“In the Cause of American Liberty:” Catholic Contributions to Independence

Eighteenth-century America was predominantly Protestant, and the Thirteen Colonies suffered from a virulent strain of anti-Catholicism. Despite this, the mostly-Protestant Founding Fathers, while being greatly inspired by their Protestant English forebears, were greatly inspired by Catholic thinkers as well.

The United States was not established as a Christian country, with American diplomats asserting in 1797: “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.”[1] But while the separation of church and state remains an important tenet of the American republic to this day, the Founding Fathers, while taking many of their philosophical ideas from the rationalist notions of the Enlightenment, believed that virtue was necessary to sustain a republic, with religion being the most common source for virtue.[2] While Christianity was not seen as the only faith that provided virtue, with Benjamin Rush remarking “I had rather see the opinions of Confucius or Mahomed inculcated upon our youth, than to see them grow up wholly devoid of a system of religious principles,”[3] Christianity, particularly Protestant Christianity, was seen as the best source for virtue, with the notion best illustrated in Samuel Adams’ idea of a “Christian Sparta” that combined the best aspects of classical political tradition and Protestantism.[4]

Virtue could be attained through Protestantism in the eyes of many eighteenth-century Americans, but not through Catholicism. Eighteenth-century British Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic were largely anti-Catholic, with this anti-Catholicism stemming from the bloody conflicts over religion in Europe. After Martin Luther started protesting against the abuses of the Catholic Church in the early sixteenth century, Europe split into Protestant and Catholic camps. Because the countries had state-sponsored churches in this time, the divisions caused by the Reformation were not only spiritual but political as well. England came to support the Protestant Church under Henry VIII in the 1530s, but in the following centuries England would occasionally revert to having a Catholic monarch, causing both religious and political turmoil in the American colonies. For instance, during the reigns of James II and Charles II, many northern colonial governments briefly lost their political charters as well as much of their autonomy. Because of these trends, the predominantly Protestant Anglo-Americans of the time associated their own faith with liberty, and Catholicism with tyranny. [5]

Nonetheless, British Catholics had played their part in the founding of the Thirteen Colonies, with the colony of Maryland, being led by the Catholic Cecil Calvert, being founded in the seventeenth-century. Calvert granted religious freedom to all Christians in the colony, though his interests in founding Maryland were more economic than religious. Unfortunately, this period of toleration did not last and by the end of the seventeenth-century Catholics had lost their protection, with Anglicanism becoming the colony’s preferred religion. Nonetheless, Catholics in Maryland still had more rights than their coreligionists in other colonies, with large numbers of Catholics existing in in St. Mary’s and Charles counties during the eighteenth-century. Making up 10 percent of the colony’s population, Maryland’s Catholics greatly contributed to the colony’s economy, with many being wealthy planters, while others served in trades such as blacksmithing and carpentry or worked on the Chesapeake Bay. Jesuit priests also contributed to Maryland’s development as a colony, with many running manors on which they maintained chapels where the local Catholics would gather.[6] Maryland proved to be economically vital during the American Revolution, with the Chesapeake Bay and the Eastern Shore being particularly important, [7] but the colony’s economic sufficiency would have been lacking if not for the vital contributions of Catholics throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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Even with the contributions Catholics in Maryland and elsewhere, anti-Catholicism remained dominant in eighteenth-century-America, as shown in the reaction to The Quebec Act of 1774. The Quebec Act was one of many British decisions that led to the American Revolution. After capturing the region from the French in the Seven Years War, the British needed to make clear the legal status of this new addition to the empire. To pacify their new subjects, the act reinstated the principles of the French legal system and allowed French Canadian Catholics to practice their faith freely. Furthermore, the act also moved Quebec’s border down to the Ohio River, encroaching on territories claimed by Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Virginia. Colonists saw the act as a gross violation of English law, mainly because it encroached on their previous claims to lands on the frontier. But some saw a darker conspiracy afoot. A popular conspiracy in Massachusetts told of an unholy alliance between Rome and London, with England adopting Catholicism as its state religion and the pope mobilizing an army of French Catholics to destroy Boston. Equating tyranny with the practice of the Catholic faith, conspiracy theories involving the Quebec Act were common among Protestant colonists.[8]Alexander Hamilton predicted that “an inquisition” would be set up in Canada, with Catholic tyranny spreading across the English colonies in America, writing that “priestly tyranny may hereafter find as propitious a soil, in America as it ever has in Spain or Portugal.”[9]

Despite the strong anti-Catholicism of the time, the Founders owed some of their philosophical underpinnings to Catholic thinkers, including a document that was drafted by the thirteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton. Langton served as Archbishop at a time when the barons of England were in a dispute with the tyrannical King John. Langton urged the barons to fight for their liberties, but advised against bloodshed. In order to accomplish this difficult task, Langton served as an intermediary between the barons and King John at Runnymede in 1215, where he helped draft the Magna Carta Libertatum (the Great Charter of Liberties). The Magna Carta put into writing the notion that the king and his government were not above the law, and laid the basis for trial by jury and due process. The Magna Carta became an official part of English law by the end of the thirteenth century and greatly influenced the American founding, serving as an inspiration for the colonial charters of Maryland, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Carolina, and Connecticut. Furthermore, the Magna Carta was repeatedly referenced by the American founders themselves, with statesmen such as Samuel Adams comparing the colonists’ grievances against King George with the barons’ grievances against King John. But while the Magna Carta was championed as a justification for American rights, the Catholic cardinal that helped instigate and draft it remained unsung.[10]

The Founders were also strongly inspired by Algernon Sidney, a seventeenth century English political theorist, who fought on the side of Parliament during the English Civil War and was later executed for plotting against King Charles. Although he was an Anglican, Sidney was greatly influenced by the sixteenth-century Italian Jesuit Robert Bellarmine. While living in different time periods, and practicing different denominations of the Christian faith, both men were equally opposed to the notion of Divine Right, which held that kingship was the result of God’s will, freeing monarchs of constitutional limitations.[11] The influence of the Italian Jesuit on Sidney is well illustrated in his renowned political treatise Discourses on Government. In this political treatise, Sidney advocated equality as a virtue above all others, a notion he borrowed from Bellarmine: “I take Bellarmine’s first argument [‘because by nature all men are equal: therefore, he hath given power to the people or multitude’] to be strong.”[12] Algernon Sidney was thought of very highly by the Founding Fathers, with his works being advocated by James Madison as useful references for Congress. Thus, in their direct reliance on Sidney, the Founders were indirectly influenced by an Italian Jesuit.[13]

The Founders were also influenced by a Catholic from their own ranks: Charles Carroll. Hailing from Maryland, Carroll was educated at the College of St. Omer’s in France, where he received a Jesuit education in political philosophy, with the institution not only promoting the political notions of Bellarmine, but also Francisco Suarez and Juan de Mariana, opponents of the divine right of kings.[14]Carroll was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence and signed the document mainly to promote religious toleration in America.[15] Carroll was a unique asset to the American cause and was sent by the Continental Congress to Canada in early 1776 (along with his cousin, a Catholic priest), in order to assuage the fears of Catholic Canadians who feared that the American invaders would deprive them of their religious liberties.[16] A letter from Congress described Carroll’s qualifications: “The third member was Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a prominent and wealthy Maryland Roman Catholic who had been educated in France; and he was asked to persuade John Carroll, his cousin and a priest, to accompany the mission.”[17]

The efforts of Carroll and his fellow patriots to gain the support of Canadians failed, but the Jesuit-educated gentleman secured another victory: respect from his fellow delegates, and in a broader sense respect for Catholics involved in the patriot cause.[18] For instance, John Adams, who described the Catholic mass as an extravagant display intended to “bewitch the simple and ignorant,” nonetheless thought very highly of his Catholic compatriot.[19] He wrote:

In the Cause of American Liberty, his Zeal Fortitude and Perseverance have been So conspicuous that he is Said to be marked out for peculiar Vengeance by the Friends of Administration: But he continues to hazard his all: his immense Fortune, the largest in America, and his Life. This Gentlemans Character, If I foresee aright, will hereafter make a greater Figure in America. His Abilities are very good, his Knowledge and Learning extensive, I have seen Writings of his which would convince you of this. You may perhaps hear before long more about them.[20]

The efforts of Catholics like Carroll, and the more pragmatic concerns of gaining the support of American Catholics and gaining an alliance with the Catholic French, decreased expressions of anti-Catholicism in the patriot cause. George Washington took the lead in this trend, quashing the observation of Pope’s Day, an anti-Catholic celebration practiced in England and America, which involved burning the pope in effigy.[21] According to Washington, “At such a juncture, and in such Circumstances, to be insulting their Religion, is so monstrous, as not to be suffered, or excused.”[22] While anti-Catholicism would return to America in the nineteenth century,[23] the Catholic contributions to the American Revolution (and the ability of non-Catholic founders such as Washington and Adams to transcend the prejudices of their day) helped lay the groundwork for a republic committed to the free practice of all religions.

[1] David Humphreys, “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary,” November 4, 1796, Yale Law School.

[2] Thomas S Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution (Basic Books, 2010), 249.

[3] Benjamin Rush, “On the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic” (Philadelphia, 1798).

[4] Kidd, God of Liberty, 98.

[5] Ibid., 19.

[6] Chester Gillis, Roman Catholicism in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 53-56.

[7] Barry Paige Neville, “For God, King, And Country: Loyalism on the Eastern Shore of Maryland During the American Revolution,” International Social Science Review 84, no. 3/4 (2009): 135–56.

[8] Kidd, God of Liberty, 67-68.

[9] Remarks on the Quebec Bill: Part One, June 15, 1775], Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0058.

[10] Robert R. Reilly, America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding (Ignatius Press, 2020), 75-79.

[11] Ibid., 196-197.

[12] Algernon Sidney, “Discourses Concerning Government” (1698), constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/algernon-sidneydiscourses-concerning-government-1698.

[13] “Report on Books for Congress, [January 23] 1783,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-06-02-0031.

[14] Bradley J. Birzer, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll (ISI Books, 2010), 11.

[15] Ibid., 173

[16] Ibid., 105

[17] “Instructions and Commission from Congress to Franklin, Charles Carroll, and Samuel Chase for the Canadian Mission, 20 March 1776,” Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-22-02-0228.

[18] Birzer, American Cicero, 107-108.

[19] John Adams to Abigail Adams, October 9, 1774, Adams Family Papers: An Electronic Archive, Massachusetts Historical Society, www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17741016aa.

[20] John Adams to James Warren, February 18, 1776, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-04-02-0008.

[21] Kidd, God of Liberty, 73

[22] General orders, November 5, 1775, Founders Online, National Archives, founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-02-02-0279.

[23] Kidd, God of Liberty, 74