Finkelman Files an Amicus Brief

Historians are part storytellers, part politicians, and their credibility depends on what they include and exclude. For years, I have been telling a historical fact that appears untrue in order to ascertain a person’s character. I considered my half-truth a test, and after ensnaring one of America’s top legal historians, I will now reveal my trap.

Did the Founders of the United States envision a Catholic or Protestant nation? Answer: ex-Maryland, they wanted a republic with checks and balances rather than a king or a Pope, and they differed on how to distribute power to accomplish that end. No serious historian can refute my last sentence, but the next statement will reveal whether you understand human nature: did any legitimate or conforming Catholics sign the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution? To test so-called experts, I have been saying zero Catholics signed the Constitution and only one signed the Declaration of Independence. However, textbooks will tell you two Catholics signed the Constitution and only one signed the Declaration of Independence. The Catholic who signed the Declaration of Independence (Charles Carroll) is the brother of one of the two Catholic signees to the Constitution (Daniel Carroll), the other being Thomas Fitzsimons, who was anti-slavery. None of them appear to be conforming Catholics.

We know the Church and other long-standing institutions, including Ivy League universities, built their wealth using chattel slavery; indeed, the word “Black” in today’s vernacular comes from the Spanish (and Catholic) word for the color black. Back then, under the doctrine of papal supremacy, you could not be anti-slavery and in line with the Pope’s thinking. As for the Carroll brothers, remember that the Founders were generally anti-Catholic and in the middle of wartime preparation, when outsiders are instinctively mistrusted.

“I do declare that there is no transubstantiation in the sacrament of the Lord’s supper in the elements of bread and wine... I do declare that I will [conform] to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England as by Law…” — 1754, anti-Catholic oath signed by George Washington, required to validate his and others’ military commissions

Why was the Carroll family an exception to anti-Catholic antipathy in the colonies? The likely answer is that they were spies and military recruiters for the Protestants. You can’t win a war without good intel and able bodies, and the Carroll family checks off all the usual characteristics of a spy family. I lack proof suitable for an academic journal, other than human nature during wartime and hundreds of letters from the Founders decrying divided loyalties, monarchies, and papal doctrine, but academic thinkers are often behind the curve for a reason. Any minority knows if you’re the only one around, you had better conform, be different (and better) than the usual stereotype (which Fitzsimons was), or keep your mouth shut about your true beliefs. My favorite part about Daniel Carroll is the following entry in the National Archives: “Not much is known about the next two decades of his life [from age 21 to 41] except that he backed the War for Independence reluctantly and remained out of the public eye.” A religious minority from a rich family openly ingratiates himself into a cabal of revolutionary Protestants and nothing is known about his formative years? As far as I’m concerned, the Carrolls were as Catholic as I am Zoroastrian, and my “zero Catholics” test exposes who is looking deeper than the surface and who understands religion as history rather than mere ideology.

What does all this have to do with Paul Finkelman, a legal historian aligned with the Democratic Party? Nothing at all, except the email he sent in response to mine is so condescending, I finally had to divulge my American history “trap.” If someone knows a Carroll brother signed the Declaration of Independence, they probably know another Carroll signed the Constitution. My statement, “Zero Catholics signed the Constitution, and only one signed the Declaration of Independence,” would, between two normal educated persons having internet access, produce questions concerning how one knows only part of the Carroll family, or why one Carroll would be Catholic and the other not. For Dr. Finkelman, the response was the following: 

“I won’t debate this now but two Catholics signed the Constitution and one signed the Declaration... So your history is deeply flawed and incorrect... Half the first class at West Point was Jewish. And of course many founders. Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, and Rush were famously non-theological.”

I made some comments above about human nature, and Professor Finkelman’s misleading statement about West Point Academy’s inaugural class allows me to explain further. Finkelman is technically correct: 50% of West Point’s first class was Jewish: “The Academy’s first graduating class of 1802 was 50% Jewish when Simon Magruder Levy graduated with one other cadet.” But the first class had only two cadets. The other cadet was General Joseph Gardiner Swift, and the type of relationship they had was exposed in a letter sent by Levy to Swift, in which Levy signs off as “Your most obedient Servant.” Tellingly, Swift once described Levy as hailing from a “respectable Jew family,” which any non-whitewashed minority knows is code for, “He’s one of the good ones.”

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https://lononaut.substack.com/p/finkelman-files-an-amicus-brief] 

https://doi.org/10.63940/ajd3