The Scotch settlers retained the characteristic traits of their native stock and continued to call themselves Scotch, although molded somewhat by surrounding influences. They demanded and exercised the privilege of choosing their own spiritual advisers, in opposition to all efforts of the hierarchy of England to make the choice and support the clergy as a state concern. From the descendants of these people came the Scotch-Irish emigrants to America, who were destined to perform an important part on the theatre of action by organizing a successful revolt and establishing a new government. Among the early emigrants to the New World, although termed Scotch-Irish, and belonging to them we have such names as Campbell, Ferguson, Graham, McFarland, McDonald, McGregor, McIntyre, McKenzie, McLean, McPherson, Morrison, Robertson, Stewart, etc., all of which are distinctly Highlander and suggestive of the clans. On the outbreak of the American Revolution the thirteen colonies numbered among their inhabitants about eight hundred thousand Scotch and Scotch-Irish, or a little more than one-fourth of the entire population. They were among the first to become actively engaged in that struggle, and so continued until the peace, furnishing fourteen major-generals, and thirty brigadier generals, among whom may be mentioned St. Clair, McDougall, Mercer, McIntosh, Wayne, Knox, Montgomery, Sullivan, Stark, Morgan, Davidson, and others. More than any other one element, unless the New England Puritans be excepted, they formed a sentiment for independence, and recruited the continental army. To their valor, enthusiasm and dogged persistence the victory for liberty was largely due. Washington pronounced on them a proud encomium when he declared, during the darkest period of the Revolution, that if his efforts should fail, then he would erect his standard on the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Besides warring against the drilled armies of Britain on the sea coast they formed a protective wall between the settlements and the savages on the west. Among the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence, nine were of this lineage, one of whom, McKean, served continuously in Congress from its opening in 1774 till its close in 1783, during a part of which time he was its president, and also serving as chief justice of Pennsylvania. The chairman of the committee that drafted the constitution of the United States, Rutledge, was, by ancestry, Scotch-Irish. When the same instrument was submitted, the three states first to adopt it were the middle states, or Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, so largely settled by the same class of people.