e descendants of these people came the Scotch-Irish emigrants to
America, who were destined to perform an important part on the theatre
of action by organizing a successful revolt and establishing a new
government. Among the early emigrants to the New World, although termed
Scotch-Irish, and belonging to them we have such names as Campbell,
Ferguson, Graham, McFarland, McDonald, McGregor, McIntyre, McKenzie,
McLean, McPherson, Morrison, Robertson, Stewart, etc., all of which are
distinctly Highlander and suggestive of the clans.

On the outbreak of the American Revolution the thirteen colonies
numbered among their inhabitants about eight hundred thousand Scotch and
Scotch-Irish, or a little more than one-fourth of the entire population.
They were among the first to become actively engaged in that struggle,
and so continued until the peace, furnishing fourteen major-generals,
and thirty brigadier generals, among whom may be mentioned St. Clair,
McDougall, Mercer, McIntosh, Wayne, Knox, Montgomery, Sullivan, Stark,
Morgan, Davidson, and others. More than any other one element, unless
the New England Puritans be excepted, they formed a sentiment for
independence, and recruited the continental army. To their valor,
enthusiasm and dogged persistence the victory for liberty was largely
due. Washington pronounced on them a proud encomium when he declared,
during the darkest period of the Revolution, that if his efforts should
fail, then he would erect his standard on the Blue Ridge of Virginia.
Besides warring against the drilled armies of Britain on the sea coast
they formed a protective wall between the settlements and the savages on
the west.

Among the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nine
were of this lineage, one of whom, McKean, served continuously in
Congress from its opening in 1774 till its close in 1783, during a part
of which time he was its president, and also serving as chief justice of
Pennsylvania. The chairman of the committee that drafted the
constitution of the United States, Rutledge, was, by ancestry,
Scotch-Irish. When the same instrument was submitted, the three states
first to adopt it were the middle states, or Delaware, Pennsylvania and
New Jersey, so largely settled by the same class of people.

Turning again specifically to the Scotch-Irish emigrants it may be
remarked that they had received in the old country a splendid physique,
having large bones and sound teeth, besides be