Charles Carroll of Carrollton: Faithful Revolutionary (review)

Faithful and revolutionary. Catholic and American. So the portrait of Charles Carroll emerges from the pages of this most recent biography of the sole Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Relying primarily on secondary sources, McDermott presents an engaging introduction to the life of Charles Carroll and his family. After noting "the Signer's" inauspicious origins at the illegitimate son of Charles Carroll of Annapolis, McDermott presents a summary history of the English Reformation. This four-page treatment of an enormous subject, which suggests that Henry VIII's actions in subverting the Church in England owed their philosophical justification to the ideas of William Ockham and John Duns Scotus, should not have been attempted. Additionally, current authorities on the Calvert family will wince at McDermott's suggestion that the founder of Maryland, George Calvert, was forced to resign from the government of King James I after he had "announced his Catholicism publicly." These early stumbles appear to be the result of an over-reliance on some outdated and tendentious secondary sources. Basing his text on the more recent scholarship of Thomas O'Brien Hanley, Ronald Hoffman, and Sally Mason, McDermott's narrative is on firmer ground when he takes up his discussion of the Carroll family.

Following the earlier work of Hanley, McDermott asserts that Charles Carroll's education at the Jesuit exile school of St. Omer's was pivotal in forming his political ideas. St. Omer's exposed the future founding father to the political writings of the Spanish Jesuit, Francisco Suarez. This instruction, and more importantly, his preference for the political philosophy of Montesquieu over that of Locke, led Carroll to maintain that the American experiment would reach its greatest potential as a republic rather than as a strict democracy founded on general suffrage. This discussion of the probable influences on Carroll's political thinking is interesting. However, McDermott's sudden leap at this point from the eighteenth century into the culture wars of the twenty-first century inserts a polemical tone into his account. 

  Carroll's development as a political leader in Maryland and a Revolutionary War patriot occupies the largest portion and forms the most interesting part of McDermott's book. The Carroll family's status as one of the wealthiest in the American colonies had shielded them from most of the social disabilities associated with anti-Catholicism. Yet only the general furor in the years leading up to the Revolution would enable Charles Carroll to rise above the weight of religious prejudice to take a leading part in moving Maryland to renounce its allegiance to Crown and Parliament. In describing Carroll's role as an emissary of Congress, (along with John Carroll and Benjamin Franklin) to enlist Canadian support for the revolution, McDermott cites a remark of John Adams that Carroll was "a Roman Catholic but an ardent patriot" as if the two were mutually exclusive. Apart from a few lapses, this book provides an interesting account of how Charles Carroll "the Signer" was truly faithful and revolutionary, Catholic and American. McDermott's work is a good introduction to the life and times of Charles Carrroll for the general reader.