Two hundred and forty-eight years ago, the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, asserting our nation’s freedom from England and accelerating the Revolutionary War. All thirteen colonies contributed troops to the Continental Army and formed militias to advance the cause for our national sovereignty. The men who enlisted to fight were motivated by many grievances, such as excessive taxation, heavy British military presence in the colonies, and restriction of colonial trade. Some who volunteered – like the Catholics of Southern Maryland – were also motivated by a strong desire for religious liberty.

Maryland was founded in the early 17th century as a place for religious toleration, and it was initially a haven for Catholics who faced persecution in Protestant England. The colony's first proprietary governor, Leonard Calvert, was a Catholic, and he established the colony as a place where Catholics and Protestants could live amicably with one another. The colony passed “An Act Concerning Religion,” also called the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649, which granted religious freedom to all Christians.

Soon, however, English anti-Catholic prejudices prevailed even in the Maryland colony. Beginning in 1689, Catholics were barred from civil and military offices in Maryland. By 1702, Anglicanism became the established, taxpayer-funded religion of the colony. In 1704, Catholics in Maryland were prohibited from having public places of worship and were permitted to celebrate Mass only in private homes; this prohibition was repealed in 1718, but Masses in homes remained commonplace for some time. Beginning in 1716, anyone who wanted to hold public office had to renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e., the change of bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ at Mass. In 1756, Catholic landowners in Maryland began to be charged double for their property taxes. In the same year, Maryland lawmakers also attempted to pass two separate bills that would have prohibited any Catholics from owning firearms, gunpowder, or ammunition.[i]

By the time of the Revolutionary War, many Southern Maryland Catholics saw independence from England as the best way to break free from Maryland’s legislated anti-Catholicism. Although Catholics were a minority in Maryland, Maryland Catholic men were much more likely to enlist in the war than their Protestant peers, who enjoyed a privileged religious status in the colony. Consider the following impressive statistics:

Precise numbers are impossible to determine, but the muster rolls, veteran pension applications, and supply records from St. Mary’s County—where the greatest concentration of colonial American Catholics lived—all indicate that support for the Revolutionary War was greater among Catholics than it was among Protestants. An astounding 79 percent of the 145 Catholic men who married in St. Mary’s County between 1767 and 1784 swore their allegiance to the free state of Maryland, donated money and supplies to the American war effort, and served in the Continental Army or the St. Mary’s County Militia. Fifty eight percent of the men who belonged to the Jesuits’ congregation at St. Inigoes Manor in 1768 did the same, and an analysis of the lives of more than 2,000 men from St. Mary’s County who aided the independence movement reveals that more than half of them were probably Catholic—at a time when the Catholic population of St. Mary’s County was between 25 and 32 percent. [ii]

As some readers will know, I’m an avid genealogist, and I recently published a book on the history of my own Catholic family, The Wathens of Southern Maryland. When researching a couple of years ago, I was amazed to see how many Wathen men had enlisted to fight in the Revolutionary War: Volunteers included eight Wathens from St. Mary’s County and twelve from Charles County, including my great-great-great-great-great grandfather Bennett Wathen Sr. of Newport, Maryland. As far as I can tell, every local male Wathen who was of military age volunteered for either the Continental Army or his local militia to break free from the British crown and secure religious liberty. Although my research was limited to my own family, I imagine such zeal for freedom was also characteristic of other local Catholic families.

As we celebrate our nation’s birthday, then, let us remember not only the courage of our forebears, but the importance of the liberty for which they fought. Let us continue to fight for a country in which we can live out our faith freely, without fear of persecution or coercion.

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[i] A thorough overview Maryland’s anti-Catholic penal laws can be read in Scott D. Gerber, “Law and Catholicism in Colonial Maryland,” The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 103, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 465-490, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45178724. For details about the failed bills to disarm Catholics, see “An Act to Prevent the Growth of Popery within this Province” and “An Act for Regulating the Militia of the Province of Maryland” in J. Hall Pleasants, editor, Archives of Maryland, vol. 52, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly of Maryland 1755-1756 (Baltimore, Maryland: Maryland Historical Society, 1935), 441 – 449 and 450 – 474, respectively; consulted as “Archives of Maryland Online,” database with images, Maryland.gov (http://aomol.msa.maryland.gov/ : access 14 Mar 2024) > Jump to volume: 52, page: 441.

[ii] Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 242.