Scope and Content Note
The papers of Charles C. Marshall (1860-1938), span the years 1886-1968, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1927-1937. The collection consists of correspondence, notes, scrapbooks, reprints, and newspaper clippings and is organized into seven series: General Correspondence , Scrapbooks , Book Manuscripts , Calvert Controversy , Printed Matter , Miscellany , and Oversize .
Marshall was known for his controversy in 1927 with Alfred E. Smith over the qualifications of a Roman Catholic for president of the United States. In “An Open Letter to the Honorable Alfred E. Smith” in the Atlantic Monthly, Marshall suggested that there was an irreconcilable conflict between the dogmas of the Catholic Church and the American Constitution. Smith answered Marshall in the May issue of the same journal denying that his religious beliefs conflicted with the Constitution and at the same time proclaiming his adherence to the principle of separation of church and state.
The correspondence which this controversy evoked is of interest for a study of one aspect of the 1928 presidential election as well as for students of the church-state problem in the United States. Of further interest on the latter subject is the correspondence relating to Marshall’s book The Roman Catholic Church in the Modern State, first published in 1928 and revised in 1931.
Marshall was an active layman in what was known as the Catholic Church of the Anglican Church, and this interest is represented in the papers. His deep interest in the early history of religious freedom in this country is seen in the material that he assembled in the Calvert controversy in seventeenth-century Maryland.
Correspondents in the collection include E. Boyd Barrett, Frederic R. Coudert, Frank Courtenay Dodd, James M. Gillis, L. H. Lehman, Walter Lippmann, Arthur Selden Lloyd, Wilfrid Parsons, and Michael Williams.