Carroll, Anna Ella

Carroll's fame stems not from her theorizing and pamphleteering but from her claim that, under her contract with the War Department, she devised a military strategy to invade Tennessee by traveling up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, rather than down the Mississippi… While Carroll always claimed it was her plan that had guided the Union forces in their invasion, which began the following February and did in fact follow much the same line of attack she had suggested, General Ulysses Grant, who had been in charge of the campaign, had been progressing toward the invasion during the fall, first capturing the towns at the mouths of the rivers, then waiting for shallow-draft gunboats so he could travel on the inland waters…

Carroll's true importance, however, lies in her early political writings. Not only did she articulate the positions of the Know Nothing party in the 1850s, but she also articulated to Lincoln the concerns of the border states and their fears regarding the effect of abolition. (Carroll freed her family's slaves in 1855.) Her strong personality, her gift for promoting herself as well as others, and her ability to keep herself in the public eye until her death contributed to the legend surrounding her work.