First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country

by Thomas E. Ricks

They were conscious that they represented only part of the American population, faced many internal opponents, and possessed no army to speak of—and that they were publicly challenging the world’s leading power. Jefferson’s old tutors would have been proud: Nineteen of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration were of Scottish or Ulster Scot extraction.25