The Declaration of Independence

And we returned to our American stories. Charles Carroll might be the most overlooked signer of the Declaration of Independence. A devout Catholic, he overcame religious prejudice and the difficulties of establishing a new nation, and in doing so, became one of the most respected and wealthiest men in colonial America. You to tell the story of this forgotten founder is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, Doctor Bradley Burser. He’s also the author of American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll. Let’s get into the story.

Charles Carroll is definitely one of the more forgotten Founding Fathers, and I think that’s unfortunate, because there’s so much about his story that really tells us a lot about the greater understanding of him—America. Charles Carroll of Carrollton, for no other reason he’s the only one who signs his name with an aristocratic feel to it, ‘of Carrollton’ at the end of it. But he’s the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration, and I think that that speaks volumes about the nature of American Christianity at the time of the Founding. Certainly, there were very few Roman Catholics at all, and those that did exist were distrusted by the larger population, which, understandably, we know that almost all of the Englishmen who settled in the North American colonies were coming out of the English Reformation itself, and so they had a very deep connection to Reformational theology, and they hadn’t met that many Catholics, because the Reformation in England was really about those who were somewhat pro-Catholic without wanting a poe, and those who wanted to purify the Church of its Catholicism—that is, the Puritans. So there weren’t really Catholics that were still coming along, but there were images of Catholics that still existed, kind of shadows of Catholics, if you will. And so Catholicism could still be seen as a kind of boogeyman because of all of these people coming out of the Reformation. And so Charles Carroll of Carrollton really had to ride through that distrust. He had to overcome it, and he had to prove himself in some way, and he does in actually a variety of ways. But there were certainly a number of things that we can think about with Charles Carroll that made him important. Not only was he the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration, but he was one of the founders of the Maryland Constitution, and in particular, Maryland Senate that he designed was seen as the model for the American Senate. So in Federalist Paper Number Sixty-Three, you have Madison saying, ‘Our model for the U.S. Senate is the Maryland Senate,’ which means that Charles Carroll was really the fountainhead, the touchstone beyond all of that. So, yeah, there are a lot of things that we could think about that when we think about Charles Carroll that he contributed to America. Even parts of Washington, D.C., sit on land that was formerly his. There’s at least the one stop, the metro stop Carrollton, and a lot of that property was Charles Carroll’s. Charles Carroll, because he was a Catholic, always had a disadvantage when it came to his relations with the other founders. And my favorite is always John Adams. John Adams loved Charles Carroll, but every time Charles Carroll walked into a room, Adams would record it in his diary. But it would always be, ‘That papist, Charles Carroll, has just walked into the room.’ ‘That papist has signed the Declaration of Independence.’ And I don’t think it’s meant to be a jab; it’s just a descriptive. He was that papist. It was always this marker—that is, Charles Carroll could never just be Charles Carroll. He was always Charles Carroll the papist. I do think George Washington didn’t see him that way. I think George Washington, who had relied on Carroll, relied on his money, saw him as a close ally. We know that Thomas Jefferson greatly respected Carol and used him for all kinds of financial advice. They had a very close friendship. Alexander Hamilton really liked Carroll as well. In fact, Hamilton was trying to get Carol to run for the presidency in 1796, when George Washington would have completed his two terms. And that’s pretty shocking to imagine even the possibility of a Catholic president as early as our second president of the United States. Not possible, of course, but pretty amazing. Hamilton thought that highly of him. So, yeah, Carol was really well respected at the time. Starting in 1774, a number of what we might call proper governmental institutions began to fall apart. And we can see this through the Intolerable and the Coercive Acts that were being passed by Britain. Britain was really putting the restraints on the American colonies. And one reaction of the American colonies was simply to create what they called extra-legal governments. That is, they would create committees or they would create their own legislatures. And so one of my favorite stories of these is Maryland. Maryland has what was called the First Convention in Annapolis, and basically this was in 1774. A number of people get together. These are men who feel like they’ve not been able to express their wishes in the legitimate Maryland Assembly. So they meet as a group and they begin having political discussions, and it’s pretty clear by the end of the First Convention that this is the legitimate Maryland government. And so they meet again, and they meet again, and they meet again, and Governor Eden realizes after a certain amount of time that there’s no sense in him dealing with the actual legislature because all the real power is in these conventions, and Charles Carroll was very much a part of that, creating again what we might call extra-legal government. And yet, if we think about it in the larger scheme of things, it’s not that surprising. The First Continental Congress is an extra-legal government; the Second Continental Congress is an extra-legal government; the Constitutional Convention is an extra-legal government. These were all in some ways not quite legitimate, but not illegitimate either, and they become legitimate nearly by the great weight that they carry into the communities. One of my favorite stories with Maryland is they finally decided that they didn’t need Governor Eden any longer, and so Governor Eden was trying to govern from his ship out in the harbor in Annapolis, and he would send men in with notes, and the notes would be taken back to him, and he would try to run the government this way, and finally the Convention of Annapolis just sends Eden about six to eight weeks’ worth of food and tells him that his services are done and that they thank him for it, but it’s time for him to go back to Britain. They no longer have use of him. And again, that’s just shocking to think about how these governments worked. Now, those could become dangerous as well, because you can imagine in these conventions, and many states had them, you always had a synthesis of monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic powers all at once. There was no real separation of government. So Charles Carroll was not only famous for promoting the conventions at the beginning, but then he became equally famous in 1776 when he published a series of letters under the name ‘CX,’ and he said, ‘It’s now very much time for us to write proper constitutions and for us to get rid of these constitutional conventions, because we now run the risk of them becoming tyrannical, replacing what was tyrannical.’

And you’ve been listening to Doctor Bradley Burser, Professor of History at Hillsdale College, telling the story of Charles Carroll, who maybe the most overlooked signer of the Declaration of Independence and the only Catholic signer. Christianity at the time, by the way, in America, as Doctor Burser pointed out, was mostly filled with folks from the Reformation movement of England, and of course, that left Catholics out for the most part. And they were seen with a level of distrust in America and discrimination. And it’s a point of Carol’s character—he was able to win over the trust of so many in the colonies. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of Charles Carroll, and also the story of religion in America and Christianity in early America, here on our American stories. And we returned to our American stories, and with the story of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic design the Declaration of Independence. You’re again. It’s Professor of History at Hillsdale College and the author of American Cicero, Doctor Bradley Burson.

So Charles Carroll, because he was Catholic, could not be raised properly by his family. In Maryland, it was illegal to raise your children in a quote-unquote Catholic fashion, and if you attempted to, your child would be taken away from you and sent to a Protestant family. In England, this is one of the most draconian laws in colonial America. So at the age of 11, Charles Carroll was sent to France to be educated by Jesuits. And he ends up going over to France for 17 years along with his cousin John Carroll, whom I mentioned earlier, will become the first Archbishop in North America. Charlie and Jackie, as they were known. And so Charlie and Jackie went over to France again for 17 years. They earned the equivalent—at least Charles did. He earned the equivalent of an M.A. in Platonic philosophy, and then he went on and got law degrees as well. So he’s actually among the American founders, by the way that we would mark what degrees have been earned, he’s actually one of the highest degree-earning Americans, among the founders, because of his M.M.E. and then his law degrees. But he loved, of all the people that he studied in the Western tradition, and he studied everyone from Socrates to Plato, to Aristotle, to Cicero, to Saint Augustine, to Thomas Aquinas, to Sir Thomas More. Of all the figures that he had studied, he loved Cicero, and so Cicero was always right there for him in everything he did. Cicero not only as a model of statesmanship, but as a model of the intellect as well, and so I took the title American Cicero from one of the last statements that Charles Carroll made. He was asked, because he was in his nineties, if he felt lonely because he was the last of the signers to be alive, and he said, ‘Well, no, I’ve got my two best friends: I have Jesus and I have Cicero.’ ‘I talked to them always, and they talked to me.’ And so I love that idea of Charles Carroll being this great Western figure, being completely in line with the liberal arts tradition of the West, and being very Ciceronian. I think there are probably other founders. I think of someone like Nathan Hale, who actually gave his life for the Founding, that may qualify more as an American Cicero. But I still think that Charles Carroll has at least some claim to the title. Another thing about Charles Carroll that people have found fascinating is his wealth. He was extremely wealthy. Some people argue that he was the single wealthiest man in North America, along with his father, and his father will pass away in 1782, but prior to that, his father was also Charles Carroll, but he was Charles Carroll of Annapolis rather than Charles Carroll of Carrollton. They made a formidable team. And one of the interesting things about all of this is that Maryland forbade Catholics from participating in politics or participating in law. So, as a Roman Catholic, I would not be allowed into a law court to represent myself, even to speak for myself. I certainly would not have been let into a political body at all. But the one thing that Catholics could do was they could own property. And you find this same story with Judaism during the Middle Ages that you find with Catholicism in Maryland. The Catholics absolutely took advantage of being able to own property, and so they bought and they sold property. They served as banks for other property owners. So this one restriction that didn’t exist on them, they took to the fullest advantage. And again, the same thing that Jews did during the Middle Ages when they were forbidden from being a part of usury and so forth, they used this to their economic advantage. So Charles Carroll and his father were immensely wealthy on the eve of the American Revolution, and Carol spends a lot of his money on the American Founding, supporting the American Founding, supporting George Washington. And he loses a lot of his property during the Founding as well, so he really puts his money on the line. In all of this, Charles Carroll represents something unusual. He represents a lone Catholic, or one of two or three Catholics, in a Protestant world. But one of the things that Charles Carroll loved to remind his fellow compatriots of was that when they talked of natural law, when they talked of natural rights, when they talked of the Magna Carta, when they talked of common law, they were really all talking about Catholic history. That is, the Magna Carta—the greatest document, political document signed in the Middle Ages—was an absolutely Roman Catholic document. And so by the time we get to the Protestants of the American Revolution, most Protestants see themselves as really having a heritage of liberty. But as Carol reminded us, that heritage is one that they inherited from the Catholics. And so I think that’s a great reminder for all of us. Then, when we think about those things that mean so much to us, as Americans, again, natural rights, natural law, common law, all of these things, these are deeply rooted in our Catholic European past, and there’s just no way to get around that at all. In 1826, July 4th of 1826, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams passed away, which seemed miraculous to Americans that they would die within hours of each other on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. I mentioned too that Charles Carroll lives on until November 14th of 1832. During that time, he got to meet Alexis de Tocqueville. I love that that Totaukville was here on his big trip and interviewed Charles Carroll as one of his great subjects for Democracy in America. But I also love that when Charles Carroll died, there were two newspaper headlines that went out across the United States. One is, ‘The last of the Romans has passed into eternity,’ and the other was, ‘A great man in Israel is dead.’ And I love that idea that somehow Charles Carroll was both a Jewish prophet and a Roman demigod in some way; to me, that perfectly sums up his life and what he gave to the American experiment.

And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Gavin Listrof, a Hillsdale College student. And also a special thanks to Doctor Bradley Burser, a Professor of History at Hillsdale College. And we tell lots of stories thanks to Hillsdale College. They’re proud sponsors of this show, and we couldn’t do it without them. Go to Hillsdale.edu to take all of their terrific and free online courses. Their storytelling is remarkable, their teaching even better. Learn about all the good and beautiful things in life in American history, economics, and so much more. Go to Hillsdale.edu. And what a story. The fact that Charles Carroll, well, it was illegal for him to be raised as a Catholic, so he was sent off to be educated in Paris by Jesuits for 17 years and, as a citizen, couldn’t be a member of the bar or be in politics. But crafty as he was, he learned how to amass great wealth and how to use that wealth to fund the American Revolution and to be a central part of America’s ideas and intellectual history, and in the Founding and formation of our government. The story of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic design the Declaration of Independence. Here are now American stories.