America's Founding Secret
What the Scottish Enlightenment Taught Our Founding
Fathers
by Robert W. Galvin
Review by Jon Roland
This charming little collection of essays provides a gentle introduction to
the works of several Scots whose great influence on the development of the
political culture of early America is often undeservedly neglected. It traces
the emergence of the 18th century Scottish Enlightenment, mainly centered on
the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and shows how the works and members
of that movement traveled to the American colonies and instructed the founding
generation of the new republic. Many of its ideas and words became incorporated
into the Declaration of Independence and the constitutions of the states and
the United States.
However, unless these essays were published as an introduction to a
collection of the works it discusses, it could use a bibliography. Here is a
partial one for some of the more important works of some of the more important
thinkers discussed. It includes several works I hope to eventually add to our
online collection.
Hector Boece (Boethius) (1465?-1536)
Chronicles of Scotland (Scotorum historiae) (Latin 1540)
John Major (Mair) (1469-1550)
A history of Greater Britain as well England as Scotland (Historia
Maioris Britanniae, tam Anglie q[uam] Scotie) (1521)
George Buchanan (1506-1582)
The art and science of government among the Scots (De jure regni apud
Scotos dialogus) (1579)
Tyranicall government anatomized, or, A discourse concerning
evil-councellors being the life and death of John the Baptist (pub. 1642)
The history of Scotland (Rerum Scoticarum historia) (1583 Latin,
Eng. tr. pub. 1690)
The trial of George Buchanan before the Lisbon Inquisition ...
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746)
Inquiry into the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue (1725)