John Witherspoon (February 5, 1723 – November 15, 1794) was a Scottish-American Presbyterian minister, educator, farmer, slaveholder, and a Founding Father of the United States.

[1] Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–1794; now Princeton University) became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character.

[12] During his two pastorates he wrote three well-known works on theology, notably the satire "Ecclesiastical Characteristics" (1753),[13] which opposed the philosophical influence of Francis Hutcheson.

[14] At the urging of Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, whom he met in Paisley,[15] Witherspoon finally accepted their renewed invitation (having turned one down in 1766) to become president and head professor of the small Presbyterian College of New Jersey in Princeton.

An advocate of natural law within a Christian and republican cosmology, Witherspoon considered moral philosophy vital for ministers, lawyers, and those holding positions in government (magistrates).

As the college's primary occupation at the time was training ministers, Witherspoon became a major leader of the early Presbyterian Church in America.

Nonetheless, Witherspoon transformed a college designed predominantly to train clergymen into a school that would equip the leaders of a new country.

Students who later played prominent roles in the new nation's development included James Madison, Aaron Burr, Philip Freneau, William Bradford, and Hugh Henry Brackenridge.

Although Witherspoon can be heavily credited in the expansion and progression of the university, his ownership ties to the enslavement of Black people in America have caused for an internal Princeton petition to the CPUC Committee on Naming at Princeton University and President Eisgruber for the removal of his statue that currently stands in Firestone Plaza on campus.

[18][19] As of Fall 2022, the petition has garnered over 250 signatures in support of removing the statue on the basis that it is a distraction to the university's mission and makes community members uncomfortable because of Witherspoon's racist history.

Of particular interest to Witherspoon was the Crown's growing interference in the local and colonial affairs which previously had been the prerogatives and rights of the American authorities.

His 1776 sermon "The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men" was published in many editions, and he was elected to the Continental Congress as part of the New Jersey delegation.

James, the eldest, graduated from Princeton in 1770 and joined the Continental Army as an aide to General Francis Nash, with the rank of major and was killed at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777.

David, the youngest son, graduated the same year as his brother John, married the widow of Abner Nash, and practiced law in New Bern, North Carolina.

According to Herbert Hovenkamp, Witherspoon's most lasting contribution was the initiation of the Scottish common sense realism, which he had learned by reading Thomas Reid and two of his expounders Dugald Stewart and James Beattie.

Witherspoon was a proponent of Christian values, his common sense approach to the public morality of civil magistrates was influenced by the ethics of Scottish philosophers Francis Hutcheson and Reid rather than Jonathan Edwards.

In his lectures on moral philosophy at Princeton, required of all juniors and seniors, Witherspoon argued for the revolutionary right of resistance and recommended checks and balances within government.

He made a profound impression on his student James Madison, whose suggestions for the United States Constitution followed both Witherspoon's and Hume's ideas.

Some are superior to others in mental powers and intellectual improvement—some by the great increase of their property through their own, or their predecessors industry, and some make it their choice, finding they cannot live otherwise better, to let out their labor to others for hire.Let us shortly consider (1.)

In this connection it may be noted that in 1790 President Witherspoon, while a member of the New Jersey Legislature, was chairman of a committee on the abolition of slavery in the state, and brought in a report advising no action, on the ground that the law already forbade the importation of slaves and encouraged voluntary manumission.

He suggested, however, that the state might enact a law that all slaves born after its passage should be free at a certain age—e.g., 28 years, as in Pennsylvania, although in his optimistic opinion the state of society in America and the progress of the idea of universal liberty gave little reason to believe that there would be any slaves at all in America in 28 years' time, and precipitation therefore might do more harm than good.

Witherspoon was firmly grounded in the Reformed tradition of High to Late Orthodoxy, embedded in the transatlantic Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century, and frustrated by the state of religion in the Scottish Kirk.