. He died at his farm, Tusculum, near Princeton, in 1794.

See also: Signers of the Declaration · Richard Stockton · Francis Hopkinson · John Hart · Abraham Clark