CHARLES CARROLL was descended from Irish ancestry. His grandfather, Daniel Carroll, was a native of Littemourna, in Ireland, and was a clerk in the office of Lord Powis, in the reign of James the Second. Under the patronage off Lord Baltimore, the principal proprietor of Maryland, Mr. Carroll emigrated to that Colony toward the close of the seventeenth century, and became the possessor of a large plantation. His son Charles, the father of the subject of this memoir, was born in 1702, and lived to the age of eighty years, when he died and left his large estate to his eldest child, Charles, who was then twenty-five years old.
Charles Carroll, the Revolutionary patriot, was born on the twentieth of September, 1737. When he was only eight 5 years of age, his father, who was a Roman Catholic, took him to France, and entered him as a student in the Jesuit College at St. Omer’s. There he remained six years, and then went to another Jesuit seminary of learning, at Rheims. After remaining there one year, He entered the College of Louis le Grand, whence he graduated at the age of seventeen years, and then commenced the study of law at Bourges. He remained at Bourges one year, and then moved to Paris, where he continued until 1757. He then went to London for the purpose of continuing his law studies there. He took apartments in the Inner Temple, where he remained until 1765, and then returned to Maryland, a most finished scholar arid well-bred gentleman.
The passage of the Stamp Act, about the time that he returned to America, arrested his attention and turned his mind more intently upon political affairs, of which he had not, for some time, been an indifferent spectator. He at once espoused the cause of the American patriots, and became associated with Chase, Paca, Stone, and others, in the various patriotic movements of the day. They became engaged in a newspaper war with the authorities of Maryland, and so powerfully did these patriots wield the pen, that their discomfited opponents soon beat a retreat behind the prerogatives and power of the royal governor. Mr. Carroll was particularly distinguished as a political writer, and in 1771-72, his name, as such, became familial in the other Colonies.
In 1772, he wrote a series of essays against the assumed right of the British government to tax the Colonies without their consent. The Secretary of the Colony wrote in opposition to them, but Mr. Carroll triumphed most emphatically. His essays were signed “The First Citizen,” and the name of the author was entirely unknown. But so grateful were the people for the noble defence of their cause which these papers contained, that they instructed the members of the Legislative Assembly of Maryland, to return their hearty thanks to the unknown writer, through the public prints. This was done by William Paca, and Matthew Hammond. When it became known that Mr. Carroll was the writer, large numbers of people went to him and expressed their thanks personally, and he at once stood among the highest in popular confidence and favor.
Mr. Carroll early foresaw that a resort to arms in defence of Colonial rights, was inevitable, and this opinion he fearlessly expressed. His decided character, his stern integrity, and his clear judgment, made him an umpire in many momentous cases,* and in every step he ascended higher and higher the scale of popular favor. He was appointed a member of the first Committee of Safety of Maryland; and in 1775, he was elected a member of the Provincial Assembly. His known sentiments in favor of independence were doubtless the cause of his not being sooner sent to the General Congress, for, as we have already seen, the Maryland Convention were opposed to that extreme measure.
Anxious to witness the men and their proceedings in the Continental Congress, he visited Philadelphia for the purpose, early in 1776, and so favorably was he known there, that Congress placed him on a committee, with Doctor Franklin and Samuel Chase, to visit Canada on an important mission, the object of which we have mentioned in the life of Mr. Chase. On his return, finding Mr. Lee s motion for independence before Congress, he hastened to Maryland, to endeavor, if possible, to have the restrictive instructions which governed her delegates in the National Assembly, removed. In this he was successful, and when the prohibition was removed, he was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress. With instructions to vote as the judgment of the delegates should dictate, Mr. Carroll proceeded to Philadelphia, where he arrived on the eighth of July, top late to vote for the Declaration of Independence†, but in ample time to affix his signature to the parchment.
Ten days after he took his seat in Congress, Mr. Carroll was placed upon the Board of War, and continued a member of the same during his continuance in that body. He was at the same time a member of the Assembly of Maryland, and all the time which he could spare from his duties at Philadelphia, he spent in the active service of his own State. He was appointed, in 1776, a member of the Convention that framed a Constitution for Maryland as an independent State, and after its adoption, he was chosen a member of the State Senate.
Mr. Carroll continued a member of Congress until 17S8, when he relinquished his seat, and devoted himself to the interests of his native State. He was again elected to the Senate of Maryland, in 1781, and continued a member of that body until the adoption of the Federal Constitution. In December, 1788, he was elected a member of the first United States Senate for Maryland. He remained there two years, and in 1791 he was again elected to the Senate of Maryland, where he continued until 1801, when, by the machinations of the strong party feeling of the day, he was defeated as a candidate for re-election. He then retired from public life, being sixty-four years of age; and he spent the remainder of his days amid the quiet pleasures of domestic retirement, where his children s children, and even their children grew up around him like olive plants. He lived, honored and revered by the Re public with whose existence he was identified, until 1832, and was the last survivor of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence. He died at Baltimore, on the fourteenth day of November, 1832, in the ninety- sixth year of his age.
For a long term of years, Mr. Carroll was regarded by the people of this country with the greatest veneration, for, when Jefferson and Adams died, he was the last vestige that remained upon earth of that holy brotherhood, who stood sponsor at the baptism in blood of our infant Republic. The good and the great made pilgrimages to his dwelling, to behold, with their own eyes, the venerable political patriarch of America, and from the rich store house of his intellect, he freely contributed to the deficiencies of others. “His mind was highly cultivated. He was always a model of regularity of conduct, and sedateness of judgment. In natural sagacity, in refinement of caste and pleasures, in unaffected and habitual courtesy, in vigilant observation, vivacity of spirit, and true susceptibility of domestic and social happiness, in the best forms, he had but few equals during the greater part of his long and bright existence,”
* As an instance of the entire confidence which the people had in his judgment, it is related, that when, in 1773-4, the “tea excitement” was at its height, a Mr. Stewart of Annapolis, imported a quantity of the obnoxious article. The people were exasperated, and threatened to destroy the tea if landed. The Provincial Legislature being then in session, appointed a committee of delegates to superintend ihe unlading of the cargo and see that no tea was landed. With this the people were not satisfied, and Mr. Stewart appealed to Mr. Carroll to interpose his influence. The latter told him it would be impossible to have any effect upon the public mind in this matter, where such an important principle was concerned, and he advised Mr. Stewart to allow the vessel and cargo to be burned. This advice Stewart followed, and by his consent the conflagration took place.
† The question naturally arises, Why did Mr. Carroll append to his signature the place of his residence, “Carrollton”? It is said that when he wrote his name, a delegate near him suggested, that as he had a cousin of the name of Charles Carroll, in Maryland, the latter might be taken for him, and he (the signer) escape attainder, or any other punishment that might fall upon the heads of the patriots. Mr. Carroll immediately seized the pen, and wrote “of Carrollton” at the end of hls name, exclaiming “They cannot mistake me now”