People Set Apart.

There were few Roman Catholics in the early United States, perhaps twenty-five thousand of a total population of almost four million in 1783. Like the Jews, American Catholics felt themselves to be a people set apart from Protestant Americans by their distinctive beliefs and rituals. Catholics suffered the added problem of a persistent anti-Catholic animus which had roots in the Protestant Reformation and had been reawakened in the controversy over Britain's treatment of French Catholics in Quebec in 1763. Many Protestant Americans considered the British too generous to the Catholics. American Catholics were just as engaged as Protestants in shaping the character of the new country's citizens. They eagerly embraced the republicanism of the new nation and worked hard in the 1780s to establish an American version of the Roman church. Father John Carroll wrote his Address to the Roman Catholics of...