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Charles Carroll: Senate

In 1791, Mr. Carroll relinquished his seat in the National Senate, and was again called to the Senate of his native State. This office he continued to hold until 1804, at which time the democratic party was successful in electing their candidate, to the exclusion of this long tried and faithful patriot. At this time, Mr. Carroll took leave of public life, and sought in retirement the quiet enjoyment of his family circle.

Since the date of his retirement from public office, few incidents have occurred in the life of this worthy man which demand particular notice. Like a peaceful stream, his days glided along, and continued to be lengthened out, till the generation of illustrious men, with whom he acted on the memorable fourth of July, 1776, had all descended to the tomb. He died in 1832. "These last thirty years of his life," says a recent writer, "have passed away in serenity and happiness, almost unparalleled in the history of man. He has enjoyed, as it were, an Indian summer of existence, a tranquil and lovely period, when the leaves of the forest are richly variegated, but not yet seared; when the parent bird and the spring nestling are of the same flock, and move on equal wing; when the day of increase and the day of the necessity of provisions are gone; when the fruits of the earth are abundant, and the lakes of the woods are smooth and joyous, as if reflecting the bowers of Eden. Such an Indian summer has this patriot enjoyed: his life has been thrice, yea, four times blessed; blessed in his birth and education, in his health, in his basket, and in his store; blessed in his numerous and honorable progeny, which extend to several generations; blessed in the protracted measure of his days, in which have been crowded the events of many centuries; and blessed in the wonderful prosperity of his country, whose population has since his birth increased from nine hundred thousand souls to more than twelve millions, enjoying the blessings of freemen. It is, perhaps, from the fact, that the world think it quite enough for one mortal that he should be virtuous, prosperous, and enjoy a green old age, that an analysis of his intellectual powers, or a description of his rare attainments, has seldom been attempted; but talents and attainments he had, that made him one of the most successful of the business men of the momentous period in which he lived--a period when that which the head conceived the hands were ready to execute. There were too few at that time, and those too zealous, to make the proper division of labor. The senator armed for the field, and the soldier met with the Conscript Fathers. "Mr. Carroll was an orator. His eloquence was of the smooth, gentle, satisfactory kind, delighting all, and convincing many. It is not pretended that, like John Adams, he came down upon his hearers, as with the thunder-blast from Sinai, raising the tables of independence on high, and threatening in his wrath to break them if they were not received by the people; nor that, like Dickinson, he exhausted rhetoric and metaphysics to gain his end, and was forever striving to be heard; but Carroll came to his subject well informed, thoroughly imbued with its spirit, and with happy conceptions and graceful delivery, and with chaste and delicate language, he, without violence, conquered the understandings, and led captive the senses of his hearers. All was natural, yet sweet and polished as education could make it. He never seemed fatigued with his labors, nor faint with his exertions. His blood and judgment were so well commingled that his highest efforts were as easy and natural as if he had been engaged in the course of ordinary duties. This happy faculty still continues with the patriarch, for his conversation has now that elegant vivacity and delicacy that characterized the sage Nestor of elder times, whose words fell like vernal snows, as he spake to the people. "His serenity, and in no small degree, perhaps, his longevity, may be owing to the permanency of his principles. In early life he founded his political creed on the rights of man, and reposing his faith in the religion of his fathers, he has felt none of those vacillations and changes so common in times of political or religious agitations. It were good for the nation that he should long continue among us, for in his presence all party feuds are hushed; and the demagogue, accustomed to vociferate elsewhere, in his vanity to be heard, talks not above his breath when the aged patriot is near. In a republic where titles are not known, we ought to make a peerage of talents, virtues, patriotism, and age, that every youth may learn to admire, respect, and imitate the wise and good. With all our wishes for his stay here on earth, the patriarch must soon be gathered to his fathers, and his name given to the historian and the poet. The bard shall then strike his harp and sing, `in strains not light nor melancholy,' but with admiration, touched with religious hope,-- "Full of years and honors, through the gate Of painless slumber he retired. And as a river pure Meets in its course a subterraneous void, Then dips his silver head, again to rise, And rising glides through fields and meadows new So hath Oileus in those happy climes, Where joys ne'er fade, nor the soul's powers decay But youth and spring eternal bloom."

The name of Carroll is the only one on the Declaration to which the residence of the signer is appended. The reason why it was done in this case, is understood to be as follows:- The patriots who signed that document, did it, almost literally, with ropes about their necks, it being generally supposed that they would, if unsuccessful, be hung as rebels. When Carroll had signed his name, some one at his elbow remarked, "You'll get clear--there are several of that name--they will not know which to take." "Not so," replied he, and immediately added, "of Carrollton."

In 1827, the Editor of the Philadelphia National Gazette published a biography of Mr. Carroll, which appeared in the American Quarterly Review. He records the following fact:-- In 1825, one of Mr. Carroll's grand-daughters was married to the Marquis of Wellesley, then Viceroy of Ireland; and it is a singular circumstance that one hundred and forty years after the first emigration of her ancestors to America, this lady should become vice-queen of the country from which they fled, at the summit of a system which a more immediate ancestor had risked everything to destroy; or, in the energetic and poetical language of Bishop England, "that in the land from which the father's father fled in fear his daughter's daughter now reigns as queen."

From the same publication, it appears that Mr. Carroll, some years before our revolutionary war, wrote to a member of the British Parliament as follows:-- "Your thousands of soldiers may come, but they will be masters of the spot only on which they encamp. They will find naught but enemies before and around them. If we are beaten on the plains, we will retreat to the mountains and defy them. Our resources will increase with our difficulties. Necessity will force us to exertion: until tired of combating in vain against a spirit which victory cannot subdue, your armies will evacuate our soil, and your country retire, an immense loser, from the contest. No, sir--we have made up our minds to abide the issue of the approaching struggle; and though much blood may be spilled we have no doubt of our ultimate success."

His whole career, says Mr. Walsh, public and private, suited the dignity of his distinctive appellation--the Surviving Signer. He was always a model of regularity in conduct and sedateness in judgment. In natural sagacity, in refinement of tastes and pleasures, in unaffected habitual courtesy, in vigilant observation, vivacity of spirit and tone, susceptibility of domestic and social happiness in the best forms, he had but few equals during the greater part of his bright and long existence. The mind of Mr. Carroll was highly cultivated; he fully improved the advantages of an excellent classical education and extensive foreign travel; he read much of ancient and modern literature, and gave the keenest attention to contemporary events and characters. His patriotism never lost its earnestness and elevation. It was our good fortune, in our youth, to pass months at a time under his roof, and we never left his mansion without additional impressions of peculiar respect for the singular felicity of temperament and perfection of self-discipline, from which it resulted that no one, neither kindred, domestic nor guest, could feel his presence and society as in the least oppressive or irksome--exact and systematic, opulent and honored, enlightened and heedful though he was. The announcement of the death of Charles Carroll, was made as follows in one of the Baltimore papers of the date: "It becomes our painful duty to announce to our readers the demise of the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll of Carrollton is no more! He expired at 4 o'clock yesterday morning. Thus, one after another, the luminaries of the Revolution are leaving this stage of action, and soon the whole of the bright galaxy, which in those dark days adorned the land, must be numbered with the silent dead, and live only in the grateful recollection of those for whom they have purchased liberty, independence, prosperity and happiness. Here and there a solitary star remains, to attract the eye and warm the hearts of those who love and admire them for their virtues and their services. Mr. Carroll had reached a good old age; and had the happiness to see this young republic, which he had performed so prominent a part in aiding to establish, emerge from obscurity and take a station among the most powerful of the nations of the earth. He had lived to see her pass triumphantly through a second war with the mistress of the seas, as England has been long denominated, in which the proud lion was a second time compelled to cower beneath the power of the eagle; to see her banner waving over every sea, and her prowess acknowledged and feared in every land. He has lived to witness the anomaly in the records of the world, of a powerful people almost entirely clear of debt, and without any dangerous or distracting controversy subsisting with any foreign power, which can be thought likely to require the expenditure of money for the maintenance of her rights. He saw the people for whom he had toiled, and pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor, united, prosperous and happy, and lived to see a worthy fellow-citizen elected a second time to the Chief Magistracy of the nation by an almost unanimous voice, embracing a large portion of every section of the Union; thus evincing that there is no reason to apprehend any danger of a severance of this happy Union. In causing a retrospective glance over the path he had trodden in the course of his eventful life, how it warmed and animated his heart! It was a subject upon which he always delighted to dwell; and whenever it was touched upon, it caused him almost to forget his age, and to put on the vigor and fire of youth. "In his own immediate neighborhood, in the place of a small and obscure village, he lived to see a large and populous city spring up, and assume a station the third only in the Union in point of extent, wealth, and commercial enterprise, and inhabited by a virtuous and gallant people, partaking of his feelings, and following his bright and glorious example. What more could a mortal desire to witness? The cup of happiness with him was full to overflowing. He has fought a good fight, and his triumph has been complete. He has now run his race, and his remains repose in silence, and his grateful countrymen are showering their benedictions upon him. Peace to his ashes! May his brilliant example long serve to animate the hearts and nerve the arms of his countrymen."