When the federation of the thirteen English colonies into the United States of America was finally achieved in 1776, powerful influences had made it certain that this new nation would have religious freedom and that it would not maintain an established church. Among those influences was the influence of an overwhelming number of settlers known as Ulster Scots, or Scotch-Irish, who emigrated into the colonies from Northern Ireland between the years 1720 and 1775. They came as dissenters from the Established Church in northern Ireland and remained dissenters from the Established Church as they found it where they settled along the frontiers of the Southern Colonies of Virginia, North and South Carolina. From 1720, the year these Ulstermen emigrated to the colonies in any appreciable numbers, until 1775 at the outbreak of hostilities between the colonies and England, they exerted a significant influence upon the achievement of religious liberty. Although the Ulster Scots were the most widely distributed of immigrants except those from England, being found in all thirteen colonies at the time of the Revolution, their influence in achieving religious freedom was most effective in the Southern Colonies where their numbers were most effective in the Southern Colonies where their numbers were five times as large as in the north. The development of religious liberty in colonial America has been determined to have had its impetus in three factors. First, the large and influential number of sects in the colonies; second, the liberal philosophy of sects in the colonies; second, the liberal philosophy of the 18th century with its relationalistic temper coupled with a fervent evangelical zeal that is reflected in the revivalistic movement of the Great Awakening across the middle of the 18th century; and thirdly, the ecclesiastical and political influence and interference of England. The Ulster Scots were directly concerned with the first and second factors. The third factor, however, does not relate itself to them primarily because they were situated on the western frontier of the Southern Colonies and not directly connected with any major commercial interests which developed such a display of emotion as was to be found in such centers of commerce as Boston and Philadelphia. The effort on the part of some colonials to prevent the appointment of a resident Bishop of the Anglican Church in the colonies does not appear to have made much impression on the Ulster Scots in the Southern Colonies, as the opponents to such a move were confined principally to the New England and to a lesser extent in the Middle Colonies. Opposition in the Southern Colonies to the appointment of a resident Bishop was found among the Anglican planters who had, for all intents and purposes, control of the Establishment through the vestries and did not wish to lose it. Because the Ulster Scots were the largest group among the sects dissenting from the Establishment who settled in the Southern Colonies their influence was proportionately greater in the achievement of religious liberty in these colonies than any other. But equal in importance with their numerical strength was the site of their settlements in the Southern Colonies. Prevented largely from setting in the more well-established tidewater area of the colonies of Virginia and South Carolina, they were forced to push westward into what was called the back country, or the frontier settlements were initiated by the emigration of these Ulster Scots from the colony of Pennsylvania who came down the eastern and western valleys of the mountain range which extends across the western flank of the Southern Colonies. There, in the isolation of the wilderness, their influence for the achievement of religious liberty exerted itself along with other dessenters from the Establishment so as to hasten the disestablishment of the Anglican church in the Southern colonies at the outbreak of the revolution, and usher in religious liberty.

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This thesis contends that Anglo-Saxon studies made a powerful contribution to Thomas Jefferson's development of public concepts of American identity and nationalism in ways that have been elided by scholars preoccupied with Jefferson's classicism. Jefferson's comprehensive survey of Anglo-Saxon grammar, language, law and emigration provided him with a precedent for revolution and helped him develop a model of American nationhood. Jefferson's detailed study of the Anglo-Saxon era set him apart from writers on both sides of the Atlantic in the period 1750-1860, and this thesis will argue that to generalize his interest as 'whig history' or a subscription to a theory of Teutonic superiority is unjustified. Chapter One considers Jefferson's educational background, his exposure to Anglo-Saxon history and the degree to which he might have been encouraged to pursue it. Previous studies of Jefferson's Anglo-Saxonism have presumed that there was a 'Gothic font' from which American Founding Fathers could drink; the detailed study of Anglo-Saxon historiography in this chapter will show otherwise. Chapter Two is concerned with a detailed examination of the collections of books relating to Anglo-Saxon history and language that Jefferson collected throughout his lifetime. If Jefferson was concerned with whig dialogues, or interested in the Saxons as a product of a passion for Tacitus we should find evidence of it here. In fact, the study of Jefferson's library in Chapter Two demonstrates that Jefferson was genuinely an expert Anglo-Saxon scholar and regarded that knowledge base as a political tool. Chapters Three and Four constitute detailed examinations of the nationalist use to which Jefferson put his understanding of early English history. Chapter Three considers the problem of shared heritage with Britain confronting the American statesman in the 1760s and 1770s and his employment of pre-Norman history in resolving this conflict. Chapter Four enlarges upon the study of American national identity, with specific reference to the linguistic debates following on the Revolution. This chapter revolves around a reconsideration of Jefferson's Anglo-Saxon Essay and his attempts to introduce this language into the education of future American statesmen. Jefferson's examination of Anglo-Saxon history, when considered in this light, seems oddly discordant with the simplistic notion of Jefferson as a founder of Teutonic superiority. Chapter Five is interested in Jefferson's impact on historical rhetoric in the nineteenth century. Thomas Jefferson used English history as an aid to separating an American nation from the British Empire and he believed that Americans could look to their Anglo-Saxon ancestors for a precedent that would justify their independence from Britain. He saw in Anglo-Saxon studies a means for appropriating those parts of English history that could underpin a national identity defined by freedom, initiative, and perhaps a racial predilection for democracy, while simultaneously rejecting Britain's authority in his present.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In mid-January of 1691/2 two young girls in the household of Samuel Parris, the minister of Salem Village, Massachusetts, began exhibiting strange behavior. "It began in obscurity, with cautious experiments in fortune telling. Books on the subject had 'stolen' into the land; and all over New England, late in 1691, young people were being 'led away with little sorceries.'" The young girls of Salem Village had devised their own creation of a crystal ball using "the white of an egg suspended in a glass" and "in the glass there floated 'a specter in the likeness of a coffin.'"

William III, Prince of Orange, ascended the throne of England after the English Glorious Revolution of 1688. The next year, the American colonists rebelled against colonial administrations in the name of their new king. This thesis examines William's perception of these rebellions and the impact his perception had on colonial structures following the Glorious Revolution. Identifying William's modus operandi—his habit of acceding to other's political choices for expediency until decisive action could be taken to assert his true agenda—elucidates his imperial ambitions through the context of his actions. William, an enigmatic and taciturn figure, rarely spoke his mind and therefore his actions must speak for him. By first establishing his pattern of behavior during his early career in the Netherlands and England, this project analyzes William's long-term ambitions to bring the Americas under his direct control following the 1689 rebellions and establish colonial administrations more in line with his vision of a centralized English empire.