The Founding Fathers
Daniel
Carroll was member of a prominent Maryland family of Irish descent. A
collateral branch was led by Charles Carroll of Carrollton, signer of
the Declaration of
Independence. Daniel's older brother was John Carroll, the first
Roman Catholic bishop in the United States.
Daniel was born in 1730 at Upper Marlboro,
MD. Befitting the son of a wealthy Roman Catholic family, he studied
for 6 years (1742-48) under the Jesuits at St. Omer's in Flanders.
Then, after a tour of Europe, he sailed home and soon married Eleanor
Carroll, apparently a first cousin of Charles Carroll of Carrollton.
Not much is known about the next two decades of his life except that
he backed the War for Independence reluctantly and remained out of the
public eye. No doubt he lived the life of a gentleman planter.
Politically he was, in his time, one of the
most influential men of his native State, but the wider fame of his
illustrious brother has somewhat overshadowed his repute. His early
training was like that of the archbishop. "My father", he
wrote, 20 Dec., 1762, to his kinsman, James Carroll, in Ireland,
"died in 1750 and left six children, myself, Ann, John, Ellen,
Mary and Betsey. My eldest sister Ann is married to Mr. Robert Brent
in Virginia. They have one child a son. My brother John was sent for
his education on my return. Ellen, my second sister, is married well,
to Mr. Wm. Brent in Virginia near my eldest sister. She has three boys
and one girl. My sisters Mary and Betsy are unmarried and live chiefly
with my mother" (Woodstock Letters, VII, 5). An elder brother,
Henry, was drowned while a boy at school. Until the Revolution Daniel
Carroll led the life of the country gentlemen of the day, but it may
be noted that the Catholic men who had been sent abroad to school were
far superior, as a class, to their neighbours, whose narrow and
insular education rarely led them to interests beyond their county
limits. Carroll was an active partisan of the colonists, serving as a
member from Maryland of the old Colonial Congress (1780-1784).
In 1781 Carroll entered the political arena.
Elected to the Continental Congress
that year, he carried to Philadelphia the news that Maryland was at
last ready to accede to the Articles
of Confederation, to which he soon penned his name. During the
decade, he also began a tour in the Maryland senate that was to span
his lifetime and helped George
Washington promote the Patowmack Company, a scheme to canalize the
Potomac River so as to provide a transportation link between the East
and the trans-Appalachian West.
Carroll did not arrive at the Constitutional
Convention until July 9, but thereafter he attended quite
regularly. He spoke about 20 times during the debates and served on
the Committee on Postponed Matters. Returning to Maryland after the
convention, he campaigned for ratification of the Constitution but was
not a delegate to the state convention.
In opposition to the arguments of Samuel
Chase, the Anti-Federalist leader in Maryland, he wrote and printed a
public letter defending the proposed Constitution,
the last sentences of which read: "If there are errors it should
be remembered that the seeds of reformation are sown in the work
itself and the concurrence of two-thirds of the Congress may at any
time introduce alterations and amendments. Regarding it then in every
point of view with a candid and disinterested mind I am bold to assert
that it is the best form of government which has ever been offered to
the world" (Maryland Journal, 16 Oct., 1787). As one of the four
laymen representing the Catholics of the United States, his name is
signed to the address of congratulation presented to George Washington
on his election as President of the Republic under the Constitution.
In the sessions of the new Congress Carroll
served again (1789-1791) as a member from Maryland. When the Congress,
at the session held in October, 1784, at Trenton, New Jersey, enacted
that a board of three commissioners should lay out a site, between two
and three miles square, on the Delaware for a federal city, to be the
capital of the nation, he was named with Thomas Johnson and David
Stuart as his associates. The choice of the present site of Washington
was advocated by him, and he owned one of the four farms taken for it,
Notley Young, David Burns, and Samuel Davidson being the others
interested. The capitol was built on the land transferred to the
Government by Carroll, and there is additional interest to Catholics
in the fact that, in 1663, this whole section of country belonged to a
man named Pope, who called it Rome. On 15 April, 1791, Carroll and
David Stuart, as the official commissioners of Congress, laid the
corner-stone of the District of Columbia at Jones's Point near
Alexandria, Virginia. When the Congress met in Washington for the
first time, in November, 1800, Carroll and Notley Young owned the only
two really comfortable and imposing houses within the bounds of the
city. Young's name is among those assisting as collectors of
subscriptions (1787) for the founding of Georgetown College.
In 1789 Carroll won a seat in the U.S. House
of Representatives, where he voted for locating the Nation's Capital
on the banks of the Potomac and for Hamilton's program for the federal
assumption of state debts. In 1791 George Washington named his friend
Carroll as one of three commissioners to survey and define the
District of Columbia, where Carroll owned much land. Ill health caused
him to resign this post 4 years later, and the next year at the age of
65 he died at his home near Rock Creek in Forest Glen, MD. He was
buried there in St. John's Catholic Cemetery.
Image: Courtesy
of The Maryland Historical Society
