After the Peace of Paris provincial politics takes on, indeed, a certain militant and perfervid character hitherto unknown, and not wholly due to the restrictive measures of the Grenville Ministry. It was as if the colonists, newly stirred by a naive, primitive egoism, still harboring the memory of unmerited slights, of services unappreciated even if paid for, had carried over into secular activities some fanatical strain from the Great Awakening, something of the intensity of deep-seated moral convictions. And in no unreal sense this was so. The mantle of Samuel Davies fell upon Patrick Henry. The flood tide of religious emotionalism ebbed but to flow in other channels? and men who had been so profoundly stirred by the revivalist were the more readily moved by the appeal of the revolutionary orator. In diverting the current of quickened religious feeling into political channels, the influence of Princeton College was a memorable one. Founded by Presbyterians less interested in creeds than in vital religion, and barring no person on "account of any speculative principles," the new institution furnished an education that was "liberal" in the political as well as in the intellectual sense of the term. From this center emanated a new leaven. Here young men came from all the Middle and Southern country to receive the stamp of a new Presbyterianism compounded of vital religion and the latter-day spirit of Geneva. In this era, by such men as John Madison, Oliver Ellsworth, and Luther Martin, were founded the two famous societies, _Cliosophic_ and _American Whig_, where the lively discussions were doubtless more often concerned with history and politics than with the abstract points of theology or religion. It was in 1768 that John Witherspoon, the very personification of the new influence, became president of the college. A Scotchman educated at Edinburgh, he became at once an ardent defender of the colonial cause, as "high a Son of Liberty as any man in America," destined to be better known as a signer of the Declaration of Independence than as a Presbyterian minister of the gospel. During twenty years previous to the Revolution, many men went out from Princeton to become powerful moulders of public opinion. Few were counted as theologians of note; few were set down as British Loyalists. But they were proud to be known as Americans and patriots: ministers who from obscure pulpits proclaimed the blessings of political liberty; laymen who professed politics with the fervor of religious conviction.