---
title: 'William Adams on the Spirit of the Covenanters in America'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2024-05-01
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2024-william-adams-on-the-spirit-of-the-covenanters-in-america
---

# William Adams on the Spirit of the Covenanters in America

“We claim the Scottish Church as the ancestor of the Church in America. It is your privilege in Scotland to hold the ancestral places to which we resort; but we of America represent the results of these events which have a common origin for us all. In Scotland you hold Greyfriars and the tombstones, where the Covenanters signed their Solemn League; but the spirit of the Covenanters is walking over all the continent of America. In Scotland you possess the pulpit of John Knox, but the spirit of Knox lives in America. You have in your Antiquarian Museum that singular projectile — that stool which Jenny Geddes flung at the head of the Dean of Edinburgh, but the reverberations of the single shot of that great revolution are rolling on at this day beyond the Rocky Mountains.” — [**William Adams**](/authors/williams-adams), speaking at the First General Presbyterian Council, convened at Edinburgh, Scotland in July 1877