ABSTRACT
As English settlers, the Jesuits shared in the development of slavery in Maryland. In administering their slaveholding, however, they attempted to apply the abstract ideals of Catholic philosophy and theology. In 1965 the pastor of Saint Ignatius, Father Robert Thoman, celebrated the fact that the Wee-Sorts were tri-racial. He felt that they were the only group of people who embodied the complete image of the Catholic Church in the United States itself. The key to understanding the sale lies in the simple fact that the slaveholding of the Jesuits, unlike that of their Protestant neighbors, was perpetually linked to the Catholic struggle to win acceptance and assimilation in British North America and the United States. In colonial Maryland, the Jesuits realized from the outset that Catholics must achieve recognition of their status as propertyholders if they were to overcome the stigma of religious minority in a Protestant culture.
