Bradley J. Birzer - American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll

LIVES OF THE FOUNDERS

EDITED BY JOSIAH BUNTING III

ALSO IN SERIES

AMERICAS FORGOTTEN FOUNDERS

Edited by Gary L. Gregg II and Mark David Hall

FORGOTTEN FOUNDER, DRUNKEN PROPHET:

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Bill Kauffman

AN INCAUTIOUS MAN: THE LIFE OF GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

Melanie Randolph Miller

RISE AND FIGHT AGAIN: THE LIFE OF NATHANAEL GREENE

Spencer C. Tucker

FOUNDING FEDERALIST: THE LIFE OF OLIVER ELLSWORTH

Michael C. Toth

THE COST OF LIBERTY: THE LIFE OF JOHN DICKINSON

William, Murchison

AMERICAN CICERO

T HE L IFE OF C HARLES C ARROLL

Bradley J. Birzer

WILMINGTON, DELAWARE

To Dedra, who always shows me the way.

CONTENTS

Introduction:
An Exemplar of Catholic and Republican Virtue

INTRODUCTION

AN EXEMPLAR OF CATHOLIC

AND REPUBLICAN VIRTUE

D URING THE HOT, HUMID M ARYLAND AUGUST OF 1779 , B ARONESS von Riedesel visited the Charles Carroll of Carrollton estate. She had met the Carrolls at a spa in Frederick, Virginia, earlier that summer, and Molly, Charless wife, and the baroness had become fast friends. Her description of the plantation reveals much about the aristocratic position and power of Carroll, even though diminished economically because of the politicized demands of the war effort. He was believed to be, at the time, one of the two wealthiest men in the colonies. The other man was his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis.

After passing a pretty town of enslaved blackseach of whom had his own garden and had learned a tradeimmediately adjacent to Carrolls plantation, the baroness received a warm joyous welcome from the entire Carroll clan. The baroness described the grand patriarch, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, as an

Carrolls mind and soul were as ordered as his estate. Indeed, he was a man of supreme intellect, imagination, integrity, and character. He had his flaws, to be sure, but it is very difficult for even the most objective biographer not to sympathize with this highly educated and articulate figure. He began life a bastard, sent to France by his parents at the age of eleven to receive a liberal and Jesuit education denied to him in the traditional homeland of the Carrolls, Ireland, and in his adopted home of Maryland, the most anti-Catholic of the thirteen English colonies on the North Atlantic seaboard.Though still denied access to the law, to courts, and to politics because of his Catholicism, Charles joined a number of prominent social clubs, learned the necessary skills to run the family estate, and carefully observed and analyzed the political and cultural situation in the coloniesespecially in Maryland. As early as 1765, he believed independence from Great Britain a necessity and a good. When the colony reached a political impasse over two issues in the early 1770s, the government-provided salaries of Anglican clergyman and the right of the executive to impose taxes, Charles entered the public debates, ironically, as First Citizen, a defender of Whiggish, republican government, informed by a long tradition of classical and Roman Catholic theorists, from Marcus Cicero to Robert Bellarmlne to Baron Montesquieu. As a resounding success in the public debates in Maryland, recognized by budding patriots in and out of his own colony, and with the cultural shifts accompanying the imperial crises of 1774, Charles found himself a leader of the anti-Parliament and patriot movements in Maryland. With the anti-Catholic laws quietly removed during the revolutionary period of 1774, he assumed a prominent and effective position in the powerful and extralegal Maryland Convention of late 1774. From this new position, Charles Carroll exerted a great deal of influence in Maryland.

His own analysis of the situation, though original and brilliant, has been ignored by almost all historians of the American Revolution. However, it should no longer remain quiet, and Charless well-crafted views deserve a serious place in the historiography of the American Revolution and in the understanding of the American Republic, then and now. In the spring of 1776, under the pseudonym CX, Charles explained the American Revolution in Livyian terms. Rooted deeply in the natural law and Anglo-Saxon common-law traditions of Western civilization, Marylanders and the Americans as a wholeconsciously and unconsciously desired to assert their natural rights. When the English government failed to protect the rights and autonomy of the citizens of the colonies, the colonists responded by desiring a reformation and reinstltution of the first principles of the Western and English constitution. Just as in the decades and centuries after the successful overthrow of the Etruscans, the Romans slowly and gradually saw the organic formation of a balanced and virtuous republic with the rise of the senate and the (unplanned) rise of the Roman Assembly, so Americans were now responding to the tyranny of the British government with extralegal and revolutionary associations, committees, and conventions. For Charles, though, these extralegal institutions were necessary but ultimately dangerous, as they concentrated the executive, legislative, and judicial powers into a form of popularly approved despotism. By declaring independence from Great Britain, which Charles advocated months before Congress passed the Declaration of Independence, the republic would evolve quickly but permanently toward a new constitutional orderone that divided, balanced, and protected the autonomy of each proper branch of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. Because the tradition and history of any one particular people was different from every other people, no two governments would look or function the same. Still, Charles believed, certain principles applied to all peoples and all governments. When these principles were recognized, followed, and protected, the people prospered and enjoyed virtue and happiness. When these principles were undiscovered, ignored, or mocked, the people and the government fell into decay and ruin. The end of every state, Charles argued, was justice, and the state best promoted justice by protecting the right of property, the right from which all others flowed.

As a leader of the Maryland conventions, Charles Carroll played a vital role in the move toward independence. Not only did he almost single-handedly pressure the reluctant Maryland Convention to declare independence, but the people of Maryland also rewarded Charles by sending him as a delegate to the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence. Congress rewarded Charles, even before Maryland did, by sending him on a failed but important diplomatic mission to Canada. During the Revolution, Charles served effectively in Maryland and the Continental Congress to advance the patriot cause. Importantly, he backed his friend George Washington at every turn of the war, recognizing the virtue and quiet strength of the greatest of Virginians (and Americans). Tied up with domestic concerns in Maryland, Charles did not take his elected position at the Constitutional Convention, though he offered support to its members, during and after, serving as a leading Maryland Federalist and defender of the new constitution. Perhaps most significantly, as author of the Maryland Senate, Charles is often seen as an indirect author of the United States Senate, whichas Madison noted in