Charles Carroll, Matthew Tilghman, Thomas Johnson, William Paca, Samuel Chase, Thomas Stone and William Alexander were elected delegates to Congress then in session at Philadelphia. Mr. Carroll took his seat on July 18th, having just returned from Canada. It is related that on August 2 an engrossed copy of the famous Declaration of Independence was placed on the desk of the Secretary of Congress for the signature of the members. Mr. John Hancock, the President of the body, in a conversation with Mr. Carroll, asked him if he would sign the document. “Most willingly,” said Mr. Carroll, who then took up a pen and signed his name—“Charles Carroll of Carrollton.” He affixed the name of his manor of Carrollton in order to be distinguished from his eminent relative, Charles Carroll, Barrister, and not, as is generally supposed, to show his defiance of England and of the consequence which might accrue in case the Revolution would be crushed by Great Britain, which would be, at least, the confiscation of his estates and his own reduction to poverty, if not execution as a traitor. His act is generally interpreted to have been caused by such an impulse alone, but chivalry as well as the fine sense of honor, which then governed men and women, was evidently his motive in doing so. He was then the richest man in the Colonies and his action simply meant also that if Great Britain won, he was prepared to sacrifice more than any man in the Colonies at the time. His cousin, Charles Carroll, Barrister, was almost as rich as he was, however, and either would have been a rich prize to the British if the Revolution had failed. “There goes a few millions,” said one of the delegates who stood around and who had seen Mr. Carroll sign the Declaration, thus showing that all agreed at the time that Carroll’s action was regarded as extraordinary. It was a truth that no single signer of the greatest Charter of Human Rights ever written risked as much intrinsically as Mr. Carroll. He was a member of the Board of War, and served in Congress until November 10, 1776, with marked ability; being succeeded by his namesake, Barrister Carroll. In December, 1776, he was a member of the first Maryland Senate and in 1777 he was returned to Congress and in 1781 was re-elected to the Maryland Senate. In 1788 he was elected one of the first United States Senators from Maryland, and in 1789 and 1806 was elected and reëlected to the Senate of Maryland. He was also appointed in 1797 one of the Commissioners from Maryland to settle the boundary line dispute between Maryland and Virginia. Mr. Carroll continued a member of the Maryland Senate until 1824, when he retired from public life. In April, 1827, he was elected a director of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, and on July 4, 1828, he laid the corner stone of the railroad at Mount Clare, Baltimore. While in Baltimore he resided at the mansion located at the corner of Lombard and Front Streets, which was also the home of his son-in-law,