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Overview
Drawing on his considerable study of Carroll's published and unpublished writings, historian Bradley J. Birzer masterfully captures a man of supreme intellect, imagination, integrity, and accomplishment. Born a bastard, Carroll nonetheless became the best educated (and wealthiest) Founder. The Marylander's insight, Birzer shows, allowed him to recognize the necessity of independence from Great Britain well before most other Founders. Indeed, Carroll's analysis of the situation in the colonies in the run-up to the Revolution was original and brilliant—yet almost all historians have ignored it. Reflecting his classical and liberal education, the man who would be called "The Last of the Romans" advocated a proper understanding of the American Revolution as deeply rooted in the Western tradition. Carroll even left his mark on the U.S. Constitution despite not assuming his elected position to the Constitutional Convention: by inspiring the creation of the U.S. Senate.
American Cicero ably demonstrates how Carroll's Catholicism was integral to his thought. Oppressed because of his faith—Maryland was the most anti-Catholic of the original thirteen colonies—Carroll became the only Roman Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence and helped legitimize Catholicism in the young American republic.
What's more, Birzer brilliantly reassesses the most controversial aspects of Charles Carroll: his aristocratic position and his critiques of democracy. As Birzer shows, Carroll's fears of extreme democracy had ancient and noble roots, and his arguments about the dangers of democracy influenced Alexis de Tocqueville's magisterial work Democracy in America.
American Cicero reveals why Founders such as John Adams assumed that Charles Carroll would one day be considered among the greats—and also why history has largely forgotten him.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781933859897 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2010 |
| Series: | Lives of the Founders |
| Edition description: | 1 |
| Pages: | 230 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.80(w) x 7.80(h) x 1.20(d) |
| Age Range: | 3 Months to 18 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
AMERICAN CICERO
The Life of Charles CarrollBy Bradley J. Birzer
ISI BOOKS
Copyright © 2010 Bradley J. BirzerAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-933859-89-7
Chapter One
LIBERALLY-EDUCATED BASTARD
"The situation of our affairs absolutely require[s] my residence in Maryland: and I can not sacrifice the future aggrandisement of our family to a woman," Charles Carroll wrote from England to his father in Maryland in 1763, after contemplating marriage. "America is a growing country: in time it will & must be independent." Immensely loyal to his family, Charles, already at the age of twenty-six, had determined the course of his life. Though a disenfranchised Roman Catholic in a Protestant colony, Charles possessed a deep patriotism for his country. Not simply the province of Maryland or the British Empire, his country-that is, his "America"-was the imagined republic of citizens who had inherited the Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman tradition and the rights and liberties of the Anglo-Saxons. Charles's exemplar, the Roman republican Cicero, had written that the good man "is not bound by human walls as the citizen of one particular spot but a citizen of the whole world as if it were a single city." For Charles Carroll, an Americana res publica might very well represent Cicero's ideal.
A citizen of Western civilization, Charles in 1763 stood at the forefront of his generation in terms of his republicanism, his Christianity, and his virtue. Oppressed because of his Roman Catholic faith, he still saw possibilities and prepared for a life devoted to the pursuit of the humane. From the age of eleven until the age of twenty-seven, Charles received an intense education in France and England. From French Jesuits, he learned the liberal arts and the greats of the Western tradition. On July 8, 1757, at the age of nineteen, Charles successfully defended his thesis in "universal philosophy" and became a master of arts. With a firm grounding in the classics and liberal arts, Carroll studied civil law in France for two additional years, and in 1759, he went to London to study common law. Never very interested in the practice or details of the law, pursing studies in it only because of the wishes of his father, Charles spent much of his time in London studying various forms of math, accounting, and surveying, and toward the end of his stay, pursuing a wife and spending time with friends.
While Charles spent his formative years in various European and English circles, his father read the letters he sent home with great attention, gauging his son's progress as a virtuous and educated man. What kind of man would continue the Carroll family name, the Carroll fortune, and the Carroll reputation? What kind of man could be a proud but disenfranchised Irish Roman Catholic aristocrat in a predominantly Anglo-Saxon Protestant society?
A Liberal Education
Only eleven, and legally a bastard, Charles Carroll sailed to France in the summer of 1748 and entered the College of St. Omer as a student. Founded in 1593 on the Aa River in the Pas de Calais, the school's mission was engraved above its entrance, revealing its intentions without trepidation: "Jesus, Jesus, convert England, may it be, may it be." Known to English Catholics as the "seminary of martyrs-the school of confessors," the college offered the Jesuit version of the liberal arts, the ratio atque institutio studiorum Societas Jesu ("Method and system of the studies of the Society of Jesus"), or in its abbreviated form, the ratio studiorum. Based on the Spiritual Institutes and the teachings of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus (i.e., the Jesuits), the ratio studiorum reflected the martial, humane, and rigorous spirit of the Jesuits. It offered a true Christian humanism, bridging the liberal traditions of the ancients and the medievals, through the lens of Cicero. Additionally influenced by the teachings of the Catholic Spanish humanist Luis Vives (1492-1540) and the Lutheran educational theorist John Sturm (1507-89), the ratio studiorum brilliantly combined scholastic and humanist methods, ideals, and goals. True to the teachings of such vital figures as St. Augustine, the ratio studiorum allowed for local options, as long as the local schools remained true to larger, universal principles as understood and propounded by the Roman Catholic Church. What Charles Carroll learned at St. Omer reflected, to a great extent, the specific beliefs of the local Catholic community, as well as those of the superior or rector of the school. In this way, personality expanded rather than diminished in the Jesuit promotion of the liberal arts, and the Jesuits avoided the latent mechanical tendencies of the martial aspects of their order. Led by a (hopefully) devoted individual tutor, a student studied literature, philosophy, and science over a six-year period. The curriculum called for frequent recitations and repetitions-through compositions, discussions, debates, and contests-on the part of the student. The ratio studiorum also promoted physical exercise, mild discipline in terms of punishments, and serious "moral training." Students learned Greek and Latin throughout the six-year course, and the system of study encouraged the speaking of Latin even in casual conversation. Ultimately, though, the student was to aim for "the perfect mastery of Latin" and, especially "the acquisition of a Ciceronian style." With the course, the Jesuits helped to release and harmonize "the various powers of faculties of the soul-of memory, imagination, intellect, and will."
Charles was certainly not the only Catholic exile educated at St. Omer. Indeed, a number of children from Maryland received their educations there, including the future first Catholic bishop in the United States, John Carroll, Charles's first cousin. "Most of our Merylandians [sic] do very well," Charles proudly wrote his parents in 1750, "and they are said to be as good as any, if not the best boys in the house."
His peers, teachers, and liberal education suited young Charles, who thrived at St. Omer. At the age of thirteen, Charles wrote his father: "I can easily see the great affection you have for Me by sending me hear [sic] to a Colege [sic], where I may not only be a learned man, but also be advanced in piety & devotion." While one might cynically take this as a mere platitude, Charles seemed quite sincere with his father, whom he must have idealized, though separated by the Atlantic. Rarely does he complain about being in France or away from Maryland in his early letters. This contrasts significantly with his later letters, when Charles clearly hated the study of law and desired nothing more than to return to the family estate. "Master Charles is a very good youth & I hope he will deserve all the favours you bestow uppon [sic] him," William Newton, one of the priests at St. Omer, assured Charles's parents. A year later, a relative of the Carrolls's who was a tutor at St. Omer, Father Anthony, evaluated Charles's abilities in a very favorable light. "He is naturally curious," Anthony wrote, and full of "much good sense." His only problem "is that he is giddy." Still, Anthony conceded, Charles always earned a position as one of the six best students in the college. "I have seldom seen him worse than 5th. which he is at present, but often better." All competitions at St. Omer revolved around who achieved status as one of the six best. By late November 1753, as Charles graduated, he received the highest praise of all. His master, Father John Jenison, claimed him to be "the finest young man, in every respect, that ever enter'd the House." Hoping not to have his words considered as exaggeration, Father John summed up his views of Charles:
'Tis very natural I should regret the loss of one who during the whole time he was under my care, never deserv'd, on any account, a single harsh word, and whose sweet temper rendered him equally agreeable both to equals and superiors, without ever making him degenerate into the mean character of a favorite which he always justly despis'd. His application to his Book and Devotions was constant and unchangeable.... This short character I owe to his deserts;-prejudice, I am convince'd, has no share in it.
Father John assured Charles's father that the community of priests and students shared this view of the graduate. Whether exaggerated or not, these words should have made his parents justly proud, and they offer good evidence of Charles's character, fully commensurate with his life as an adult.
The six-year course at St. Omer introduced Charles to a thorough understanding-at least as taught by the Jesuits-of the Western tradition. In addition to an intensive study of Latin and Greek, Carroll met the greats. In the letters to his father, Charles revealed a cherished familiarity with Homer, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Dryden. Charles should, his father advised him, "understand those Authors well" and "[enter] into the Spirit of them to aid your Judgment and form a taste in you." Charles seems to have done this long before his father encouraged it. Indeed, this intimacy with the great minds of the Occident remained throughout Charles's days, and he considered the best thinkers of the Western tradition as friends and conversationalists. This is obvious in his correspondence as well as in his public writings and speeches. The greats shaped and spoke to Carroll, and he in turn considered them ancestors worth honoring in his thoughts, words, and actions. While these greats were not Carrolls, they were equal citizens "of the whole world as if it were a single city." Their dialogue transcended the limits of time and generation.
And yet, his father cautioned him, one should read the greats not just for conversation and continuity but also to understand virtue and its relationship to a satisfied life. "The rest of your Life will be a continued Scene of ease and Satisfaction, if you keep invariably in the Paths of Truth of Virtue," his father explained. At the forefront of the faculties for understanding virtue stood Reason, an utterance of the soul that balanced the passions with the intellect. "Men of Sense do not content themselves with knowing a thing but make themselves thoroughly acquainted with the Reasons on which their knowledge is founded," the father wrote. Consequently, even though your "Memory may fail you ... an impression is made by Reason" and "it will last as long [as] you retain your Understanding." A year later, Charles's father offered another explanation of virtue and its significance to the good life. All actions should be commensurate with "probity, Honour, [and] your Duty to God and your Superiors," as "Sight with our other Senses is bestow'd on us by Providence for Our Benefit and happiness, but it mus[t] be kept under the Dominion of Reason." Virtue and knowledge stood well above the possession of even large amounts of wealth, his father believed. And even higher than the wisdom of the ancient pagans stood the wisdom of the Jews. The beginning of all wisdom, Charles's father reminded him, is the fear of the Lord. "Always remember this and you will not only infallably [sic] secure happiness here and hereafter to your Self but you will be in the Comfort of Yor [sic] Parents."
There can be little doubt that his years at St. Omer, important years for any young person, formed Charles in a profound manner. Significantly, Charles recognized this as well. As his friend, poet and priest Charles Constantine Pise, remembered,
And often, in the retirement of his old age, in the social hours of his evening fireside, have I heard him speak in strains of the highest eulogy, and with sentiments of the most devoted attachment, and expressions of the noblest gratitude, of his ancient preceptors. To them he attributed all that he knew-to their solicitude he referred all that he valued in his acquirements; and particularly that deep and hollowed conviction of religious truth, which was the ornament of his youth, and the solace of his old age. When any one uttered a sentiment of astonishment how, in his advanced years, he could rise so early, and kneel so long-these good practices he would answer with his high tone of cheerfulness, I learned under the Jesuits, at the College of St. Omers [sic].
This was high praise indeed from a proud alumnus.
After his successful career at St. Omer, Charles enrolled in another Jesuit institution, the College of Rheims, in the autumn of 1753, at the age of sixteen. A city dating backing back to the Roman Empire, Rheims was one of the most important towns for the Franks and one of the first to convert to Christianity. It provided a romantic backdrop for Charles's continuing studies. What Charles studied there remains somewhat unclear, but the school offered courses in some of the liberal arts and some of what would be included in today's understanding of the social sciences, as well as courses in the fine arts. His father encouraged him to take fencing and dancing for a "graceful Carriage," and math and geography. These studies, his father noted, gave more significance to the importance of knowing Greek and Latin. "Would it not be very odd for a man to know Greek and Latin and not be able to describe the Position of any Noted place or Kingdom, or to Add, Multiply, or Divide a Sum," Charles Carroll of Annapolis asked rhetorically.
It remains unclear how long Charles studied in Rheims, and each of his various biographers offers a slightly different timeline for his post-St. Omer's, pre-law education. He seems to have shifted-at least if one follows the dates and references in his letters-between Rheims and Paris with relative frequency. In the fall of 1755, Charles was attending another Jesuit college, the Louis-le-Grand in Paris. Focusing on classical philosophy, but also deeply familiar with and knowledgeable of natural law theory, Charles earned a master of arts in "universall [sic] philosophy" on July 8, 1757. Charles reported to his father that the auditors of the test "seem'd to be contented" with his performance. At the Louis-le-Grand, Reverend Pise later eulogized, Charles
grounded himself in the critical knowledge of the ancient languages[,] became master of all the intricacies and beauties of style, as well as in his own town, as in the learned languages; stored his mind with the poets and historians, with the orators and the philosophers of Greece and Rome, and acquired that general information, that universal knowledge, which shed a charm around his conversation, and gave increased interest to the natural fascination of his manner.
While one might take this as hagiographic hyperbole, Charles's own writings-both in style and argument-seem to prove Pise correct. Throughout Charles's life, the greats stood as his constant companions.
It was also at Louis-le-Grand that Charles first encountered, devoured, and absorbed Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws. Montesquieu's influence on the young scholar cannot be exaggerated, and one biographer has gone so far as to argue that he served as "the seminal influence on Carroll." Charles was especially taken with Montesquieu's notion of republican balance and the minimization of concentrated power in any one branch or person in government. Equally important, during his study at Louis-le-Grand, Charles seems to have rejected the philosophy of John Locke (for reasons that are lost to history). Rooted in the study of history-which had been recently included in the ratio studiorum-Charles might have easily rejected Locke's ahistorical, simplistic, and anti-Catholic understanding of a state of nature at the beginning of all things. Charles would certainly have rejected the Lockean notion of man's soul as a "blank slate" upon his birth and Locke's own argument in favor of the denial of civil rights for Catholics. Whatever the case, when Charles's father recommended that he purchase a book of Locke's, Charles replied: "You need not buy Mr. Lock's[sic] work [as] it will be of no great service to me." Never again does Charles mention or cite Locke.
Though he read Montesquieu a full generation before the American Revolution, Charles's intimate knowledge of the classical world is commensurate with the familiarity many of America's Founding fathers held toward the ancient world. When a student entered college (usually at age fourteen or fifteen), he would need to prove fluency in Latin and Greek. According to historians Forrest and Ellen McDonald, he would need to "read and translate from the original Latin into English 'the first three of [Cicero's] Select Orations and the first three books of Virgil's Aeneid' and to translate the first ten chapters of the Gospel of John from Greek into Latin, as well as to be 'expert in arithmetic' and to have a 'blameless moral character." The education of the Founders followed a pattern. Not only did they study the classics, but they also connected the classical tradition through the Christian tradition-Protestant and Catholic-to a mythologized view of the liberties and common law of the Anglo-Saxons. "The minds of the youth are perpetually led to the history of Greece and Rome or to Great Britain," Noah Webster wrote, as "boys are constantly repeating the declamations of Demosthenes and Cicero or debates upon some political question in the British Parliament." Those promoting the American Revolution in the 1770s and 1780s "were men of substance-propertied, educated. They read. And what they read made it easer for them to become rebels because they did not see rebels when they looked in the mirror," historian Trevor Colbourn has written. "They saw transplanted Englishmen with the rights of expatriated men. They were determined to fight for inherited historic rights and liberties." Though perhaps to an extreme extent, Charles Carroll fits nicely into the arguments of these authors and confirms their ideas and suppositions.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from AMERICAN CICERO by Bradley J. Birzer Copyright © 2010 by Bradley J. Birzer. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction: An Exemplar of Catholic and Republican Virtue....................IX 1 Liberally-Educated Bastard....................12 First Citizen....................39
3 The Constitution Evolves....................79
4 Attenuating Disorder....................117
5 Echoing the Divine Order....................161
Conclusion: The Last of the Romans....................189
Appendix....................199
Notes....................215
Selected Bibliography....................255
Acknowledgments....................271
Index....................277