This is the record of the day. The incidents narrated in the foregoing article throw some light on the services of the illustrious clergyman to the American cause and also show why he was elevated to the primacy of the Catholic Church in America. Subsequent to the Revolution, when full freedom dawned on the former Colonies, the Catholics in the several states, and they were most numerous in Maryland, desired no connection with England, religiously, because English Catholics were at that time proscribed persons and without political rights or standing before the law, although it is true that active persecution had ceased. Yet still although freemen the American Catholics were under the jurisdiction of the English Bishops, or Vicars Apostolic, and it was this connection that it was desired to sever, so that the Americans could have absolute independence religious as well as political. Father Carroll was one of the six priests who met on June 27, 1783, in Baltimore and held a conference at which the necessity of being independent of England was considered. At this conference were present Father John Ashton, the ex-Jesuit priest, who may be fitly styled the Nestor of the Catholic priesthood of the Archdiocese of Baltimore, and Rev. Leonard Neale, afterwards Archbishop of Baltimore. On October 11, 1784, Father Carroll took part in a second conference, at which a plan of Government for the Catholic Church in the United States was drawn up, which included nineteen rules for the Government of the Clergy, was also adopted and a chapter of body corporate was formed, of which Father Ashton was chosen procurator general and he was given charge of all the church property in the Union. The chapter at a subsequent meeting at Whitemarsh, Prince Georges County, resolved to found Georgetown College, Father Ashton being named as one of the first board of directors. Father Carroll was made vicar general in 1786; in 1788 in company with Father Ashton and Rev. Robert Molyneux, afterwards vicar general, drew up a petition asking that the American Catholic Church be given greater liberty by being put under the charge of a bishop directly responsible to the Congregation of the Propaganda, which at that time was understood to be dominated by French influence. This petition was successful, and Father Carroll was unanimously nominated for the proposed prelacy.