David Ramsay (1749-1815) was a second-line political figure of the American Revolution but a first-rate and most important contemporary historian of that epoch.

David Ramsay was born in Pennsylvania on April 2, 1749, of substantial landowning parents. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) and, after teaching for a while, took a medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1772.

Ramsay settled in Charleston, S.C., and made it his home for the remainder of his life. The beginning of his political career coincided with the outbreak of the American Revolution. Much of that career was spent in the legislature of his adopted state, but he also served for 2 years in the 1780s in the Continental Congress, where he emerged as an early supporter of a strong federal government. After the ratification of the Constitution, Ramsay served in the upper house of South Carolina and on...