Maryland Abolitionist or Lincoln Confidante Extraordinaire

Anna Ella CarrollMaryland Abolitionist, Anna Ella Carroll, was not only a new-wave feminist-lobbyist of the 19th century, but a Lincoln Confidante Extraordinaire. During an era when women were not expected to do more than write about politics and war, Carroll became an active lobbyist in the Whig party. Anna Ella Carroll was an outspoken Maryland advocate for the election of Lincoln in 1860, and used her own and borrowed money to print and distribute thousands of pamphlets she had written. When Lincoln won the election, she celebrated by freeing her slaves. Her anti-slavery views have been credited with helping arouse Lincoln’s interest in the plight of the nation’s African-Americans held in slavery.

On August 29, 1815, Anna Ella Carroll was born in a twenty-two-room manor called Kingston Hall, which rested on a large Maryland plantation stocked with cotton, wheat, and tobacco. She had a fierce temper and an independent spirit, balanced with an equally strong tendency to shower her family with love. As a young woman, Anna was tutored by her father in the law, philosophy and history. Her sense of independence would remain with her, carrying her through the adventures that lay ahead. Anna’s father, Thomas Carroll was a law partner with Francis Scott Key. Her paternal grandfather’s brother, Charles Carroll, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

She was a companion, secretary and adviser to her father, Thomas King Carroll, a slaveholding aristocrat who became an outstanding lawyer-statesman and was elected governor of Maryland in 1829. After serving as governor for one term, Carroll retired to care for an ill wife, but relied on his daughter to maintain his political visibility in not only the state of Maryland, but more importantly in the seats of power, specifically Baltimore, Annapolis and Washington.

With her father’s fortune largely wiped away by the depression of 1837, which included the loss of his land and slaves, Anna moved to Baltimore and went to work as a publicist for several businessmen. She later worked in Washington as a paid lobbyist promoting the building of railroads. Even though she was a woman and could not vote, Carroll helped organize the American Party, a new political organization better known as the “Know-Nothings.”

In 1856, Carroll met railroad mogul Cornelius Garrison. Her knowledge of railroads, which she had gained from writing press releases for various railroad companies, impressed Garrison so much that he hired her as an assistant planner for new railroad lines. Railroads, in fact, prompted Carroll to write her first major political essay, “The Star of the West,” in which she discussed the importance of building railroad lines in order to keep the Union together and improve the economy.

The Star of the West” was quite successful among Union supporters when it was published in 1856. Carroll’s writing caught the interest of Republicans, many of them former Whigs, who shared her earnest desire for the Union to stay together. She met with Republican senators, wrote other pro-Union essays, and, in 1860, optimistically watched Abraham Lincoln sworn in as president of a nation divided by the argument over secession and slavery.

Her influence over Maryland’s wartime Governor Thomas Hicks and her knowledge of the intrigues of the State Legislature are credited with playing an important part in preventing Maryland’s secession from the Union.

In 1861, Lincoln ordered, Carroll to slip behind enemy lines on a secret mission to study the Rebel defenses along the Mississippi River, which brought her in contact with Charles Scott, an experienced steamboat captain. Her theory, based on discussions with Scott, supported a strategy of splitting the Confederacy by seizing control of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, giving the Union army a direct water route to the interior of the South while bringing Nashville, Memphis and upper Alabama under Union control.

Carroll’s Tennessee River Plan, presented to the War Department, challenged the prevailing view of launching a campaign along the well-fortified Mississippi River. The plan was adopted by Lincoln, and the Union army successfully captured Forts Henry and Donelson in January 1862. Later, it also carried out Carroll’s plan for the capture of Vicksburg. The controversy from then on was, whose was this strategy originally, Anna Ella Carroll or another male member of Lincoln’s Civil War Cabinet or Legion of Generals.

Anna Ella Carroll tried for more than two decades after the war to gain the recognition and payment she felt were her due. Neither Congress nor the United States Court of Claims shared her opinion. Her cause was taken up by various women’s organizations, one of which hired feminist writer Sarah Ellen Blackwell to compose Carroll’s biography. The title – Military Genius, Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland, “The Great Unrecognized Member of Lincoln’s Cabinet.”

As the Civil War raged on, Carroll continued to work side by side with Lincoln and Grant until the war’s end in 1865. During the final months of war, Lincoln began planning the reconstruction of the country, with Carroll at his side offering advice. On March 1, 1865, while Carroll and the president looked for ways to pick up the pieces of the shattered country, she received an anonymous letter from Fort Delaware.

“Madame: It is rumored in the Southern army that you furnished the plan or information that caused the United States Government to abandon the expedition designed to descend the Mississippi River, and transferred the armies up the Tennessee River in 1862. We wish to know if this is true. If it is, you are the veriest of traitors to your section, and we warn you that you stand upon a volcano. Confederates”

After Lincoln’s assassination, Carroll worked closely with Grant, who knew the truth about Carroll’s responsibility in the war, other top advisers chose to bury the truth and promote Grant as the real war hero. Grant did not argue with this decision, causing Carroll to lose her faith in her former friend.

Her “Memorial” and other claims for recognition disappeared from government files several times over, drawing the process out for years. In fact, Carroll did not receive any promise of payment from the government until James A. Garfield was elected in 1880 and Congress considered a bill demanding that Carroll receive back-pay as a major-general in quarterly installments from November 1861 to the end of her life. However, this bill disappeared at the same time that Garfield was shot, and it was replaced with another in 1881, offering fifty dollars a month from the passage of this new bill until the end of Carroll’s lifetime. This offer was not nearly that of a major-general and an insult to such an important political figure. Nevertheless, Carroll had no choice but to accept it, for during her nine-year fight for recognition, she had grown ill and needed the money to take care of herself.

Her younger sister, Mary, was living with her in Washington, D.C. on the meager pension, and caring for her. Anne continued her writing for some time, even though she rarely left her bed. She read and wrote, answered letters and wrote essays, and received friends and visitors.

On February 19, 1894, she quietly fell asleep and died of Bright’s disease, a kidney ailment and was buried at Old Trinity Church in Cambridge, Maryland with her family. Her simple tombstone epitaph reads,

“A woman rarely gifted; an able and accomplished writer.”

Maryland Abolitionist, Anna Ella Carroll, Lincoln Confidante Extraordinaire, was one of many brilliant women of the 19th century, that was totally shunned and ignored by the male dominated government and power elite. Thank God for her stamina, perseverance, patriotism and loyalty to the Union and to fight the moral cause of equality and human rights.

Two paintings showing Lincoln and Cabinet are displayed below. Which rendering of the Civil War Cabinet do you suppose includes Anna Ella Carroll?

painting with anna

painting without Anna

 

 

 

 

Bummer

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