ANNA ELLA CARROLL
ADVISOR TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN13 May 1862
Washington, D. C.

“. . . .I will tell you what Mr. Lincoln said of you last night. *I was there with some seven or eight members. . .when a note came with a box from you. . . . He seemed delighted—and read your letter to us and showed the contents of your box. He said *Miss Anna Ella Carroll is the head of the Carroll race, and when the history of this war is written she will stand a good bit taller than ever old Charles did.” *

-- Rep. William Mitchell (R-Ind.)
U. S. House of Representatives

Anna Ella Carroll was the daughter of Gov. Thomas King Carroll of Maryland, raised essentially as his political aide. During the 1850s she became a leading politician, pamphleteer, and campaign operative for former Pres. Millard Fillmore, former Congressman John Minor Botts, and Gov. Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland. A Southern Unionist, she operated at the highest political levels in the capital which gained her entrée to the Lincoln administration when it assumed office; she became one of Lincoln’s political advisers.

During the Civil War, Carroll:

-- aided Governor Hicks and the Lincoln administration in keeping Maryland loyal through the distribution of ably written pamphlets that contained scholarly legal arguments on the war powers of the government and by lobbying members of the state legislature and the US Congress, publishing pro-Union articles in the press, and providing intelligence on Confederate plans to disrupt the inauguration and stage a coup d’etat of the capital (also see Congressional hearings on alleged coup plots, January 1861).

-- worked with Judge Lemuel Evans, a former Texas congressman, as a secret agent in St. Louis, ultimately submitting a plan to the Lincoln administration that advocated an invasion of the Confederacy via the Tennessee River rather than the Mississippi River. Carroll’s plan contributed to the victories at Forts Henry and Donelson by US forces in February 1862. Evidence indicates that Edwin Stanton was appointed secretary of war to implement the Tennessee River plan (Gen. Henry W. Halleck was simultaneously and separately planning the movement also).

-- lobbied Lincoln on the establishment of a colony for freedmen in British Honduras (Belize) and wrote on the constitutional issues involved in emancipation

By 1875, Carroll had been a Washington insider for twenty-five years. From 1870 on, most of her life was consumed trying to gain reimbursement for monies owed her for publication expenses for her political pamphlets. Hicks wrote that her pamphlets were key to electing a Union governor in the fall of 1861. Sadly Carroll went through twenty years of congressional hearings, with every military committee but one voting in her favor, yet no bill passed the Congress. Carroll died in 1894, supported by her sister and funds raised by the Grand Army of the Republic and the Woman's Relief Corps, both Union veterans' associations. Arguably Carroll is the most important woman involved in mainstream politics in the nineteenth century.

by C. Kay Larson

*C. Kay Larson* is the author of /Great Necessities: The Life, Times, and Writings of Anna Ella Carroll, 1815-1894/ (1-888-795-4274; amazon.com). Her work offers an eclectic view of antebellum politics, a comprehensive take on the secession crisis, detailed research on the decision-making involved in the Tennessee River campaign, and other fresh material. The *Foreword to Great Necessities by Col. James S. Wheeler, USMA (ret.) and the complete Tennessee River chapter, it is online at www.nymas.org/tennesseeriver.html.* Feel free to copy the Foreword for CWRT newsletters. Larson.has been a Civil War buff since childhood, having many Civil War ancestors. She has helped pioneer research on the women Civil War soldiers and has authored the only military history of women in World War II (/‘Til I Come Marching Home/). She served for many years in government and most recently has been active in foreign policy circles. Larson has been a political campaign coordinator and manager, including during four presidential elections. She is a graduate /cum laude/ from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in political science and holds an MBA in management from Baruch College (CUNY).