"Driven to emigrate by England's devastating anti-Catholic policies, the first Carroll brought with him to Maryland an iron determination to reconstitute his family and fortune. But instead of a more tolerant environment, he found an increasingly militant Protestant society that ultimately disenfranchised Catholics and threatened their wealth and property. Confronting religious antagonisms like those that had destroyed their Irish ancestors, this Carroll and his descendants founded a fortune - and a dynasty that risked everything by allying with the American Revolutionary cause.". "Meeting each crisis with compromise, cunning, and a tenacious will to survive and prevail, the Carrolls earned an esteemed place in the new nation. Hoffman balances the intimacy of their frequently painful private lives against their contentious public role in American history. He shows how the journey from Irish rebels to American revolutionaries shaped and shattered the Carrolls - and then remade them into one of the first families of the Republic."--BOOK JACKET.