At the age of sixteen, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton were all being schooled by Scots who had been educated in Scotland before coming to America.
This remarkable fact was no mere coincidence. Scholars from Scotland were held in the highest regard in colonial America because of Scottish thinkers and Scottish universities' preeminence at that time. The Scottish Enlightenment (it is usually dated from about 1730 until the 1790s) was an explosion of creative intellectual energy in science, philosophy, economics, and technological innovation. It arrived just in time to have a decisive influence on the Founders.
Jefferson was the architect of the Declaration of Independence, Madison was the architect of the Constitution, and Hamilton was the architect of The Federalist Papers. If we want to understand their thinking, we need to start with the fact that the Scottish Enlightenment provided their teachers.
