Heinrich was on to something here: support for and opposition to the American Revolution was often influenced by ethnic and cultural ties. Presbyterians tended strongly towards rebellion in at least New York and Pennslyvania; I'm less familiar with the other states.

In New York, politics had long been divided between the Delancey and Livingston parties, named after the fabulously wealthy families that headed each faction. The Delanceys were the descendants of French Huguenots that had converted to Anglicanism. They supported, and enjoyed greater accesses to, the royal administration of the colony. They were occasionally known as the "Anglican Party." The Livingstons, on the other hand, were dubbed the "Presbyterian Party," and supported greater colonial autonomy and eventually revolution.

Revolutionary Philadelphia was home to a dizzying array of religious and ethnic groups, but the Presbyterians provided perhaps the largest coherent block of support for the Revolution (the pacifist Quakers largely opposed the rebellion, and Anglicans were split but tended towards loyalty). The Old Pine Street Presbyterian Church boasts that their cemetery contains the remains of over 200 Patriots, but only one Loyalist.

What does all this mean? I don't think there was anything in the Presbyterian belief system itself that encouraged violent revolution. Rather, the Revolution appealed to people one or two steps removed from power. Presbyterians were English-speaking Britons (for the most part), and the Scotch-Irish owed their very existence as an ethnic group to their previous support of British imperial projects. Still, their separation from the established Anglican Church made them dissenters, outsiders looking in.

Sources:

Philip Ranlet, The New York Loyalists

Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, Soldiers

Old Pine Street Church - site visit and website at http://www.oldpine.org/history/historic-colonial-churchyard

I'd like to know more about the hessian in general. My family story is that we descend from them. What are good things to read about the hessian a in America? Plus the matrices come up a lot in my work.