Dear Papa, Dear Charley: Volume II

This compelling collection of correspondence between a father and a son documents the history of eighteenth-century America through the intimate story of a family and the journey from boyhood to political prominence of its most illustrious member, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.Beginning in the late 1740s, when ""Papa"" (Charles Carroll of Annapolis) sent ""Charley"" (Charles Carroll of Carrollton) away from his native Maryland to be educated in Europe, the letters present a new perspective on colonial and Revolutionary America as the lived experience of Roman Catholics, whose defiant adherence to their faith denied them the civil rights and guarantees - including the right to hold office and to vote - that their Protestant counterparts enjoyed. This context accentuates the drama of Charley's rise to power during the Revolution, the necessity of the political and economic compromises he felt compelled to make, and the ultimately tragic personal price exacted by his success. Bringing the Carroll's public and private lives sharply into focus, these volumes present the past in its fullest human dimensions.

Ronald Hoffman is the former director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and professor of history at the College of William and Mary. He is editor of the Charles Carroll of Carrollton Papers and author of Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga, 1500-1782. Sally D. Mason is associate editor of the Carroll Papers and assistant to the director of the Institute. Eleanor S. Darcy is former assistant editor of the Carroll Papers.