Francis Alison: Donegal-born Ulster-Scot who helped shape 18th century US political thinking

He was probably educated at the Royal School, Raphoe.

He emigrated to America in 1735 after graduating from Glasgow University where he had been a student of Francis Hutcheson, the Ulster-Scots philosopher and ‘Father of the Scottish Enlightenment’.

A Presbyterian minister and teacher, Alison played a significant role in transmitting Hutcheson’s political thought to the American colonies and in shaping American public opinion prior to American independence.

Endowed with a formidable intellect, Alison ran an academy in Philadelphia and was acknowledged by Benjamin Franklin to be ‘a man of great ingenuity and learning’.

Alison has a three-fold significance in American history: as a Presbyterian minister, as an educationalist and as a political thinker.

Alison was hostile to ‘the Great Awakening’, the first of a series of religious revivals in America, which began in the 1730s.

Key figures in the first ‘Great Awakening’ were Jonathan Edwards (a Congregationalist who is still widely held to be America’s ‘most important and original philosophical theologian’), George Whitefield (who combined Calvinism with Methodism) and Gilbert Tennant (a Presbyterian minister who was born in Co Armagh).

Alison was firmly on the ‘Old Side’ of the argument which strongly emphasised an educated ministry and decorum in worship.

Advocates of the ‘New Side’ of the argument, by contrast, stressed the importance of enthusiasm, emotion and a conversion experience.

The ‘New Side’ protagonists denounced their critics as ‘dry, sapless, unconverted ministers’. In response, Francis Alison and his allies denounced their ‘New Side’ opponents as devilish and disorderly and in 1741 they signed a protest which expelled Gilbert Tennent and other ‘New Side’ clergy from the Philadelphia Synod.

Upon the reunion of the two sides in 1758, which created the new Synod of New York and Philadelphia, Alison preached the opening sermon entitled ‘Peace and Union’, taking his text from Ephesians 4:4-7. Alison never deviated from his ‘Old Side’ interpretation of theology.

Alison is an example of a man who was radical in his politics but conservative in his theology, a by no means unusual combination.

Turning to Alison the educationalist, he was frequently employed as a teacher both within and without the church. John Dickinson of Delaware, the author of the very influential ‘Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania’ and a patriot politician in the vanguard of the American Revolution, hired Alison to tutor his children.

Ultimately, Alison may be regarded as the father of the University of Delaware. This academic institution traces its origins to 1743, when Alison opened up his ‘Free School’ in his home in New London, Pennsylvania.

The school changed its name and location on many occasions, becoming the Academy of Newark in 1769 (chartered by the colonial government). Since Delaware was part of the Pennsylvania colony until 1776, the academy was denied a charter as a college in order to prevent competition with the University of Pennsylvania (then the College of Philadelphia of which Alison became vice-provost in 1755).

In 1833, the general assembly for the State of Delaware passed the ‘An Act to Establish a College at Newark’, and in 1834 Newark College opened. It changed its name in 1843 to Delaware College and it merged with the Academy of Newark. In recognition of Alison’s intellectual prowess, the University of Glasgow conferred a Doctorate of Divinity on him in 1756.

Politically, Alison stood in a long tradition of Scots and Ulster-Scots thinkers – including George Buchanan, John Knox, Andrew Melville, Samuel Rutherford and Francis Hutcheson – who opposed what they regarded as 'over-mighty government'.

Alison’s philosophy may be conveniently summarised by this quotation: 'I fear the British Parliament are [sic] determined to twist the yoke around our necks … they may distress us, but can never enslave us … if they send their armies to distress & destroy us, they will distress & destroy themselves at the same time.'

Whether Alison was right in thinking this is of course another matter altogether. Americans obviously believe he was.

British historians, for example Andrew Roberts’ biography of George III (2021), believe other and more benign interpretations of British policy are possible. For example, Roberts argues persuasively in some detail that the Declaration of Independence is largely Jeffersonian propaganda.

It is widely known that three of Alison’s pupils were signatories to the American Declaration of Independence: Thomas McKean, Charles Thomson (Secretary of the Continental Congress) and James Smith.

However, James E Doan of Nova Southeastern University has delved further. He has uncovered information relating to 46 students who studied with Alison before 1767 and who, thus, would have reached adulthood by the time of the American Revolution. Of these, 15 served in the Continental Congress between 1776 and 1783; 25 served in Washington’s army, 16 held office in the new states; five received important executive appointments from the Continental Congress. Only five are known to have been loyalists.

Although Alison died in 1779 and did not live to see the outcome of the great political events which he helped set in motion, Kerby Miller, the American historian, claims that Alison ‘perhaps more than any other figure, helped prepare Pennsylvania’s Scots-Irish for their prominent role in the American Revolution’.