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. Carroll was a delegate to the Revolutionary Convention of Maryland; in 1776 he went with three other commissioners (Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase, and Father John Carroll) to try to induce the Canadian colonies to join in the revolt; and soon after his return from this unsuccessful journey he signed the Declaration of Independence.  Of the circumstances of the signing the late Robert C. Winthrop of Boston gave the following description: 

     “Will you sign?” said Hancock to Charles Carroll.

     “Most willingly,” was the reply.

     “There goes two millions with the dash of a pen,” says one of those
     standing by; while another remarks:  “Oh, Carroll, you will get off,
     there are so many Charles Carrolls.”

And then we may see him stepping back to the desk and putting that addition “of Carrollton” to his name, which will designate him forever, and be a prouder title of nobility than those in the peerage of Great Britain, which were afterward adorned by his accomplished and fascinating granddaughters.

Some doubt has been cast upon this tale by the fact that papers in possession of the Carroll family prove that Mr. Carroll was wont to sign as “of Carrollton” long before the Declaration.  Further, it is recorded that John H.B.  Latrobe, Mr. Carroll’s contemporaneous biographer, never heard the story from the subject of his writings.