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Finding this situation well-nigh intolerable, Carroll of Carrollton,
already a man of great wealth, joined with his cousin, Father John
Carroll, who later became first Archbishop of Baltimore (for many years
the only Roman Catholic diocese in the United States, embracing all
States and Territories), in an appeal to the King of France for a grant
of land in what is now Arkansas, but was then a part of Louisiana, this
land to be used as a refuge for Roman Catholics and Jesuits, whom the
Carrolls proposed to lead thither precisely as Cecilius Calvert, Lord
Baltimore, had led them to Maryland to escape persecution.
The Roman Catholics were not, however, by this time the only American
colonists who felt themselves abused; the whole country was chafing, and
the seeds of revolution were beginning to show their red sprouts.
It might have been expected that Mr. Carroll, being the richest man in
the country, would hesitate at rebellion, but he did not. Unlike some of
our present-day citizens of foreign extraction, and in circumstances
involving not merely sentiment, but property and perhaps life, he showed
no tendency to split his Americanism, but boldly threw his noble old
cocked hat into the ring. Nor did he require a Roosevelt to make his
duty clear to him.
In 1775 Mr.
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