Anna Ella Carroll
Encyclopedia
Anna Ella Carroll was an American politician, pamphleteer and lobbyist. She played a significant role as advisor to the Lincoln cabinet during the American Civil War
.
into a prominent upper class, mixed Catholic-Protestant family.
Her father was Thomas King Carroll
, who served as Maryland governor in 1830 and was owner of a 2000 acres (8.1 km²) tobacco plantation in Somerset County. She was the eldest of eight children and was educated and trained by her father to be his aide and likely tutored in the law by him. This allowed her access into the male world of politics. Anna contributed to her family’s income by establishing a girls’ school at their home, Kingston Hall. However little is known about her life between the ages of twenty and thirty-five.
. Shortly thereafter, Taylor died and Carroll's commission was signed by Millard Fillmore
. In 1854, Carroll joined the American Party
(the Know Nothing Party) following the demise of the Whigs. At the time much political realignment was going on nationwide. The same year the Republican party was formed and the Southern pro-slavery Democrats were to take over the control of their leadership in Congress due to the defeat of many Northern Democrats following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in May. In Maryland, large numbers of immigrants, largely German and Irish Catholics, had flooded into Baltimore following the famines of the 1840s, taking work in the port and railroad yards. Due to this rapid urbanization, street crime became a problem and relief rolls rose. At the same time planters were a strong force in the state with many Catholic and Episcopalian ones residing on the Eastern Shore. In 1853, the Maryland Know Nothing party was formed, initially, from three nativist groups. Yet beginning in February, it took in large numbers of striking laborers from the ironworks factory in Baltimore whom the Democratic party had refused to support. Thus in opposing the pro-slavery Democrats, the Know Nothings became a powerful, but divisive, party in the state, being not pro-slavery, but pro-Union, pro-labor, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant.
Along with other reformers, Carroll campaigned against urban machine corruption, crime, and what was perceived as the political threat of the power of the Catholic Church. In Maryland the Catholic planter/urban vote could combine to establish a pro-slavery state government. In 1856, the party then split nationally into Northern and Southern factions due to the slavery issue. During the 1856 presidential election, Carroll supported and campaigned on behalf of Fillmore, the South American/Whig candidate, writing many articles and pamphlets and touring the Northeast on his behalf. Considered a moderate, Fillmore carried the state of Maryland, the only one he won.
For the 1856 campaign, Carroll published two party books that greatly extended her political and press contacts: The Great American Battle, or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism and The Star of the West, and influential pamphlets such as "The Union of the States". The former book was a virulent criticism of the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church
under the papacy of Pius IX (see anti-clericalism
). In 1857 Carroll was the chief publicist for Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and he credited his victory to her writings. In 1858, she took up the cause of former Congressman John Minor Botts, a Unionist from Virginia, in his presidential bid. She wrote a series of articles in the New York Evening Express newspaper on the 1860 candidates under the pseudonym "Hancock." Others over time appeared in the influential National Intelligencer, among other venues.
as president in 1860, Carroll freed her own slaves and turned her activities toward opposition to the secession of the Southern states and keeping Maryland loyal. Lincoln’s election set off the secession movement out of the Union which began with South Carolina’s exit on December 20, 1860. In February 1861, the Confederate government
was formed in Montgomery, Alabama
. During this time Carroll was advising Governor Thomas H. Hicks on compromise efforts in the Congress and sending intelligence on Confederate plans that may have resulted in a coup d’etat of Washington, D.C. had Maryland seceded, once Virginia went out.
During the summer of 1861, Carroll wrote a political pamphlet in response to a speech given on the floor of the senate by the Hon. John C. Breckinridge
of Kentucky who argued that Lincoln had acted in violation of the Constitution by mustering state militias into service following the bombardment of Fort Sumter
, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and imposing martial law and a naval blockade. In her reply pamphlet that was widely circulated by the Lincoln administration, Carroll made informed legal arguments, later used by Attorney General Edward Bates, stating that Lincoln had acted in accordance with the United States Constitution
. As the chief enforcement officer of the nation, Lincoln could use all his powers to enforce federal law in the Southern states. Those powers included his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Under a verbal agreement made with the government, by 1862 Carroll had produced three more war powers pamphlets that presented able constitutional arguments supporting the federal government’s actions. Governor Hicks wrote that her documents did more to elect a Union man as his successor than “all the rest of the campaign documents together.”
, who had been appointed by Secretary of State William H. Seward
, to assess the feasibility of an invasion of Texas. Carroll worked on her second war powers paper at the Mercantile Library where she sleuthed out information from the head librarian who was Confederate General Joe Johnston
’s brother. She took military matters into her own hands when she initiated an interview with a riverboat pilot Capt. Charles M. Scott about the feasibility of the planned Union Mississippi River expedition. Scott informed her that he and other pilots thought the advance ill conceived because there were many defensible points on the Mississippi River that could be reinforced and it could take years just to open it up to navigation. Carroll then questioned Scott about the feasibility of the use of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for a Union invasion. Scott provided Carroll technical navigation details. Based on this information Carroll wrote a memorandum that she sent to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott and Attorney General Edward Bates
in late November 1861, advocating that the combined army-navy forces change their invasion route from the Mississippi to the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.
Meanwhile in St. Louis, Major General Henry W. Halleck was planning the same movement without Lincoln’s knowledge. Upon learning that Confederates were possibly sending reinforcements west from Virginia, Halleck ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant
and Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote
to immediately move on Fort Henry
and Fort Donelson
on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in a telegram dated January 30. Scott was dispatched to the Midwest to mobilize reinforcements for Halleck on the night of January 29. On February 6, Fort Henry fell to Foote’s gunboats and on February 13, Fort Donelson fell to Grant’s and Foote’s combined forces. These comprised the first two “real victories” of the Civil War for the Union as Gen. William Sherman wrote later. At the time Carroll’s role in the effort was kept secret, and immediately following the war, she herself gave credit for the plan to Capt. Charles Scott in a letter printed in a leading Washington newspaper, but years later Assistant Secretary of War Scott and Senator Wade testified to it before Congress.
During the remainder of the war, Carroll worked with Lincoln on issues pertaining to colonization and emancipation
. She and Aaron Columbus Burr
lobbied him to establish a colony of freedmen in British Honduras, today Belize. Although Carroll had freed her own slaves, she lobbied Lincoln against issuing the Emancipation Proclamation
fearing that support of Southern Unionists would be lost and resistance to the Union would be stiffened. But, she wrote that Lincoln did have the constitutional right to free the slaves as a temporary war measure under his power as commander-in-chief, since the proclamation would help cripple the organized forces of the rebellion. Yet the measure was not a transfer of title and would have to be suspended once the war emergency ended. To free the slaves required a constitutional amendment.
in Maryland and continued her political writing career. After 1870, however, her life was largely consumed trying to gain payment for $5,000 she insisted that the government still owed her for her wartime publications. She went through twenty years of congressional hearings. Every military committee but one voted in her favor, but no bills passed the Congress. She filed a claim in the United States Court of Claims in 1885, but was denied, Justice J. Nott writing that the documents she used to back up her claim were "impressive" but "valueless as blank paper" because "they establish no judicial fact." Despite the rulings against her claim—or, more likely, because of those negative rulings—Carroll received support from women’s and suffrage organizations and a biography by Sarah Ellen Blackwell was commissioned by the suffragists in 1891.
Anna Ella Carroll died of Bright's disease, a kidney ailment, on February 19, 1894. She is buried at Old Trinity Church, near Church Creek, Maryland
, beside her father, mother, and other members of her family. The epitaph on her grave reads, "A woman rarely gifted; an able and accomplished writer." In 1959, the state historical society unveiled a monument to Carroll with the words, "Maryland’s Most Distinguished Lady. A Great humanitarian and close friend of Abraham Lincoln. She conceived the successful Tennessee Campaign and guided the President on his constitutional war powers." Curiously, the gravestone has the wrong year—1893—as her date of death, but a Washington, D.C. death certificate lists the correct death year of 1894, and surviving letters in her writing exist from the same year.
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
.
Early life
Anna Carroll was born in 1815 on the Eastern Shore of MarylandEastern Shore of Maryland
The Eastern Shore of Maryland is a territorial part of the U.S. state of Maryland that lies predominately on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay and consists of nine counties. The origin of term Eastern Shore was derived to distinguish a territorial part of the State of Maryland from the Western...
into a prominent upper class, mixed Catholic-Protestant family.
Her father was Thomas King Carroll
Thomas King Carroll
Thomas King Carroll served as the 21st Governor of the state of Maryland in the United States from 1830 to 1831. He also served as a judge, and in the Maryland House of Delegates from 1816 to 1817.-Biography:...
, who served as Maryland governor in 1830 and was owner of a 2000 acres (8.1 km²) tobacco plantation in Somerset County. She was the eldest of eight children and was educated and trained by her father to be his aide and likely tutored in the law by him. This allowed her access into the male world of politics. Anna contributed to her family’s income by establishing a girls’ school at their home, Kingston Hall. However little is known about her life between the ages of twenty and thirty-five.
1850s political career
Carroll entered the national political arena in the 1850s, following her father's appointment as Naval Officer for the District of Baltimore by Whig President Zachary TaylorZachary Taylor
Zachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
. Shortly thereafter, Taylor died and Carroll's commission was signed by Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore
Millard Fillmore was the 13th President of the United States and the last member of the Whig Party to hold the office of president...
. In 1854, Carroll joined the American Party
Know Nothing
The Know Nothing was a movement by the nativist American political faction of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon Protestant values and controlled by...
(the Know Nothing Party) following the demise of the Whigs. At the time much political realignment was going on nationwide. The same year the Republican party was formed and the Southern pro-slavery Democrats were to take over the control of their leadership in Congress due to the defeat of many Northern Democrats following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill in May. In Maryland, large numbers of immigrants, largely German and Irish Catholics, had flooded into Baltimore following the famines of the 1840s, taking work in the port and railroad yards. Due to this rapid urbanization, street crime became a problem and relief rolls rose. At the same time planters were a strong force in the state with many Catholic and Episcopalian ones residing on the Eastern Shore. In 1853, the Maryland Know Nothing party was formed, initially, from three nativist groups. Yet beginning in February, it took in large numbers of striking laborers from the ironworks factory in Baltimore whom the Democratic party had refused to support. Thus in opposing the pro-slavery Democrats, the Know Nothings became a powerful, but divisive, party in the state, being not pro-slavery, but pro-Union, pro-labor, anti-Catholic, and anti-immigrant.
Along with other reformers, Carroll campaigned against urban machine corruption, crime, and what was perceived as the political threat of the power of the Catholic Church. In Maryland the Catholic planter/urban vote could combine to establish a pro-slavery state government. In 1856, the party then split nationally into Northern and Southern factions due to the slavery issue. During the 1856 presidential election, Carroll supported and campaigned on behalf of Fillmore, the South American/Whig candidate, writing many articles and pamphlets and touring the Northeast on his behalf. Considered a moderate, Fillmore carried the state of Maryland, the only one he won.
For the 1856 campaign, Carroll published two party books that greatly extended her political and press contacts: The Great American Battle, or, The Contest Between Christianity and Political Romanism and The Star of the West, and influential pamphlets such as "The Union of the States". The former book was a virulent criticism of the political influence of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
under the papacy of Pius IX (see anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism
Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...
). In 1857 Carroll was the chief publicist for Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland and he credited his victory to her writings. In 1858, she took up the cause of former Congressman John Minor Botts, a Unionist from Virginia, in his presidential bid. She wrote a series of articles in the New York Evening Express newspaper on the 1860 candidates under the pseudonym "Hancock." Others over time appeared in the influential National Intelligencer, among other venues.
Secession role
With the election of Abraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
as president in 1860, Carroll freed her own slaves and turned her activities toward opposition to the secession of the Southern states and keeping Maryland loyal. Lincoln’s election set off the secession movement out of the Union which began with South Carolina’s exit on December 20, 1860. In February 1861, the Confederate government
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
was formed in Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery, Alabama
Montgomery is the capital of the U.S. state of Alabama, and is the county seat of Montgomery County. It is located on the Alabama River southeast of the center of the state, in the Gulf Coastal Plain. As of the 2010 census, Montgomery had a population of 205,764 making it the second-largest city...
. During this time Carroll was advising Governor Thomas H. Hicks on compromise efforts in the Congress and sending intelligence on Confederate plans that may have resulted in a coup d’etat of Washington, D.C. had Maryland seceded, once Virginia went out.
During the summer of 1861, Carroll wrote a political pamphlet in response to a speech given on the floor of the senate by the Hon. John C. Breckinridge
John C. Breckinridge
John Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from Kentucky and was the 14th Vice President of the United States , to date the youngest vice president in U.S...
of Kentucky who argued that Lincoln had acted in violation of the Constitution by mustering state militias into service following the bombardment of Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter
Fort Sumter is a Third System masonry coastal fortification located in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The fort is best known as the site upon which the shots initiating the American Civil War were fired, at the Battle of Fort Sumter.- Construction :...
, suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and imposing martial law and a naval blockade. In her reply pamphlet that was widely circulated by the Lincoln administration, Carroll made informed legal arguments, later used by Attorney General Edward Bates, stating that Lincoln had acted in accordance with the United States Constitution
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...
. As the chief enforcement officer of the nation, Lincoln could use all his powers to enforce federal law in the Southern states. Those powers included his role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Under a verbal agreement made with the government, by 1862 Carroll had produced three more war powers pamphlets that presented able constitutional arguments supporting the federal government’s actions. Governor Hicks wrote that her documents did more to elect a Union man as his successor than “all the rest of the campaign documents together.”
Wartime role
In the fall of 1861, Carroll traveled to St. Louis to work with secret agent, Judge Lemuel Dale EvansLemuel D. Evans
Lemuel Dale Evans was a U.S. Representative from Texas.Born in Tennessee, Evans studied law and was admitted to the bar.He moved to Marshall, Texas, in 1843 and engaged in the practice of law....
, who had been appointed by Secretary of State William H. Seward
William H. Seward
William Henry Seward, Sr. was the 12th Governor of New York, United States Senator and the United States Secretary of State under Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson...
, to assess the feasibility of an invasion of Texas. Carroll worked on her second war powers paper at the Mercantile Library where she sleuthed out information from the head librarian who was Confederate General Joe Johnston
Joseph E. Johnston
Joseph Eggleston Johnston was a career U.S. Army officer, serving with distinction in the Mexican-American War and Seminole Wars, and was also one of the most senior general officers in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War...
’s brother. She took military matters into her own hands when she initiated an interview with a riverboat pilot Capt. Charles M. Scott about the feasibility of the planned Union Mississippi River expedition. Scott informed her that he and other pilots thought the advance ill conceived because there were many defensible points on the Mississippi River that could be reinforced and it could take years just to open it up to navigation. Carroll then questioned Scott about the feasibility of the use of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers for a Union invasion. Scott provided Carroll technical navigation details. Based on this information Carroll wrote a memorandum that she sent to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott and Attorney General Edward Bates
Edward Bates
Edward Bates was a U.S. lawyer and statesman. He served as United States Attorney General under Abraham Lincoln from 1861 to 1864...
in late November 1861, advocating that the combined army-navy forces change their invasion route from the Mississippi to the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers.
Meanwhile in St. Louis, Major General Henry W. Halleck was planning the same movement without Lincoln’s knowledge. Upon learning that Confederates were possibly sending reinforcements west from Virginia, Halleck ordered Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant was the 18th President of the United States as well as military commander during the Civil War and post-war Reconstruction periods. Under Grant's command, the Union Army defeated the Confederate military and ended the Confederate States of America...
and Flag Officer Andrew Hull Foote
Andrew Hull Foote
Andrew Hull Foote was an American naval officer who was noted for his service in the American Civil War and also for his contributions to several naval reforms in the years prior to the war. When the war came, he was appointed to command of the Western Gunboat Flotilla, predecessor of the...
to immediately move on Fort Henry
Fort Henry
Fort Henry is the name of:*Fort Henry , a 1646 fort near present-day Petersburg, Virginia*Fort Henry , a 1774 fort near present–day Wheeling, West Virginia...
and Fort Donelson
Fort Donelson
Fort Donelson was a fortress built by the Confederacy during the American Civil War to control the Cumberland River leading to the heart of Tennessee, and the heart of the Confederacy.-History:...
on the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers in a telegram dated January 30. Scott was dispatched to the Midwest to mobilize reinforcements for Halleck on the night of January 29. On February 6, Fort Henry fell to Foote’s gunboats and on February 13, Fort Donelson fell to Grant’s and Foote’s combined forces. These comprised the first two “real victories” of the Civil War for the Union as Gen. William Sherman wrote later. At the time Carroll’s role in the effort was kept secret, and immediately following the war, she herself gave credit for the plan to Capt. Charles Scott in a letter printed in a leading Washington newspaper, but years later Assistant Secretary of War Scott and Senator Wade testified to it before Congress.
Emancipation
Emancipation means the act of setting an individual or social group free or making equal to citizens in a political society.Emancipation may also refer to:* Emancipation , a champion Australian thoroughbred racehorse foaled in 1979...
. She and Aaron Columbus Burr
Aaron columbus burr
Aaron Columbus Burr was an adopted son of Aaron Burr. He was born in Paris, France. His natural father was Count Verdi de Lesle. He came to New York in 1816 under the guardianship of Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr adopted him after the death of his father. He engaged in the diamond and jewelry...
lobbied him to establish a colony of freedmen in British Honduras, today Belize. Although Carroll had freed her own slaves, she lobbied Lincoln against issuing the Emancipation Proclamation
Emancipation Proclamation
The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of 3.1 million of the nation's 4 million slaves, and immediately freed 50,000 of them, with nearly...
fearing that support of Southern Unionists would be lost and resistance to the Union would be stiffened. But, she wrote that Lincoln did have the constitutional right to free the slaves as a temporary war measure under his power as commander-in-chief, since the proclamation would help cripple the organized forces of the rebellion. Yet the measure was not a transfer of title and would have to be suspended once the war emergency ended. To free the slaves required a constitutional amendment.
Postwar life and death
In the postwar years, Carroll traveled with Lemuel Evans to report on his role in the Texas constitutional convention to draw up a new state constitution. She was active in the Republican PartyRepublican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
in Maryland and continued her political writing career. After 1870, however, her life was largely consumed trying to gain payment for $5,000 she insisted that the government still owed her for her wartime publications. She went through twenty years of congressional hearings. Every military committee but one voted in her favor, but no bills passed the Congress. She filed a claim in the United States Court of Claims in 1885, but was denied, Justice J. Nott writing that the documents she used to back up her claim were "impressive" but "valueless as blank paper" because "they establish no judicial fact." Despite the rulings against her claim—or, more likely, because of those negative rulings—Carroll received support from women’s and suffrage organizations and a biography by Sarah Ellen Blackwell was commissioned by the suffragists in 1891.
Anna Ella Carroll died of Bright's disease, a kidney ailment, on February 19, 1894. She is buried at Old Trinity Church, near Church Creek, Maryland
Church Creek, Maryland
Church Creek is a town in Dorchester County, Maryland, United States. The population was 85 at the 2000 census.-Geography:Church Creek is located at...
, beside her father, mother, and other members of her family. The epitaph on her grave reads, "A woman rarely gifted; an able and accomplished writer." In 1959, the state historical society unveiled a monument to Carroll with the words, "Maryland’s Most Distinguished Lady. A Great humanitarian and close friend of Abraham Lincoln. She conceived the successful Tennessee Campaign and guided the President on his constitutional war powers." Curiously, the gravestone has the wrong year—1893—as her date of death, but a Washington, D.C. death certificate lists the correct death year of 1894, and surviving letters in her writing exist from the same year.