Enlightend Christianity: The Influence of David Ramsay on Martha Laurens Ramsay

Ramsay was an enlightened Christian and he greatly helped her wife to be an Enlightened Christian too. As a politician, Ramsay hated the tyranny of the British government and supported the American Independence. In delivering an Oration on the Advantages of American Independence to his fellow citizens in July 1778, Ramsay expressed his political views. He said: “We are now celebrating the anniversary of our emancipation from British tyranny; an event that will constitute an illustrious area in the history of the world, and which promises an extension of all those blessings to our country, for which we would choose to live, or dare to die.” Moreover, as a Federalist, he advocated to strengthen the power of the national government to deal with the inefficiency of the confederate government. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote, “unless they make an efficient federal government [at Philadelphia] I fear that the end of the matter will be an America monarch or rather three or four confederacies.”

As a historian, Ramsay wrote several revolutionary books, in which he explained his revolutionary ideas. Martha wrote very fast, which made her father pronounced her “to be the best clerk he ever employed,” although he had many, and some of them were very good ones. After she married to Ramsay, she assisted her husband in writing his revolutionary histories. In addition to many minor services in copying, she helped him in transcribing his History of the American Revolution, Life of Washington, Review of the Progress of Medicine in the Eighteenth Century, and the early part of his Universal History, and other works. At the turn from the late 18th century to the early 19th century, Ramsay's life experiences and thought suggested the dynamics of post-revolutionary American culture, which helped Ramsay to transform his political view from republicanism to liberalism. According to Eve Kornfeld, “Ramsay's intellectual journey from republicanism to liberalism also eloquently attest to the fundamental dissonance of these two cultural systems, and to the strength of republicanism in the minds of revolutionary intellectuals.” Ramsay's intellectual career illustrated the emerging regional allegiances of American intellectuals may have helped to mediate between American republicanism and liberalism, by fostering intellectual toleration for heterogeneous cultural sources, local economic interests, and cultural diversity. Lacking of documents, we could not know how much Martha was influenced by her husband’s political views, but we can assume that Martha agreed with her husband’s political views and became an enlightened Christian.