A half-century had hardly passed away since the landing of the Pilgrims when Daniel Carroll, the grandsire of our Charles, came to
America (A.D. 1680). He was an Irishman, of that prodigious stock which, in the wonderful ways of Providence, being transplanted on our shores, was on some future day to give to America most energetic and determined laborers in the rearing of our independence. Surely did the orator of Concord, amid the festivities of the last Centennial, prove himself miserably ignorant of what his sires owed to the Irish[149] of Pennsylvania.
For let it be recorded for the hundredth time: but for those men our cause would have been lost, in the straits to which the public weal was brought. They came to the rescue, and George Washington took good heart and went on to victory.
Daniel was born in Littemourna, King’s County, Ireland. During the reign of James II. he held responsible offices. Lord Baltimore was his patron, and by his favor, close application, sterling honesty, and persevering industry he became the owner of large estates,
and the family prospered and increased in wealth, although not in social or political position, during the second and third generations.[150]
Daniel Carroll rose very high in the estimation of the colony, and was chosen to offices of important and delicate trust. So great was his renown for spotless integrity, extraordinary ability, and love of the public weal that when Protestant bigotry obtained the upper hand, and, in the language of McMahon, the non-Catholic historian of Maryland, “in a colony which was established by Catholics, and grew up to power and happiness under the government of a Catholic, the Catholic inhabitant became the only victim of religious intolerance,” he was exempted from the opprobrious and hateful disqualifications inflicted upon his coreligionists by the penal code—an exemption, at first sight, of doubtful honor, were it not for the exceptional nature and circumstances of the case. It entailed not the least compromise on the part of the recipient, who accepted it without hindrance to an open profession of his faith; moreover, it enabled him to shelter less favored colonists in the enjoyment of rights most dear to their hearts and indispensable to their happiness.
Charles Carroll, the father of the signer, was born in 1702. He was a high-spirited man, but he had no chances to display his talents, nor field on which to exert his energies. He chafed under the wrong and ingratitude with which the children of mother church were harried in the “Land of the Sanctuary” which they had opened to the oppressed of all climes. Alluding to the legislation of the Maryland colony in 1649, Chancellor Kent says: “The Catholic planters of Maryland won for their adopted country the distinguished praise of being the first of American States in which toleration was established by law. And while the Puritans were persecuting their Protestant brethren in New England, and Episcopalians retorting the same severity on the Puritans in Virginia, the Catholics, against whom the others were combined, formed in Maryland a sanctuary where all might worship and none might oppress, and where even Protestants sought refuge from Protestant intolerance.”
But Protestant intolerance demolished the sanctuary, the handiwork of noble and loving Catholic hands. In accord with the wish of many, Mr. Carroll entertained the idea of seeking freedom of action, liberty of conscience, and equality of rights under another sky. Thus, in one of his journeys to Europe, he applied to the French minister for the purchase of a tract of land in Louisiana. The project was far advanced, when the minister growing alarmed at the vast purchase which it was their wish to make on the Arkansas River, the negotiations were (providentially?) broken off. The project, viewed in the light of succeeding events, may appear, as it was then by many deemed, injudicious.
Yet great praise is due to Charles Carroll, Sr., for his taking the lead in the movement at a time when, as Mr. Latrobe observes, “the disqualifications and oppressions to which Catholics were subjected amounted to persecution. Roman Catholic priests were prohibited from the administration of public worship. The council granted orders to take children from the pernicious contact of Catholic parents; Catholic laymen were deprived of the right of suffrage; and the lands of Catholics were assessed double when the exigencies of the province required additional supplies.”… Nay, more: a Catholic was levelled to the condition of a pariah or a helot—he was not even allowed to walk with his fellow-citizen before the State-house. Things were carried to a point beyond endurance. No wonder the Catholics of Maryland felt relief even in the thought of fleeing from home. And yet, with these facts, admitted by all American historians, staring him in the face, the British ex-premier has dared to flaunt a lie in the face of the whole world!
Charles Carroll, Sr., died at a patriarchal age, more than four-score years. Like Simeon of old, he had long waited for the consolations of Israel, for the day when the spouse of Christ would cast aside the slave’s garb, and, emerging from American catacombs, come forth in the radiant panoply of freedom and celestial splendor. He himself never had faltered in this hope. He always felt that Mary’s land would not be forsaken by her in whose name it was first held. He saw his country free, and he rejoiced. He witnessed around him the beneficent results accruing from the influences of mother church. He raised his