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The story of how the Ulster-Scots - aka Scotch-Irish as they became known in the US - shaped the reframing of the American Constitution, the founding document of American democracy.

On 25 May 1787, 11 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, delegates from the American colonies returned to Independence Hall, Philadelphia. They were there to revise the Articles of Confederation, the system of national government established at the end of the American Revolution in 1783.

The newly independent United States of America was on the brink of collapse. The Articles of Confederation gave Congress the power to make rules, but it had no enforcement powers and couldn鈥檛 regulate commerce or print money. Disputes over territory, taxation and trade threatened to tear the fledgling nation apart.

Through interviews with leading US historians, this episode reveals how a rebellion of Scotch-Irish farmers in Pelham, Western Massachusetts, provoked fear in the government and compelled them to summon the delegates back to Philadelphia to revise the Articles of Confederation during the summer of 1787. Scotch-Irish figures such as William Paterson and James McHenry influenced the debates over the design of the America鈥檚 system of government.

Many of the delegates came from the Covenanting Presbyterian tradition, and we find out how Presbyterianism, with its emphasis on religious liberty, civil liberty and the separation of church and state, shaped the structure of America鈥檚 democratic government.

Once the terms of the Constitution were agreed, it was William Findley, a Scotch-Irish Covenanting Presbyterian, who argued for a bill of rights which continues to define American鈥檚 individual rights in relation to their government.