Scottish Americans artisans in every American town. Scots arriving in Florida and the Gulf Coast traded extensively with Native Americans. American bluegrass and folk music styles have some of their roots in the Appalachian ballad culture of Scotch-Irish Americans (predominantly originating from the "Border Ballad" tradition of southern Scotland and northern England). Fiddle tunes from the Scottish repertoire, as they developed in the eighteenth century, and spread rapidly into British colonies, although sometimes through the medium of print rather than aurally. Outside of Gaelic-speaking communities, however, characteristic Highland musical idioms, such as the “Scotch-snap,” were flattened out and assimilated into anglophone musical
Scottish Americans rebellious colonies. According to the historian Arthur Herman: "Americans built their world around the principles of Adam Smith and Thomas Reid, of individual interest governed by common sense and a limited need for government." Nineteen of the fifty-six delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence came from Scotland or Ulster or, like the Scottish-tutored Thomas Jefferson, had ancestors there. Other founding fathers like James Madison had no ancestral connection but were imbued with ideas drawn from Scottish moral philosophy. Scottish Americans who made major contributions to the revolutionary war included Commodore John Paul Jones, the "Father of the American Navy",