As the United States prepares to celebrate , historians are looking back at the founding-era documents that helped define the nation’s earliest ideals.Â
Among them is a little-known 1790 exchange between John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, and President George Washington â a correspondence that helped answer a fundamental question facing the young republic: Could Catholics, long viewed with suspicion under British rule, truly become equal American citizens?
The answer still rests today inside the Library of Congress.
About 50 feet from Dr. Kevin Butterfield’s office in the Library’s Manuscript Division sits the original letter Carroll sent to Washington, preserved among the George Washington Papers.
Washington “was spending the entire year of 1790, more or less, connecting with the entire nation,” said Butterfield, acting chief of the Library of Congress Manuscript Division. “He connected with the people because he believed that it was important as the new president that they interact directly with him and have a chance to see the new government in action.”
As Washington traveled through the states during his first year in office, letters poured in from religious congregations, civic organizations and local communities seeking reassurance about their place in the new federal government. Among them was a March 1790 address from John Carroll, who became the first Catholic bishop in the United States after the Vatican established the nations first diocese in Baltimore in 1789, and other Catholic leaders asking whether Catholics â long viewed with suspicion under British rule â would be fully included in the new republic.
Michael Breidenbach, dean of the Honors College at Ave Maria University, said the exchange also reminds Americans that Catholics were not merely beneficiaries of the nation’s founding â they helped shape it.
“As America approaches its 250th anniversary, there is a heated debate about whether the nation’s foundation had Protestant, secular or other roots,” he said. “Often missing from these conversations are the Catholic contributions to the American founding.”
Carroll’s letter, Butterfield said, stood out because it sought reassurance that Catholics would be fully included in the new republic.
“They were sharing their thoughts about and the importance of having a nation where they were included as full citizens,” he said.
Catholic priests had ministered in the American colonies for generations, but until the Vatican established the Diocese of Baltimore in 1789, there had been no Catholic bishop in the United States. Carroll was consecrated the following year, becoming the country’s first bishop.
Reading from the original manuscript, Butterfield pointed to the passage that captured the Catholics’ appeal:
“Whilst our country preserves her freedom and independence, we shall have a well-founded title to claim from her justice equal rights of citizenship as the price of our blood spilt under your eyes and of our common exertions for her defense.”
The words reminded Washington that Catholics had fought beside him throughout the .
“Carroll’s remembering eight years of George Washington’s service as commander in chief through the bloody war for independence and saying, as Washington fully knew, Catholics were a part of that battle from the start and served under his leadership to win independence,” Butterfield said.
For centuries before the American Revolution, Catholics in England and many of its colonies faced sweeping restrictions.
“It’s important to understand that many English people and colonists mistrusted Catholics,” said Catherine O’Donnell, a historian at Arizona State Uni
