{"id":719,"date":"2026-06-28T07:07:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T07:07:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=719"},"modified":"2026-06-28T07:07:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T07:07:53","slug":"americas-forgotten-founding-father-john-witherspoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=719","title":{"rendered":"America\u2019s Forgotten Founding Father: John Witherspoon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, celebrations of America\u2019s history are building to a crescendo. With the Fourth of July just a scant week away, I thought I would return to a question I posed some years ago: Who is the most unfairly neglected American Founding Father? You might think that none can be unfairly neglected; so many books about that distinguished coterie have been published lately. John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington\u2014whom have I left out? It has been a literary festival of Founders these last few years, and a good thing, too. But there is one figure, I believe, who has yet to get his due, and that is John Witherspoon (1723\u201394). This Scotch Presbyterian divine came to America to preside over a distressed college in Princeton, New Jersey, and wound up transmitting to the colonies critical principles of the Scottish Enlightenment, and helped to preside over the birth and consolidation of American independence.<\/p>\n

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Jeffry Morrison\u2019s brief book,\u00a0John Witherspoon and the Founding of the American Republic\u00a0<\/em>(2006), both testifies to and partly redresses the neglect Witherspoon has suffered. Modern scholars, Morrison points out, \u201chave not made much out of Witherspoon one way or another.\u201d For example, a standard text called\u00a0The Forgotten Leaders of the American Revolution<\/em> (1955) omits Witherspoon entirely. But during his lifetime, Witherspoon enjoyed a very high reputation not only as a clergyman but also as a public intellectual and man of affairs. He commanded immense prestige both in his native Scotland and, even more, in America.<\/p>\n

Benjamin Rush spoke for many when, a few years after Witherspoon died, he eulogized him as \u201ca man of great and luminous mind\u201d and predicted that \u201chis work will probably preserve his name to the end of time.\u201d He radiated what his contemporaries called \u201cpresence\u201d: a personal dignity and charisma that transcended ideological differences and commanded respect. The contemporary record is full of encomia and tokens of deference. John Adams was notoriously stingy with praise (Hamilton he called \u201cthe bastard son of a Scotch pedlar,\u201d Washington \u201cold mutton-head\u201d), but Witherspoon emerged in his estimation \u201can animated son of Liberty.\u201d Jefferson was always going on about the \u201cirritable tribe of priests\u201d and castigated Presbyterians as \u201cthe loudest, most intolerant of sects,\u201d but he was cordiality itself when it came to the great Dr. Witherspoon. The fact that today his work goes unread and the name \u201cWitherspoon\u201d is more broadly associated with the actress Reese Witherspoon (no relation) tells us something about the fragility of fame. No wonder Morrison called his first chapter \u201cForgotten Founder.\u201d<\/p>\n

In part, the eclipse of Witherspoon\u2019s reputation was due to such accidents as a fire that destroyed his library and correspondence: having less to work with, posterity tends to work less. But John Witherspoon was a formidable intellectual and political leader whose role in the affairs of colonial and early republican America deserves wider recognition. He was, as one modern scholar puts it, \u201cQuite possibly the most influential religious and educational leader in Revolutionary America.\u201d In the last quarter of the 18th century, his imprint was everywhere, from small things to large. It was Witherspoon, for example, who is thought to have introduced the Latin term \u201ccampus\u201d to describe the grounds of a college. In one of his essays on language, he coined the term \u201cAmericanism.\u201d According to Thomas Miller, who edited an edition of Witherspoon\u2019s selected works in 1990, his\u00a0Lectures on Eloquence<\/em>\u00a0count as the first treatise on rhetoric in America. More to the point, Witherspoon\u2019s\u00a0Lectures on Moral Philosophy<\/em>\u00a0introduced a generation of Princetonians to some leading Enlightenment themes, refracted through the prism of Calvinist anthropology.<\/p>\n

Witherspoon was particularly important as a political activist, an advocate for and architect of American independence. As early as 1774, in an essay called \u201cThoughts on American Liberty,\u201d he wrote that \u201cWe are firmly determined never to submit to, and do deliberately prefer war with all its horrors and even extermination itself, to slavery riveted upon us and our posterity.\u201d He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the only clergyman among that group of 56. In May 1776, when the colonies teetered on the edge of war with England, he preached a sermon titled \u201cDominion of Providence over the Passions of Men.\u201d The church historian William Warren Sweet called it \u201cone of the most influential pulpit utterances during the whole course of the war.\u201d Arguing that \u201cThere is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire,\u201d Witherspoon articulated a link between spiritual and temporal liberty in a way that spoke vividly to the passions of the moment. In July 1776, when the question of succession was hotly debated, and one delegate argued that the country was not yet \u201cripe\u201d for independence, Witherspoon shot back, \u201cIn my judgement the country is not only ripe for the measure, but in danger of becoming rotten for the want of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEnergy,\u201d William Blake wrote, \u201cis eternal delight.\u201d Witherspoon was a prodigy of energy. Almost continuously from 1776 to 1782, he was a member of the Continental Congress. He served on over 100 committees\u2014more, it appears, than anyone else\u2014including the critically important War Board and Committee on Finance. Only when the outcome of the war was certain did he return to his duties at Princeton. A good Scot, Witherspoon was blessed with keen fiscal intelligence. His Essay on Money as a Medium of Commerce, with Remarks on the Advantages and Disadvantages of Paper Admitted into General Circulation\u00a0<\/em>(1786) was not only a warning against adulterating the money supply but also an early brief for free market policies. When, in 1768, he came to the College of New Jersey (as Princeton was then officially denominated), the young school was so nearly bankrupt that it could only afford to pay part of the travel expenses of its new president. Within two years, Witherspoon had turned the red ink to black, preaching and fund-raising indefatigably from Boston to South Carolina. In 1789, when he was 66, Witherspoon lost his wife of 42 years. Two years later, much to the consternation of his neighbors in Princeton, he married Anne Dill, a 24-year-old widow, with whom he had two daughters.<\/p>\n

Witherspoon transformed Princeton (the college was often called by the name of its town even before its rebaptism) from a creaky clerical institution into a vibrant bastion of Scotch empiricism and Presbyterian fervor. Harvard was older than Princeton, but under Witherspoon, the New Jersey school became a political and intellectual powerhouse. In\u00a0The Political Philosophy of James Madison<\/em>\u00a0(2001), Garrett Ward Sheldon describes the daily routine of the college under Witherspoon. The day began at 5 a.m. with the morning bell. \u201cA regimen,\u201d Sheldon wryly remarks, \u201cI\u2019m sure similar to that conducted by Princeton students today.\u201d But it wasn\u2019t so much discipline that distinguished Princeton: it was intellectual sophistication. Witherspoon did not deviate much from Calvinist strictness on social or cultural matters. In 1757, for example, he published\u00a0Serious Inquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Stage<\/em>, whose effects, as the title suggests, turned out to be bad. But in a larger sense Princeton under Witherspoon was an institution fired by intellectual curiosity and seriousness.<\/p>\n

It was also an institution fired by a commitment to freedom of conscience. While Virginia debated whether Anglicanism should be recognized as the only established state religion (Witherspoon was vociferously against it), Presbyterians and Congregationalists argued for religious freedom. As Jack Scott, the editor of a modern edition of Witherspoon\u2019s\u00a0Lectures on Moral Philosophy<\/em>, noted, what began as a theological debate evolved into a \u201cbroad-gauged, thoroughly secular protest movement.\u201d The role of Witherspoon and his brand of Presbyterian Calvinism in that protest movement cannot be overstated. When the Revolutionary War finally broke out, many\u2014even George III\u2014called it \u201cThe Presbyterian Rebellion.\u201d Ambrose Serle, a British clerk who accompanied the British army from 1776 to 1778, observed that \u201cPresbyterianism is really at the Bottom of the whole Conspiracy.\u201d He wasn\u2019t wrong.<\/p>\n

Princeton, the only Presbyterian institution in the colonies, was deeply implicated in the rebellion. Under Witherspoon\u2019s tutelage, the college produced one president (James Madison), one vice president (Aaron Burr), 10 cabinet ministers, 60 members of Congress, 12 governors, 56 state legislators, and 30 judges, including three justices of the Supreme Court. Princeton almost got Alexander Hamilton, too. In 1773, the 18-year-old Hamilton, bursting with ambition, presented himself to Witherspoon and asked to be admitted to the college and be allowed to advance \u201cwith as much rapidity as his exertions would enable him to.\u201d Witherspoon was deeply impressed by the young man but wrote denying his request because it was \u201ccontrary to the usage of the college.\u201d Hamilton, for his part, was impressed by Witherspoon. In 1789, he was one of a handful of people (Madison was another) to whom Hamilton turned for advice in preparing two of his landmark state papers on public credit.<\/p>\n

Witherspoon\u2019s reputation soared during the run-up to and prosecution of the Revolutionary War. His was a voice of firm moderation: generally conciliatory in tone but unyielding about matters of principle. In fact, Witherspoon was already highly regarded as a formidable polemicist and spokesman for Calvinist orthodoxy in 1766 when the young Benjamin Rush was deputed to lure him across the ocean to the College of New Jersey. So highly did Rush esteem the fiery cleric that (so it is said) he proposed to his future wife partly because of her enthusiasm for Witherspoon. At first, the 45-year-old Witherspoon declined the post: his wife had no wish to uproot herself and their five children to decamp to a half-savage land thousands of miles from home. But Rush persisted. \u201cYour talents have been in some measure buried,\u201d he wrote Witherspoon, \u201cbut at Princeton they will be called into action, and the evening of your life will be much more effulgent than your brightest meridian days have been.\u201d Eventually, Elizabeth Witherspoon relented, and in 1768, the seven Witherspoons made the journey to America, never to return.<\/p>\n

Witherspoon\u2019s reputation in Scotland was due partly to his talents as a preacher, partly to the power of his pen. A son of the manse on both sides of his family, he was a potent rhetorician and controversialist, an important ally for those whose allegiance to conservative religious principles was fired by a commitment to individual liberty and freedom of conscience. In 1746, during the second Jacobite rising, Witherspoon was briefly imprisoned by rebel forces at the Battle of Falkirk, an experience that his friend and first biographer, Ashbel Green, said dealt a \u201csevere shock\u201d to his nerves and had a permanent effect on his health.<\/p>\n

Witherspoon deplored the gentrification of religion, its subordination to the genteel, humanistic, and worldly precepts fostered by self-declared Moderates and such pillars of the cultural establishment as Francis Hutcheson. In 1745, the year he was ordained, Witherspoon anonymously published\u00a0Ecclesiastical Characteristics, or the Arcana of Church Polity<\/em>. Alluding pointedly to Shaftesbury\u2019s\u00a0Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times<\/em>\u00a0(1711)\u2014a specimen example of the sort of aestheticizing moral philosophy that Witherspoon rejected\u2014Ecclesiastical Characteristics<\/em>\u00a0baldly satirized the capture of religious understanding by the forces of polite sentiment. \u201cIn fine,\u201d Witherspoon writes in a section called the \u201cAthenian Creed,\u201d \u201cI believe in the divinity of Lord S[haftesbury], the saintship of Marcus A[urelius], the perspicacity and sublimity of A[ristotle], and the perpetual duration of Mr. H[utcheson]\u2019s works, notwithstanding their present tendency to oblivion. Amen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ecclesiastical Characteristics<\/em> was a sensation, quickly plowing through five editions and earning its still-unknown author the abiding enmity of elite opinion. \u201cA satire that does not bite,\u201d Witherspoon observed, \u201cis good for nothing.\u201d In Witherspoon\u2019s view, the Moderates cut the heart out of religion. For them, he said, religion will be perfected only \u201cwhen we shall have driven away the whole common people . . . and captivated the hearts of the gentry to a love of our solitary temples.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Thomas Miller notes, Witherspoon championed \u201cthe public,\u201d not because he was a radical democrat, \u201cbut because he was a religious conservative concerned with practical public piety.\u201d His commitment to orthodox Calvinism meant that he insisted both on the recognition of man\u2019s inherent corruption through original sin and on the possibility of redemption or \u201cregeneration\u201d through the operation of God\u2019s grace. This austere, Augustinian strain of Christianity put the temptation of pride at the center of its spiritual economy. \u201cWhat is pride?\u201d Augustine asks in\u00a0The City of God<\/em>. At bottom, he says, it is \u201ca perverse kind of exaltation\u201d in which one seeks to \u201cabandon the basis on which the mind should be firmly fixed\u201d and seeks instead to become self-created, to be like God.\u00a0The Westminster Confession<\/em>\u00a0(1646), the founding creedal document of English Calvinism, echoes Augustine in its description of mankind\u2019s \u201coriginal corruption\u201d and inclination to evil. For Witherspoon, for all serious Presbyterian Calvinists, the problem with thinkers like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson\u2014to say nothing of \u201cinfidels\u201d like David Hume, one of Witherspoon\u2019s b\u00eates noires\u2014was that they encouraged pride and spiritual arrogance: tempting men to forget their moral weakness, they also cut him off from the possibility of redemption.<\/p>\n

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The great irony that attends Witherspoon\u2019s rejection of Hutcheson and other secular pillars of the Scottish Enlightenment is the fact that his own work owes an immense amount to them. David Hume and Adam Smith might be \u201cinfidels\u201d; John Locke might have to be deprecated because of his rejection of innate ideas; Francis Hutcheson because he underestimated man\u2019s sinfulness, but in fact, Witherspoon absorbed and transmitted many of the intellectual, moral, and political presuppositions of these thinkers. Indeed, Witherspoon\u2019s Lectures on Moral Philosophy<\/em>\u00a0are heavily indebted to Hutcheson\u2019s work, especially his two-volume\u00a0System of Moral Philosophy<\/em>\u00a0(1755) and the \u201ccommon sense\u201d school epitomized by Thomas Reid (1710\u201396).<\/p>\n

Witherspoon was, as one commentator put it, less an original than a \u201crepresentative\u201d thinker. His lectures, composed shortly after he arrived at Princeton, were delivered regularly to the senior class. Ranging widely over ethics, epistemology, theology, and political theory, they form an eclectic digest that begins by considering individual virtue before moving on to ponder the common good, a tried and true format familiar since Aristotle. Some passages are virtual paraphrases of other thinkers. Others are virtual caricatures. Witherspoon was the opposite of fair and balanced: he freely indulged his prejudices\u2014against Hobbes, for example, or Hume. There is some deep confusion, as when Witherspoon seems to conflate the views of Hume with those of Bishop Berkeley. Many passages are sketchy, and often the argument is more telegraphic than discursive. But this is hardly surprising. Witherspoon never intended to publish his lectures. On the contrary, he seems to have regarded them primarily as a pedagogical resource, more of a starting point or springboard for discussion than a polished lecture. As Witherspoon\u2019s student Ashbel Green noted, \u201cenlargements at the time of recitation were indeed often considerable and exceedingly interesting.\u201d What the lectures provide is a summary, a sort of literary tableau vivant, of the chief motivating ideas about man and society that percolated through colonial and early republican America. As such, in Jack Scott\u2019s words, they \u201cprovide a microcosm of the collective mind of the Revolutionary period.\u201d<\/p>\n

If in religion Witherspoon was an orthodox Calvinist, in epistemology and metaphysics, he was a realist. One of his signal contributions at Princeton was to have steered the institution away from the misty, if perfervid, idealism of Jonathan Edwards, who had presided over the college a few years before. Within a year of coming to Princeton, Witherspoon had utterly reoriented the institution intellectually. One of the early beneficiaries of this union of religious seriousness with common-sense realism was James Madison. Madison went to Princeton from his home in Virginia in 1769 when he was 18. A delicate though studious youth, he tested out of the curriculum for the first two years and entered the college as, in effect, a junior. He graduated after two years but stayed in Princeton for another six months to study elementary Hebrew and theology with Witherspoon.<\/p>\n

Madison is often called \u201cthe father of the Constitution.\u201d His contributions to\u00a0The Federalist<\/em>, especially his analysis of the danger of and remedy for \u201cfaction,\u201d are a masterpiece of political philosophy. The two great formative influences on Madison\u2019s outlook were his own Calvinist beliefs and Witherspoon\u2019s tutelage. Nietzsche observes that a pupil repays a teacher poorly if he remains nothing more than a pupil. And Madison certainly went beyond, or at least altered while absorbing, Witherspoon\u2019s teaching. But Jack Scott was right when he observed that no teacher was \u201cso influential in shaping [Madison\u2019s] thought as Witherspoon.\u201d The influence was evident everywhere, from Madison\u2019s rhetorical style to the substance of his political thought. Famously taciturn, Madison took to heart (or perhaps it was just a matter of reinforcing his own temperament) this Witherspoonian injunction: \u201cNe\u2019er do ye speak unless ye ha\u2019 something to say, and when ye are done, be sure and leave off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Far more substantive, though, was Witherspoon\u2019s view of how society can best accommodate men whose natures were corrupt but redeemable. In a key passage of his essay \u201cOf Civil Society,\u201d Witherspoon writes that the good society<\/p>\n

must be complex, so that the one principle may check the other. It is of consequence to have as much virtue among the particular members of a community as possible; but it is folly to expect that a state should be upheld by integrity in all who have a share in managing it. They must be so balanced, that when everyone draws to his own interest or inclination there must be an even poise upon the whole.<\/p>\n

Here we have\u00a0in ovo<\/em>\u00a0Madison\u2019s famous prescription for controlling or neutralizing the effect of conflicting \u201cfactions\u201d or interests in society by balancing them one against the other. Faction, Madison said in\u00a0Federalist 10<\/em>, was \u201csown in the nature of man\u201d: avarice and arrogance were simply inseparable coefficients of the natural corruption man was heir to. (\u201cWherever there is an interest and power to do wrong,\u201d Madison wrote to Jefferson, \u201cwrong will generally be done.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But if there is a \u201cdegree of depravity in mankind\u201d (Federalist<\/em> 55), so, too, \u201cthere are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence.\u201d Yet the way to nurture that esteem and confidence is not to rely upon the goodness of men (that, as Witherspoon put it, would be \u201cfolly\u201d): \u201cEnlightened statesmen,\u201d Madison observed, \u201cwill not always be at the helm.\u201d Rather, one should rely on man\u2019s energy, his ambition, and self-interest. Ambition, Madison wrote in one of\u00a0The Federalist<\/em>\u2019s most famous passages, \u201cmust be made to counteract ambition.\u201d<\/p>\n

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.<\/p>\n

This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. [Thus it is that] the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.<\/p>\n

Man\u2019s redeemable nature makes self-government possible, but lingering depravity makes checks and balances a prudent indemnity. This piece of homely political wisdom is not just consonant with, it is a direct product of Madison\u2019s Calvinist background, a background that was formed and articulated in large part by Witherspoon\u2019s teaching. As the historian James H. Smylie put it, \u201cWithout preaching a sermon and yet relying upon his theological orientation, Madison translated the views of Witherspoon and the nature of man into a political instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

Looking back on the generation of the Founders, it is easy to deprecate the religious inheritance that, for many of them, formed the ground of their commitment to political liberty. Theological skeptics and even atheists were aplenty in late 18th-century America. But for every Jefferson who rewrote the Bible, excising every mention of miracles, there was a platoon of men like Madison who wrote commentaries on the Bible. Witherspoon believed that religion was \u201cabsolutely essential to the existence and welfare of every political combination of men in society.\u201d Madison agreed. As did even the more skeptical Washington, who in his Farewell Address observed that \u201cof all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.\u201d For many, perhaps most, of the Founders, Morrison observes, the chain of reasoning ran thus: \u201cno republic without liberty, no liberty without virtue, and no virtue without religion.\u201d John Witherspoon did as much as anyone to nurture that understanding. Which is perhaps yet another reason he is less known today than other figures from the period. Whether that is a sign of our maturity and sophistication or only, as Witherspoon might put it, our pride and natural depravity is a question we might do well to ponder as we celebrate America\u2019s semiquincentennial.<\/p>\n

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As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, celebrations of America\u2019s history are building to a crescendo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america"],"yoast_head":"\nAmerica\u2019s Forgotten Founding Father: John Witherspoon - Urban Economy news<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=719\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"America\u2019s Forgotten Founding Father: John Witherspoon - Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As we approach the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, celebrations of America\u2019s history are building to a crescendo.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/urbaneconomynews.com\/?p=719\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Urban Economy news\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-28T07:07:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"18 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be7753cb687f443815cc81e8407f68ad\"},\"headline\":\"America\u2019s Forgotten Founding Father: John Witherspoon\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-28T07:07:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719\"},\"wordCount\":3629,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/7be1eff0d36cf4c27743b18fa71338ee.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"America\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/urbaneconomynews.com\\\/?p=719\",\"name\":\"America\u2019s Forgotten Founding Father: John Witherspoon - 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