Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832)
MSA SC 3520-209
Delegate to the Continental Congress, Signer of the Declaration of Independence; U.S. Senator
The only son of Charles Carroll of Annapolis, Charles Carroll of Carrollton stood heir to a vast fortune which enabled him an extraordinary education. Carroll was sent abroad for his education, first attending the French colleges of St. Omer's and Louis-le-Grand where he received a civil law degree, and then the Middle Temple in London where he was a student of English common law. Carroll returned to Maryland seventeen years later, in 1764.
In 1774, Carroll served in the Maryland Convention and on the Committee of Correspondence. He was a member of the Council of Safety in 1775, and a member of the committee which drafted the Maryland Constitution in 1776. Because of his legal disabilities as a Catholic, Carroll was not a delegate to the First Continental Congress, but did join the delegates at Philadelphia as an unofficial observer and advisor. In March of 1776, Carroll accompanied Samuel Chase and Benjamin Franklin on their unsuccessful mission to Canada. He was chosen for this venture, as John Adams later reflected, not only for his French fluency, but also because "he continues to hazard his all, his immense Fortune...and his life."
At the June 1776 session of the Maryland Convention, Carroll introduced the resolution which finally rescinded the instructions restricting the congressional delegates. On July 4, Carroll was at last selected as an official delegate to the Continental Congress. He arrived in Philadelphia on July 18 and signed the Declaration on August 2, "most willingly" manifesting his long-held intention "to defend the liberties of my country, or die with them..." He remained a delegate until 1778.
In 1800, after twenty-three years in the Maryland Senate, Carroll retired from public life, and spent the last three decades of his life as a businessman and entrepreneur. When John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, Maryland's "First Citizen," became America's last surviving Signer of the Declaration of Independence.
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As part of an effort to update the biographies of Maryland's Four Signers of the Declaration of Independence, researchers at the Maryland State Archives addressed a major gap in the Archives's original entry in A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789: Charles Carroll of Carrolton's enslaving. The following passage combines a renewed analysis of records at the Maryland State Archives with recent scholarship on Charles Carroll of Carrollton to better understand this influential Marylander.
After Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s death in 1832, prominent individuals from throughout the country mourned the loss of the nation’s last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Nearly all the remembrances avoided any mention of Carroll’s enslaving – a glaring omission considering the fact that, at the time of his death, Carroll enslaved more than 350 human beings. Carroll’s son-in-law, Richard Caton, was one of the few people who said anything of his father-in-law’s involvement in slavery, but his comments far from condemned the practice.
Replying to one tribute, Caton noted “one trait of character in the history of Mr. Caroll’s life which is not known generally.” That trait, according to Caton, was a desire for the gradual abolition of slavery in Maryland. In Caton’s recollection, Charles Carroll of Carrollton introduced a bill for such a gradual abolition of slavery in Maryland in 1797. However, Caton did not provide a citation of Carroll’s supposed measure making it exceedingly difficult for historians to verify his claim.
Instead, relatives, researchers, and other individuals interested in Carroll’s life have taken Richard Caton’s claim as fact. Historian Mary Clement Jeske expertly detailed the lineage of Caton’s claim in her 2022 article, “Charles Carroll of Carrollton and the Enslaved Families at Doughoragen Manor in Post-revolutionary Maryland,” and should be referred to as the most up-to-date resource on Carroll’s enslaving. “In the long run,” Jeske observed, Caton’s "efforts proved immensely effective in shaping the narrative put forth by Carroll’s early biographers and, indeed, have continued to influence writers grappling with the Signer’s legacy well into the twenty-first century.”
The Maryland State Archives were among those influenced by Caton’s claim when they published A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1789 in the 1970s. Amid the four columns of densely packed text, Carroll’s biography states: “Introduced a bill in the Maryland Senate for gradual abolition of slavery, 1797.” However, both Jeske and the Maryland State Archives’ staff have been unable to locate the introduction of such a bill in the Maryland legislative journals for the session that began in November 1797. It is possible that Charles Carroll of Carrollton proposed legislation for the gradual abolition of slavery in Maryland in 1797 or during another of his many years of service in the Maryland Senate. It is equally possible that he never made such an introduction and his son-in-law offered up an unfounded claim to bolster his father-in-law’s legacy.
For more primary and secondary sources on Charles Carroll of Carrollton’s enslaving, please visit his Biographical Sources page at the Archives of Maryland Online.
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