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Scottish-born John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was educated at Edinburgh University and became a prominent minister in the Church of Scotland. In 1768 he was persuaded to cross the Atlantic to become the sixth president and leading professor of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University). From then on he played an important part in American public life, publishing many sermons and writings in support of the Revolutionary cause, and signing the Declaration of Independence. He was also among the main importers of Scottish realist philosophy into the New World, where it would dominate intellectual life through the nineteenth century.