LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://archive.org/details/lincolnssecretweOOwise 
 
JliHColdb Secnet Weapon, 
 
Portrait in Oils of Anna Ella Carroll 
 
Winifred E.Wise 
 
 Sec/vet 
 Wecvpxm 
 
 SOME OF THE AUTHOR'S OTHER BOOKS 
 
 Rebel in Petticoats 
 
 Jane Addams of Hull-House 
 
 Frances a la Mode 
 
 CHILTON COMPANY • BOOK DIVISION 
 Publishers 
 
 PHILADELPHIA & NEW YORK 
 
Copyright © 1961 by Winifred E. Wise. 
 
 First Edition. All Rights Reserved. 
 
 Published in Philadelphia by Chilton Company, 
 
 and simultaneously in Toronto, Canada, 
 
 by Ambassador Books, Ltd. 
 
 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 61-12693. 
 
 Designed by William E. Lickfield. 
 
 Manufactured in the United States of America 
 by Quinn & Boden Company, Inc., Rahway, N. J. 
 

 To STUART 
 
Contents 
 
 1. 
 
 Golden Spoon . 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 2. 
 
 The Old Plantation . 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 3. 
 
 Cruelty Up the Creek 
 
 
 
 
 16 
 
 4. 
 
 Eldest of Eight . 
 
 
 
 
 23 
 
 5. 
 
 The Governor's Daughter . 
 
 
 
 
 30 
 
 6. 
 
 Fall of a House of Cards . 
 
 
 
 
 39 
 
 7. 
 
 Facing Facts 
 
 
 
 
 45 
 
 8. 
 
 Glimpses into the Beyond . 
 
 
 
 
 53 
 
 9. 
 
 Under the Magnolias 
 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 10. 
 
 Washington Belle 
 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 11. 
 
 Rumbles of Thunder . 
 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 12. 
 
 Lightning Forks the Sky . 
 
 
 
 
 83 
 
 13. 
 
 The Storm Breaks on Lincoln 
 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 14. 
 
 "It Gives Me Deep Pain" . 
 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 15. 
 
 Advisor to Lincoln 
 
 
 
 
 114 
 
 16. 
 
 Secret Mission ... 
 
 
 
 
 125 
 
 17. 
 
 There Must Be Another Way 
 
 
 
 
 132 
 
 18. 
 
 The Great Tennessee Plan . 
 
 
 
 
 143 
 
 19. 
 
 Name the Master-Mind ! . 
 
 
 
 
 150 
 
 20. 
 
 Silent Woman in the Gallery 
 
 
 
 
 161 
 
 21. 
 
 Tapestry of War 
 
 
 
 
 169 
 
 22. 
 
 April Can Be Cruelest 
 
 
 
 
 176 
 
 23. 
 
 File for the Future 
 Bibliography 
 
 
 
 
 186 
 193 
 
 VII 
 
1 
 
 Golden Spoon 
 
 "And long may it wave!" The young lawyer- 
 poet, held temporarily prisoner aboard a British 
 warship in Chesapeake Bay, searched through 
 his mind for apt phrases and through his pockets 
 for scraps of paper and began to write it down. 
 Through the swirling mists of the early dawn he had been 
 able to glimpse the flag still bravely flying over the ramparts 
 of Fort McHenry. All through a day and a night he had 
 watched and listened to the bombardment; now by the 
 dawn's early light he could see that our flag was still there. 
 The patriotic pride which then surged through the heart 
 of young Francis Scott Key made the thoughts, the ideas, 
 the phrases come faster than he could immediately put them 
 down in words. Later he was to revise them and rework 
 them into a poem that — set to the music of an old song of 
 Revolutionary days — would become our national anthem. 
 To the tiny girl-child born a year later (August 29, 
 1815) on a plantation farther up the reaches of the old 
 Chesapeake, the flag and its stars and stripes was also to 
 become a symbol, and more than a symbol. Perhaps a pas- 
 sion. As the young, untried, only partially united United 
 States grew older and rolled with the passing years into the 
 
 1 
 
turbulent currents leading to strife and division and to civil 
 war, this girl plunged into the thick of things as no member 
 of her supposedly frail sex ever had. One flag should wave 
 above the ramparts, above the land — her land. Not two! 
 Nor should "The Star Spangled Banner" ever be drowned 
 in the swelling strains of "Dixie." "One nation, indivisi- 
 ble . . ." 
 
 Her name was Anna Ella Carroll. She was born into a 
 patrician family that did not read history as much as they 
 lived and made it. In spirit she always remained close to 
 her famous kinsman, Charles Carroll, a signer of the 
 Declaration of Independence. And when witty, cogent Ben 
 Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we 
 shall all hang separately!" it was Charles Carroll who had 
 added the defiant flourish, "of Carrollton" after his signa- 
 ture. Carroll was not an uncommon name, and he had no 
 wish to take refuge in any anonymity, nor to let the British 
 mistake the identity of the richest and perhaps one of the 
 most influential men in the colonies. 
 
 Even long earlier it had been Anna's great-great-grand- 
 father, Robert King, who had ventured to oppose the 
 mighty Lord Baltimore and finally to lead the Protestant 
 Rebellion. All issues that are very dated now — but which 
 were very alive then. The Kings had never lost their fire — 
 and while Anna was still too small a girl to know or care — 
 that branch of the family joined in a plot with Jerome Bona- 
 parte in a vain attempt to set free his exiled brother, the 
 fallen Emperor Napoleon. 
 
 The Carrolls, and most oi their kinfolk, lived vividly for 
 the most part; some of them within the narrow patterns of 
 plantation life and some others spreading like quicksilver 
 through the quickly emerging history of the country. It was, 
 from where they saw it, a sort of tidal estuary of a family. 
 Like the creeks and estuaries of the eastern shore of Mary- 
 
 2 
 
land where Anna was born, everything was interlaced with 
 some other stream and some other tributary — in Virginia, 
 in Pennsylvania, and even up into the North. 
 
 The christening of Anna, the firstborn child of young 
 Thomas King Carroll and his girl-bride, Juliana Steven- 
 son, was an event to be signally remembered — if not by the 
 child herself. Relatives in blood and "kissing cousins" in 
 effusiveness and affection converged that day upon Kings- 
 ton Hall. The rich relatives came in their carriages with 
 outriders, the poorer ones by stage or on horseback; money 
 really did not count then, but family and connections did. 
 The widespreading Carroll house with all its twenty-two 
 rooms would hold all of them, and more. 
 
 Ebony cooks scurried about the huge kitchen, each with 
 her secret store of old recipes passed on from generation to 
 generation — and a pinch of this and a pinch of that, a dash 
 of that, the "beat it till de spoon Stan's by itself." Cookery 
 on the eastern shore of Maryland was a fine art, a way of 
 life. It was based on the superabundant wild ducks of the 
 marshes, the glorious terrapin, the succulent crab and all the 
 shellfish. Eating on the eastern shore of Maryland was 
 heaven piled high on silver platters. 
 
 The infant Anna, crying now in the complicated ruffles 
 and starches of her long dress with its exquisite French 
 embroidery, was little, but the newest symbol marking a 
 long proud line. The Carroll family was a fruitful one, and 
 would continue. Marking the occasion of this christening 
 with the indicated mint juleps and also toasting the infant 
 and her proud parents with sparkling champagne, the guests 
 and kinfolk nodded agreement. Nathan the butler and his 
 liveried aides kept the magnums flowing and the glasses 
 filled — the service at Kingston House was always par excel- 
 lence. 
 
 Thomas King Carroll, the host and father, was already 
 
 3 
 
proving himself worthy of his distinguished name. Scarcely 
 twenty-one, he had just been elected to the legislature of 
 the State of Maryland. And he was a man destined to go 
 far; no doubt about it. He was a man to watch. 
 
 As for Juliana his wife, the relatives were not so sure. 
 Not a bad choice on Thomas' part, but there were many 
 who thought that her father had been an extremist. Dr. 
 Henry Stevenson had been a devout Tory. And much later 
 he had been one of the very first medicos to advocate and 
 practice inoculation against the then dreadful scourge of 
 smallpox. They called him "the Madman," and his elegant 
 Baltimore home (also used as his hospital) "Stevenson's 
 Folly." There were those who had scorned him and his 
 newfangled ideas to their everlasting sorrow; even at the 
 christening of little Anna, some ladies had to lower their 
 veils when the sunlight struck straight into their patrician 
 faces. 
 
 Nobody, however, could deny that Dr. Stevenson's 
 daughter, the young Mrs. Carroll, was a real, natural 
 beauty. Along with her wide blue eyes and translucent 
 alabaster skin, Juliana had her crowning glory — a head of 
 hair of so soft and glowing a shade of red that no touch 
 of henna could ever account for it. Wizened beldames took 
 note. 
 
 As for the baby girl herself, time only would tell. It 
 almost always did, with the quality. And even if little Anna 
 did not grow up to be a beauty, she would certainly affect 
 an air. She would undoubtedly grow up to be mistress of 
 some great plantation; she would, of course, at all times 
 defer to the wishes or the whims of her husband; she would 
 rule the Negro slaves wisely and kindly; and at the last she 
 would be gathered to her ancestors with the appropriate 
 rites of the Church. 
 
 Episcopal, probably, though her father was a Presby- 
 4 
 
terian. This branch of the family seemed always to be get- 
 ting tiresomely involved in religious controversies. It was 
 perhaps just something to be expected, like death and taxes. 
 Thus the oldsters — gathered around little Anna's canopied 
 cradle, and some of them at least wrinkled as the proverbial 
 witch — predicted and proclaimed the tiny girl's course 
 before they descended the stairs to join in the drawing room 
 for more gossip — and another sip of champagne. 
 
 None could see, at least none of the dear old beldames 
 could foresee, that old Mammy Millie, advancing upon 
 them with stout firmness to protect her baby's slumber, had 
 the last word. And that she held the future in her warm 
 brown palm — still the hand of slavery. With the invention 
 of the cotton gin some years before, the institution of slavery 
 had become firmly woven into the Southern pattern; just 
 as up in the North factories and commerce were setting the 
 design. Some great New England fortunes had been built 
 upon the African slave trade, but slavery had never flour- 
 ished above Mason and Dixon's line. 
 
 In that year of 18 15, the institution of slavery in America 
 was settled and secure. The South was convivial and pleas- 
 ure-loving and essentially feudal, scarcely touched by the 
 cold rigorousness of Puritanism up North, where there was 
 too much preoccupation with salvation and with avoiding 
 the Devil's wiles to get around to seeing human slavery for 
 the real sin it was. Nothing, to the Puritan mind, was a 
 sin until somebody in the pulpit officially called it so. And 
 Southern society, complacent at the status quo and at the 
 exorcising of the only devil it had recently seen (in the 
 form of the British redcoats), was enjoying the happy pur- 
 suits of this world, with very slight concern for the next. 
 Riding to hounds took precedence over almost everything 
 else. Could the famous and elusive fox, known familiarly 
 in his own areas as "Old Red," be run to earth or cornered 
 
 5 
 
for the kill at the next hunt, or would the wily creature 
 continue to elude them, suh? 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll had been born with a golden spoon 
 in her tiny mouth, but she had also been born at a time 
 when it was really the last of the golden era for Tidewater 
 aristocrats. Her name was like a hallmark upon the best 
 and most luxurious of everything in this quarter of the 
 world. Her father had recently fallen heir to a plantation 
 of some two thousand acres, and his hundred and fifty 
 slaves (many of them over six feet tall) were known as 
 the strongest and the finest being raised anywhere. Lined 
 up along the imposing avenue that led to the mansion, 
 dressed in the green and gold livery that was brought out 
 on state occasions, they were a princely retinue. 
 
 Outside now, in the slave quarters, the Negroes joined in 
 the spirit of the christening celebration — "Juber will and 
 Juber won't, Juber up and Juber down — we got the bestest 
 gal in town!" 
 
 Far into the soft Southern night the banjos strummed. 
 Slap-slap of hands and the shuffle of bare feet. "We got a 
 baby bes' in town!" A party at the big house always meant 
 one down in the slave quarters too. "She got han's and she 
 got feets, lemme tell you! Suh, she caint be beat!" 
 
 Stealing away from the merry guests in his drawing room, 
 Thomas King Carroll went upstairs to look again at the 
 slumbering infant, his face in the soft candlelight touched 
 with pride and yearning. She was somehow hard to be- 
 lieve in, this first child of his, this tiny stranger too fragile 
 to be touched. The lovely Juliana had given her to him as 
 she might have offered him a flower, rich and soft as the 
 scent of roses that drifted in through the night. 
 
 Young Massa was a powerful "curyus" man, Mammy 
 Millie observed from her watching post. He was a real deep 
 one, though. Rising up, the old nurse spread her apron 
 6 
 
wide, shooing the proud young father away. "Go long wid 
 you, Masser! Out! Ah am' having you wake ma baby." 
 
 Millie's capacious bosom had opened to receive this mite 
 of a girl, and now protectively enclosed her — as years 
 before she had also enclosed Juliana. Little mistress Anna 
 would naturally go the way of quality white folks; they 
 still needed darkies to take care of them. White folks had 
 ancestor pictures in great gold frames, portraits that looked 
 proudly down upon the gleam of polished wood and silver 
 and everything else that spelled tradition. Black folks had 
 pictures too, graven deep in their minds. They were pic- 
 tures that no one could care to look at or remember — 
 pictures of men and women in chains, packed spoon-fashion, 
 sweltering in the stuffy, stench-filled holds of the Atlantic 
 schooners aboard which pious Yankee skippers held prayers 
 every Sunday, and dropped overboard dead captives on 
 Monday. Tales had been told, and memories lingered. 
 
 But life for the "Nigras" was basically good at Kingston 
 Hall, even if the shadows and the sorrows were always in 
 the background. Little Anna Ella Carroll went to sleep night 
 after night listening to the wistful, haunting beauty of the 
 Negro spirituals, to the soft rich voices singing "Deep 
 River," and "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, comin' fo' to 
 carry me home." 
 
The Old Plantation 
 
 Outwardly, at least, the white folks, the quality, 
 were as sure of themselves in those early years 
 of the last century as they were sure of the ever- 
 lasting, incoming tides, the inevitable change of 
 seasons, and the fertility of everything. Includ- 
 ing the seemingly inexhaustible fertility of the "Nigras," 
 ranging in color from blue-black ebony to the "high-brown" 
 bronze, who bore their young to suckle like the lambs and 
 the foals. Nuzzling at a Negro mammy's breast alongside a 
 black child, Anna Ella Carroll fought for the rich, abundant 
 milk that seemed ever to flow for her and for little black 
 Leah. Heiress and slave child, they were equal. At least 
 they were equally hungry infants; neither knew nor cared 
 that one little girl was to grow up to be the mistress and 
 the other to serve her. 
 
 For little Anna it was a time of absolute equality. Soon 
 she was toddling around the yard with Leah and with the 
 other "chilluns," and tumbling around with the hound-dogs 
 and the kittens. They were, for that time at least, all young 
 together. On the lovely moonlight nights, when most of 
 the men, white and black, went out on 'possum hunts or 
 sat over a jug of white corn liquor and listened to the dogs 
 8 
 
after the elusive fox, the girls back at home heard the 
 puppies whimpering with excitement in their kennels. Per- 
 haps little Anna, turning in her sleep, half-woke, and cried 
 for dear Millie. 
 
 Millie was a refuge too, as far as Mistress Juliana was 
 concerned. Millie had followed Juliana Stevenson from 
 Baltimore to Kingston Hall. It was not too easy for a city- 
 bred belle, a Stevenson daughter, to become suddenly the 
 head, or at least the feminine factotum, of a great planta- 
 tion. 
 
 And besides, now Juliana was soon to be once more a 
 mother. Thomas King Carroll had courted her while he was 
 still studying law in Baltimore. Suddenly, at the death of 
 his grandfather, all this responsibility had descended upon 
 the young couple. Juliana had faithful Millie and a number 
 of other Stevenson slaves that had been given to her as a 
 dowry or wedding present; humans in bondage were still 
 her dearest treasures. So she brought them with her to 
 Kingston Hall. 
 
 Unused to country or to plantation ways, Juliana had 
 been suddenly forced from her brief honeymoon into the 
 patterns and complexities of old plantation life. She had 
 scarcely had time to adjust to marriage when she was called 
 to take over Kingston Hall and all its complicated do- 
 mestic arrangements; the ways and inter-ways of real 
 plantation life of the time. It was a large assignment; without 
 Millie, who knew everything about everything and every- 
 body, it would have been impossible. The complexity of 
 the domestic arrangements for 150 people! Without the 
 thoughtful, know-how Millie, this all could easily have over- 
 whelmed the fashionable doctor's daughter from Baltimore. 
 
 Juliana had a high responsibility. If the slaves, the owned 
 people, were troubled, it was to her that they turned. And 
 naturally, at the ripe old age of twenty, the young mistress 
 
 9 
 
had not the wisdom of the ages. Yet everybody on the 
 plantation had to be clothed and fed; and, like dependent 
 children, they had to be trained for their appointed tasks. 
 It was old Millie who — with her ear to the grapevine that 
 led from the big house to the slave quarters — made a great 
 many of Juliana's decisions for her and acted as a sort of 
 counselor and chief adviser. 
 
 Millie knew how black folks thought, and usually she 
 could read white folks' minds when it seemed indicated. 
 She had the sort of wisdom that comes not from books 
 (Millie had never even been taught the letters of the alpha- 
 bet); she read people, and hers was the language of the 
 unspoken word, the side glance, the innuendo. 
 
 So Millie was a Rock of Gibraltar, at least for Juliana at 
 Kingston Hall. The lovely young bride-mother moved gra- 
 ciously among the sculptured gardens of the formal estate, 
 among the white calla lilies of the plantation gardens. To 
 tiny Anna, the small and very inquisitive child who had 
 come so soon to bless this early marriage, her mother 
 Juliana was a Being, extremely unapproachable. Mother 
 was someone who bent over one's crib at night, with a 
 whiff of fragrance. That was it! 
 
 Sometimes Anna, carried perforce to one or the other of 
 the great balls and parties which the gentry still maintained, 
 may have been allowed to peek down the great curving 
 staircase and to have a glimpse, at least, of the fairyland of 
 the grownups. Perhaps, with her young eyes dazzled by 
 the candles and the crystal chandeliers, she failed to see 
 her own father and mother there in the assemblage, and 
 burst into tears. Social life and all its ramifications began 
 rather early in the South; it is permissible to imagine that 
 little Anna soon took a dim view of it. 
 
 She was plain, at least then, and she had what was called 
 "carrot hair" — hair which, like her mother's, was later to 
 
 10 
 
be one of her crowning glories. But Anna also had, all her 
 life, the temper which is popularly supposed to go with 
 red hair. She took little or nothing from cousins or other 
 compatriots who shared the same big bed. As a last resort, 
 she called for Millie, who would always rise from her cot 
 and come in and make sense. 
 
 Next to dear Millie, Anna was always closest to her father. 
 Though she was his only child for a brief while, it was always 
 Anna who was closest. It was this little redhead who man- 
 aged to fill, in a certain very essential sense, the long empty 
 cave of his essential loneliness, as even Juliana could not. 
 Grave beyond his years, Thomas King Carroll was, even 
 in his early twenties, faced with many problems. He had 
 never before been in control of anything, and now he was 
 in absolute control over a great plantation. He was a gentle- 
 man born; his appearance, according to the records of the 
 time, was distinguished. But it is also possible that certain 
 parts of this early dignity were only a cover up for the 
 inward uneasiness that the present state of Tidewater affairs 
 caused in him. 
 
 The years with his grandfather, an embittered old man, 
 had left certain scars. The gaiety and the fast persiflage 
 of Southern society required Thomas at times to retire to 
 his study, to his haven of refuge. 
 
 Innocent hostage of the long-standing feud between 
 Protestants and Catholics in Maryland, he often found him- 
 self upon the horns of a dilemma. He himself had been in 
 a way the product of defiance. Thomas's mother had 
 married a Roman Catholic, and had never been forgiven 
 by her family. As an only child, she was the sole heiress to 
 Kingston Hall, but she could never have it. Her father vowed 
 that the place would never come to her and then fall into 
 the hands of her husband who, under the harsh and in- 
 equitable laws of the time, would have property rights. A 
 
 n 
 
married woman then had no more legal status than a slave; 
 she could own nothing, and all belonged to her husband. 
 
 If she wished her line to inherit, she must give up her 
 first-born son. Thomas King would raise the lad away from 
 "popery's gauds" and introduce him into the strictness of 
 Calvinist doctrine, make him high-minded. 
 
 Taken from his mother before he was six, the little 
 Thomas had only remotely known her gentle influence. 
 There were no sisters to soften the regime as stern old 
 Thomas King, night after night, lectured to his grandson. 
 Sitting by the fire, in a chair too large for him as it was 
 too large for his grandfather's grandiose precepts, the little 
 boy heard only endless discourse on Calvinism, politics, 
 and law. 
 
 This was the only way to bring up a child — as a small 
 adult. At least it was all that Anna's father had known. 
 Taking his beloved little daughter into his lap he read to 
 her no nursery rhymes, but strictly Shakespeare. 
 
 With sweet musk-roses, and with eglantine: 
 There sleeps Titania some time of the night, 
 Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight. 
 
 Enchanted with these cadences, Anna tried sometimes to 
 repeat them in her childish voice. She did not know yet that 
 few little girls of her time had ever heard that "all our yes- 
 terdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death." Loving 
 her father's attention, stern though it may have been, she 
 would listen even when she did not understand. "There's a 
 divinity that shapes our ends. . . ." 
 
 Sometimes, Anna would climb with her father to the 
 cupola that topped the big house, where, from the platform, 
 he could watch the Negroes at work in the fields, tilling 
 the corn, chopping the cotton, binding the grain into 
 
 12 
 
sheaves, and tending the young tobacco that was the chief 
 money-crop. 
 
 The shadows beneath the distant chestnut trees could 
 be the groving cattle, or they could be the Negroes napping. 
 Young Mr. Carroll sighed; he had far more slaves than 
 he needed to work the plantation, much of it worn-out land. 
 Tobacco drew heavily from the soil, and the original riches 
 had not been replaced. Scientific agriculture in those days 
 was almost unknown, and a substitute for it was moving 
 on to the west. The country was so large and abundant 
 that few Tidewater planters even considered how to save 
 the riches they had. 
 
 From this high viewing post, even little Anna could see 
 the white sails of ships that seemed to float across the earth 
 as they found their ways among the low meadow channels 
 of the upper Annemessex. The waterways led to the wonder- 
 ful world outside which, to a small girl's mind, could be only 
 slightly larger than the domain she was already exploring 
 at Kingston Hall. 
 
 Whenever Anna could evade Mammy Millie's watchful 
 eye, she was off and away to watch Saul the blacksmith 
 shoeing the horses, or to absorb the fragrance of the great 
 tobacco barns, where the sunlight filtered through the 
 chinks and the breezes crisscrossed and whispered secrets 
 among the rustling leaves. 
 
 If Anna were polite and remembered to ask first, Auntie 
 Susan might give her some warm milk fresh from the cows, 
 or let her lick the spoon that ladled cream, or even stick 
 her little finger in the butter churn. Sometimes — as briefly 
 as one of the yellow butterflies that filled the air like flow- 
 ers — Anna would settle down upon a stoop beside some 
 ancient crone at her spinning wheel, usually with corncob 
 pipe in mouth. 
 
 13 
 
Kingston Hall was indeed a little world of itself, little 
 touched by the sloops that came sometimes up the Bay 
 from England or France. The Hall made its own shoes, wove 
 its own cloth, raised what it ate and, except for wines and 
 silks and velvets, needed little from outside. 
 
 Anna was a busy, inquisitive child, as inclined to roam 
 as the sweetbrier roses that fell across the country lanes in 
 wild tangles among the Queen Anne's lace. She did not fit 
 in with the clipped hedges of the formal gardens of Kingston 
 Hall; and, with her sunbonnet usually falling to her shoul- 
 ders, she was Millie's despair. Sewing the bonnet firmly 
 under little Anna's chin, Millie firmly admonished her. No 
 lady, however young, should have freckles! 
 
 Importantly jangling keys large and small to fit every 
 cupboard in the household, Anna sometimes chose to carry 
 them all in a small basket and to follow close at her mother's 
 heels. Cupboards were for locking against the overeager 
 fingers of the "Nigras" — and also for opening daily to 
 supply the household with sacks of flour, salt, medicines, 
 and bolts of cloth. The seamstresses must always have their 
 homespun, with a touch of city calico for more festive dress; 
 the aged, their liniments. And the new dark babies, arriving 
 in their usual profusion, their blankets. 
 
 Juliana, now close to her next confinement, must have 
 sighed. There seemed to be no end to the babies, nor to 
 her duties as mistress of Kingston Hall. Like her husband, 
 she was beginning to feel the weight of a very large family, 
 black and white. 
 
 Juliana was at the controls of a vast machinery, delicate 
 in the exact balance of its human relationships, which could 
 easily come to a stop at any moment. Now Uncle Nathan 
 was insisting that the new houseboys, recently promoted 
 from the fields, must go back to shucking corn. They were 
 good for nothing better, the old major-domo insisted, jealous 
 14 
 
of his position as butler and of the years of service which 
 had made him a ruler seldom disputed, at least in his spe- 
 cial realm. 
 
 Auntie Dinah, the cook, had "sweet-talked" the "Mistus" 
 into giving her mischievous grandsons a try, and Nathan 
 wished to embarrass her. Souffles would fall, the famous 
 sauces would be famous no more, puddings would scorch. 
 Unless Juliana could find some way of placating both par- 
 ties, the whole population of the plantation would take 
 sides in the quarrel. Diplomacy and manipulation — those 
 were the necessary arts of the Southern gentlewoman. And 
 as Anna grew up, she would learn those well! 
 
 15 
 
Cruelty Up the Creek 
 
 As the great estates of the Tidewater country 
 passed from hand to hand since colonial times, 
 and the mansions mellowed with the years, still 
 the gracious way of life had changed little from 
 the earlier America, when most gentlemen were 
 farmers. During Anna's childhood, it was inconceivable 
 that this way of life would ever disappear, or that the in- 
 flexible hand of the past would temporarily burst the nation 
 into bits. 
 
 The merry little Anna, her laughter echoing through 
 Kingston Hall and through the well-kept slave quarters, was 
 luckily unaware that the time would come when these walls 
 would be open to the bats and the birds, and that even the 
 stately boxwood hedges of the Hall would be destroyed. 
 And, like the mansion itself, Anna's place in history would 
 be long neglected and forgotten — until researchers, such 
 as Marjorie Bars tow Greenbie and her husband Sydney, 
 delved deep to bring it to the light and burnish it. 
 
 Slavery could not forever endure in a land where "All 
 men are created equal." Yet Thomas Jefferson, writer of 
 the impassioned phrases, himself owned slaves, and freed 
 them only with his death. The same had been true of 
 
 16 
 
George Washington. The fathers of the country, the rich 
 and influential, all had counted slaves among their assets; 
 and few had ever paused to consider the Declaration of In- 
 dependence as a formal paradox that was bound to pose 
 questions that only the future could answer, if answer there 
 could be. 
 
 Slavery was part of the American inheritance; and, to con- 
 scientious men such as Thomas King Carroll, it was already 
 causing its perplexities. Above all else, a true Southern aris- 
 tocrat had to live with honor; he had to meet, or try to meet, 
 his obligations to the slaves born on the plantation and 
 part of the family, for good or ill. With the final ending 
 of the slave trade from Africa early in the century, and with 
 the promised money to be made from growing cotton in 
 the newly opened lands to the west, here were heavy pres- 
 sures placed upon the older plantations to provide the hu- 
 man labor. 
 
 Sorely tempted by offers as high as $1200 for able-bodied 
 slaves, some planters in Maryland, Virginia, and the Caro- 
 linas were yielding to them. Sad cases of men torn from 
 their wives and families, and of women clinging desperately 
 to their babies; of men being dragged across the mountains 
 in chains. The backbreaking work in the cotton fields would 
 exact its cruel toll; in five years most of the workers would 
 be dead. 
 
 Yet to the Carrolls and hundreds of the gentry like them, 
 it was unthinkable to betray the helpless beings intrusted to 
 their care. Human souls and bodies could not be sold like 
 horses or cattle, nor could they be treated brutally. There 
 were not many Simon Legrees in the South, Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin notwithstanding. A Southern gentleman might fool- 
 ishly gamble away his family fortune at cards or at the 
 races; he might even have a high-brown mistress and in- 
 numerable half-caste children; he might be ruthless to his 
 
 17 
 
wife. The aristocratic code did not ostracize him unless he 
 practiced cruelty toward his slaves, or associated with the 
 slave traders who were beyond the pale of this closely linked 
 society. The planters shunned them, as a coarse and evil 
 horde. 
 
 Plunging ever more deeply into indebtedness on planta- 
 tions no longer flourishing nor able to indulge the extrav- 
 agances of the past, still many of the masters refused to stoop 
 to extricating themselves from their financial stress by selling 
 off their devoted servants. They would rather sign more 
 notes at the bank, mortgage their estates to the hilt, and 
 run the risk of foreclosure. Others, unable to face fact or 
 to continue to support a growing burden from which there 
 seemed no easy escape, freed their slaves, and left them to 
 shift for themselves. 
 
 So long removed from primitive life in Africa, the "freed" 
 Negroes were almost like tamed birds suddenly released 
 from their cages, and almost as helpless. With no money, 
 with only the clothes they had on their backs, and little or 
 no hope of any immediate employment, some of them stole 
 whatever they could from nearby plantations; some built 
 huts or lean-tos in the thickets along the creeks and tried 
 to stay alive by fishing and hunting. Having been accus- 
 tomed all their lives to being directed and fed and clothed 
 by the master, many of them were pathetic prey for the 
 predatory gentlemen out to trap them and usually to send 
 them off to another bondage in the cotton fields farther 
 south or west. 
 
 The law, controlled in part by the slave traders, might 
 and sometimes did confiscate or lose "the papers" that de- 
 clared these people freemen. Or Patty Cannon and those 
 of her ilk might kidnap them. 
 
 Patty Cannon was a haint — waiting out there somewhere 
 to pounce on Negro children who strayed around after dark; 
 18 
 
she was supposed to be able to hoot like an owl, able to 
 ride the wind like a witch on a broomstick. Old Uncle 
 Fortune, telling stories to the youngsters clustered about his 
 cabin door, spinning the old yarns about Br'er Fox and Br'er 
 Rabbit, might now and then pause to listen to the phantom 
 horse's hoofbeats along the lonely road past Kingston Hall, 
 and to say, "Thar she is, chillun. That's Patty Cannon, out 
 to git you unless you mind your mammy." 
 
 Anna, listening there with little black Leah, was certainly 
 troubled later by nightmares; perhaps she shuddered when 
 the people of the plantation (black and white) heard that 
 Patty Cannon and her insufferable gang were out on one 
 of their raids. Because Patty Cannon was not just a "haint" 
 — she was a real person, a renegade Englishwoman of 
 whom hideous tales were told, most of them true. She made 
 a practice of robbing most of the travelers who stopped 
 at her inn, murdered them in their sleep for what money 
 they had, and also captured and hid Negroes in the attics 
 of old deserted houses, starving and in chains, until she 
 could ship them off to the West, or "down the river." 
 
 She had even been known, according to the records, to 
 have beaten little colored children over the head with leaden 
 whips, and once to have thrown a little boy into the fire to 
 burn him alive. Some of this may be pure hearsay; but Patty 
 Cannon was not a fictional witch. She did her evil, as far 
 as she was able, until finally she was hanged. 
 
 Older than her actual age — at least sometimes — Anna 
 Ella was necessarily sensitive to forces far beyond her 
 immediate childish comprehension. Whether she would ever 
 become a real Southern belle was a question far more im- 
 portant for visiting relatives to ask. She herself would not 
 dance for them, nor show off for them in any way unless she 
 happened to be in the mood for it; and even when she was 
 expected to curtsy, she might sit tight and sulk. Examining 
 
 19 
 
her for the conventional features of a true Southern belle, 
 the grandames did not yet find grounds on which to decide. 
 Anna was freckle-faced and carrot-haired. Only a few of 
 the old ladies, whom she preferred, saw the radiance of her 
 smile — and it was unforgettable. 
 
 And it was almost always Anna who stood out among 
 the sisters who followed her in rapid succession. The family 
 resemblance between the Carroll girls was strong. Fire-red 
 ran through their hair, in flames of varying intensity, the 
 eyes were blue or gray but candid, the complexions fair. 
 The Irish Stevenson strain was evident in their appearances 
 and in their tempers, and all this seemed to be heightened 
 and intensified in Anna Ella. 
 
 Beside her, the other sisters seemed weak and insipid. 
 Taken alone, each of the girls had her accomplishments. 
 Ada had inherited mother Juliana's gift for music; Julie was 
 a young artist; Henrietta showed exceptional skill at needle- 
 work — and so it went through the lot of them. 
 
 But only Anna had a real interest in the learning that 
 came from books. The other girls were being educated in 
 "the three R's" and later would achieve the so-called ele- 
 mental — a smattering of French, a mild and graceful fa- 
 cility at the piano, a few songs for a repertoire. Beyond 
 sewing and embroidery, this was about all the education 
 young gentlewomen of the early nineteenth century were 
 felt to require. The further social graces, and not book 
 learning, would fit them for their presumed future roles 
 in life. 
 
 None of the other Carroll girls had the run of their father's 
 library — nor cared for it. Thomas King Carroll was often 
 away from home, from the plantation. But daughter Anna, 
 by reading the heavy tomes, could bring him back close. 
 Besides, her father would expect a full report on her reading 
 whenever he came home from the sessions of the legislature 
 20 
 
in Annapolis, and his assignments were apt to be far be- 
 yond the scope of their gentle governess, who had a smatter- 
 ing of French and English history and a bit of Latin. 
 
 Her littler sisters could not imagine what Anna saw in 
 these heavy tomes, these abominable volumes. They had 
 few pictures, or none at all. Books then published and illus- 
 trated for children were little known, except for the ones 
 designed to teach them moral lessons, in a drippy fashion 
 the girls could not help finding drear. There was no pleasure 
 for them whatever in books, except to throw them down 
 and run outdoors to play, or beg for dance tunes. 
 
 Yet Anna, her young imagination fired by her father, 
 was already interested in the law. Her father had marked 
 places in the big books where she might read about the laws 
 of the nation and of the state, and she sat conning the heavy 
 paragraphs hour after hour until her little head began to 
 ache. The words were long, the language strange. What 
 actually did habeas corpus mean, what was locum tenens, 
 and what was a subpoena? Laboriously, Anna copied down 
 a list, hoping that someday her father would explain it all 
 in one of his stories. 
 
 While Juliana might feel inwardly that this was training 
 hardly suitable for a girl, she was not one to try to over- 
 ride her husband. And he took so much joy in Anna, the 
 first-born! 
 
 While Thomas King Carroll was holding out to little 
 Anna intellectual garments several sizes too large for any 
 child, Anna could get into a sleeve here, a waistcoat there. 
 She could picture him working upon the laws of Maryland, 
 and sometimes catch glimpses of the men who had written 
 the Constitution, and why. Her own father had known some 
 of the founding fathers, had heard firsthand from them and 
 from their sons and daughters of the bitter struggle to get 
 all thirteen original states to adopt a federal constitution. 
 
 21 
 
The heated days of this long battle were not old cold print 
 in the history books to Anna Ella; they were living tales 
 told to her by her father of brave and devoted men. Human 
 beings did have a right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
 happiness" — and the Constitution protected them. 
 
 It was a new kind of government; a new concept that had 
 thrilled the world. Despite their stuffy, formal words, this 
 was what laws were supposed to be about — they were sup- 
 posed to be about people! 
 
 22 
 
4 
 
 Eldest of Eight 
 
 Busy with her own small pursuits in a corner of 
 
 her father's study, Anna heard the gentlemen 
 
 who came to see him arguing endlessly about 
 
 "States' rights." Most Southerners, as her father 
 
 explained to her when she finally asked, had 
 
 never admitted that the Federal government, the one over 
 
 them all in Washington, had more real power than a single 
 
 state such as Maryland or Virginia or Carolina — and that 
 
 it could override them. 
 
 "And what do you think about it, Anna?" Some of the 
 visitors turned to the elfish, bright-haired child, looking for 
 a moment of amusement. It was said that this precocious 
 ten-year-old knew some of the Constitution by heart and 
 could be persuaded to give recitations. 
 
 "I just don't know about these things," she answered them 
 with a child's seriousness. "Wait until I'm grown up, and 
 I'll tell you." 
 
 She must have been charming, sitting there with a pile 
 of journals, cutting out pieces; probably she was going to 
 make them into paper dolls, some of the gentlemen visitors 
 thought. Patting her indulgently on her red head, the tycoons 
 
 23 
 
departed. And Anna's father helped her by picking up her 
 clippings which had fallen from the table to the floor. 
 
 So many subjects, so many problems, interested Carroll! 
 Lacking time to read all the newspapers and the journals, he 
 had asked little Anna's help; she was to watch for letters 
 and for articles about the new American Colonization So- 
 ciety. Thomas Carroll was active in this movement to help 
 the freed Negroes by sending them to a place of their own — 
 Liberia, in Africa. 
 
 Liberia was a new republic, recently founded by the 
 Society as a new state for the free and for the freed. Anna 
 was also told not to miss a single scrap in the periodicals 
 about the Erie Canal, which had been recently opened as a 
 new route to the west, and which was diverting traffic from 
 the Chesapeake and causing outcries in Baltimore. 
 
 Anna's largest pile of clippings was usually about old 
 Andrew Jackson, and it was here and now about him that 
 much of the Southern press was again beginning to seethe 
 with editorial rage. Imagine this rough, backwoods gen- 
 eral and Indian fighter presuming to run for President! 
 Didn't he have the sense to know that this was solely the 
 right of Eastern aristocrats, such as the Adams family and 
 the Virginia dynasty, and that no uncouth frontiersman 
 need apply? Imagine a man like Andy Jackson striding into 
 the White House with the red mud of Tennessee on his 
 boots! 
 
 Jackson had been defeated once, and that should be the 
 end of him. The South would continue to control Congress 
 and the Senate, as it had from the beginning; and it needed 
 no help from the West or North. Any true Southerner who 
 supported Jackson was considered a traitor to his class, 
 even to his people. Yet, as the record shows, some did. 
 
 And little Anna asked questions. "Is that right, Father?" 
 she demanded, wanting to know whether she, too, was sup- 
 
 24 
 
posed to hate Jackson and all he stood for. As a child, even 
 a precocious child, Anna Ella liked to separate the bad 
 men in the black hats from the good men in the white hats; 
 she wanted to take sides. 
 
 All that her father could say was, "Run along now, and 
 don't bother your head about it." Yet Anna was still per- 
 plexed. Pohtics was an odd business if it even puzzled her 
 father! He always knew what was right — only now it seemed 
 that he didn't. 
 
 She ran down to the stables and asked for her saddle 
 horse. She was suddenly tired of staying inside in the li- 
 brary and puzzling over the things that nobody, not even 
 her father, could satisfactorily explain. So now, with the 
 intensity she applied to almost everything she did, she 
 whipped up her mount and took off. Anna could not re- 
 member when she had first learned to ride; leaping across 
 log fences and over ditches with a daring that was certainly 
 hardly ladylike, she flew across the country, or at least flew 
 down some of the lovely lanes of Maryland. 
 
 It would certainly take a good deal of corseting and lacing, 
 later on, to turn little Anna Ella into one of the so-called 
 delicate flowers of Southern womanhood. The girl perhaps 
 needed watching, but Juliana discovered that this one of 
 her daughters could usually take care of herself. Preoc- 
 cupied with the endless domestic details of the plantation 
 and with her frequent and successive pregnancies, Juliana 
 attempted little real restraint. Anna Ella was left unusually 
 free to carve her own course in life, to wind in and out 
 among the adults. Trying to combine all these grownup ideas 
 with her childish ones, Anna went every-which-way, like 
 the waters of a mountain stream dashing about the stones. 
 
 When it suited her, she read to her young sisters, often 
 from the volumes of Shakespeare that her father so dearly 
 loved. Draped in old velvet curtains, the girls would enact 
 
 25 
 
the roles of kings and queens. Anna's favorite play was The 
 Merchant of Venice, and as Portia she declaimed, "The 
 quality of mercy is not strain'd!" 
 And then she added, perhaps, 
 
 "It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 
 Upon the place beneath." 
 
 If a woman could have become a lawyer in long-ago 
 Venice, why should she herself not become one right 
 here in America, in Baltimore? Why could not a woman 
 have a major place in public life? Anna enjoyed playing 
 at law, and, as the eldest of the Carroll sisters, she brought 
 it into the settlement of girlhood quarrels. As the eldest 
 daughter and presumably the ranking executive, she tended 
 to take the role of both judge and lawyer and to pronounce 
 the verdict in the solemn terms she had picked up from 
 Blackstone and Sir Edward Coke. 
 
 And, sensing this native, latent power of analysis in this 
 brilliant youngster, her father was doing his best to shape 
 and develop it. It was Anna Ella who was the seldom- 
 disputed leader in a family that would soon number eight. 
 
 Through the long languor of the Maryland summers, 
 Anna left the books behind, and with her little sisters went 
 sailing down the river to Chesapeake Bay itself, where Anna 
 could see the clippers, with their graceful and rakish lines, 
 turning back to home ports from the West Indies, or speed- 
 ing out into the wild Atlantic under a heavy spread of 
 canvas. Those schooners were the queens of the Atlantic, 
 swiftest vessels on the face of the ocean. 
 
 The little town of Crisfield at the mouth of the river was 
 known as the seafood capital, and here she peered into bins 
 filled to the brim with shimmering fish and the harvest of 
 crabs that, scrambling across blocks of ice, would be sent 
 to markets as distant as Philadelphia and New York. Geog- 
 raphy to Anna was not found in books but in clippers and 
 
 26 
 
crabs and in maps she drew with her father's aid to mark 
 their route to other plantations. 
 
 Summer was the time for visiting, for spending weeks with 
 other families, and for exploring new rivers and creeks with 
 a party piloted by skillful Negroes. Rivers were not easy 
 to navigate, and it was an art to anticipate the tricks of 
 the currents and avoid the ever-changing snags and sand- 
 bars. Running aground, one might disturb a nest of snakes, 
 and some could be the deadly water moccasin. 
 
 A particular thrill was going up the Pocomoke; it was 
 like traveling through a tropical jungle, and one might 
 imagine the lurking of strange and savage forms. For its 
 narrow width, it was said to be the deepest river in the 
 world. Cypress trees met overhead above waters that were 
 sinister and dark, and a deserted mansion upstream was 
 reputed to be used at times by Patty Cannon. One could 
 see lights about the place at night, some affirmed, and hear 
 the shrieks of murder victims. Anna would shudder and 
 wish she had not come. 
 
 She welcomed the chatter back at the hospitable planta- 
 tion, and dancing with boys who, already being trained in 
 the manners of young gentlemen, bowed from the waist 
 and asked for "the pleasure." Her father rarely accompanied 
 them on these summer visitations, but Juliana was a social 
 being who looked forward to them. Isolated for months at 
 a time at Kingston Hall, she enjoyed the give-and-take of 
 gossip such as she had known in Baltimore. 
 
 Such gatherings were a fluid form of communication be- 
 tween the widely separated plantations, and guests were in 
 themselves like traveling journals. One might read political 
 rumors in these columns, and trends of opinion along with 
 the chit-chat. Juliana was on the alert for news of interest 
 to her husband, and Anna also began to pick up bits and 
 pieces along with the teacakes. 
 
 Anna found older folk interesting; and they, so often 
 
 27 
 
ignored by girls of her age, were flattered by her attention. 
 She was reading Kant and other German philosophers now, 
 and it was amusing to hear her expound and ask questions. 
 Recovering from the first shock of surprise such as might 
 greet a dog that could talk, scholarly gentlemen listened 
 soberly and did not mock her. Later, they might laugh 
 about it all with their wives. What other girl of twelve or 
 thirteen has so much as heard of philosophy? 
 
 As the summers slipped into fall and Christmas ap- 
 proached, Anna dropped her studies again for other pleas- 
 ures. Christmas was the crowning event of any plantation 
 year and the mark upon the calendar that divided it. One 
 figured time as just so many months after Christmas or so 
 many weeks before it. Well ahead of Thanksgiving, the 
 Carroll girls were running about planning surprises and 
 already getting in everyone's way. Anna and Julie conspired 
 in one corner, Henrietta and Ada in another, while small 
 Sally prattled and gave away secrets. Only the two boys, 
 Harry and Tommy, were too young to care. 
 
 Would it snow this Christmas? Would mother like the 
 slippers Henrietta was embroidering for her, and father the 
 painting of a dog that bore small resemblance to his fa- 
 vorite retriever, though Julie had tried? 
 
 All over the plantation, the Negroes were working with a 
 will to get in the last of the corn, to kill the hogs and make 
 the sausage. The holidays promised a gay time in "quarters," 
 and all must be in readiness. The smell of mincemeat and 
 fruitcakes and plum puddings filled the air so deliciously 
 that one could all but taste it. Turkey gobblers were fat- 
 tening in their pens, and soon the great Yule log would be 
 put to soak against the joyous season. 
 
 Every boat that drew up to the landing and every stage 
 rattling along the road might bring boxes of presents; every 
 post might bear news of more kinfolk planning to arrive. 
 
 28 
 
In the North, the season's merriment was restrained by a 
 Puritan chill, but in the South it had no limits as halls were 
 decked with holly, pine, and mistletoe. 
 
 By dusk of Christmas Eve, Kingston Hall was teeming 
 with guests; and the girls, exhilarated, were hugging even 
 cousins they did not like. While the youngest hung up their 
 stockings and were hustled off to bed, Anna and the older 
 girls stayed up to dance the reels and quadrilles until ex- 
 haustion rang the curfew. 
 
 With cockcrow, the girls were all up again in time for the 
 cry of "Chris'mus gif , Chris'mus gif," outside their par- 
 ents' door. As was the annual custom, a crowd of Negroes 
 were jostling jocularly in the hall, each striving to be first 
 with his gift to the mistress and the master. A brace of 
 mallards, a prize terrapin, a barrel of blue points, a bit of 
 knittin' or of whittlin' — whoever was first got an extra 
 present. 
 
 The ceremony was signal for all the young folk to dress in 
 holiday frocks and pantaloons. Arms loaded with gifts, they 
 paraded through the "quarters" delivering these and caroling 
 as they went. 
 
 All was high holiday throughout the week in the merry, 
 merry State of Maryland. Anna's father, often so grave and 
 distant with guests, expanded with the warmth of the season, 
 kissed the ladies under the mistletoe, and made everyone 
 forget that he did not care for foolishness. Ordinarily so 
 high-minded that he froze the ripples of frivolity by his 
 very presence, during the Yuletide he was the indefatigable 
 dancing partner, the jovial host. What a shame, Anna 
 thought, that the great Yule log must ever fall to ashes and 
 that Christmas could not last all year. . . . 
 
 29 
 
The Governor's 
 Daughter 
 
 Older than her years, and forced by her some- 
 what unique education outside the rainbow- 
 colored bubble in which most highborn Southern 
 girls of Anna's class led a light-hearted and 
 frivolous existence, she was already half a 
 woman, and perhaps half a man, in her thinking. From 
 clipping press stories for her father, she had somehow ad- 
 vanced into being his secretary. Though not yet fourteen, 
 she was already answering many of his letters and screening 
 the steady flow of visitors who came to advise him or to 
 ask for political favors. 
 
 Acting upon her earlier instructions, or perhaps on sheer 
 feminine instinct, Anna managed to shunt away the pompous 
 bores who echoed so hollowly with the rattle of their 
 verbiage, and to make time for those her father preferred 
 to see and spend time with. He liked to talk to anyone who 
 could give him solid information — the oystermen, the sea 
 captains, the small tradesmen. And to anyone who, by the 
 nature of his work, could possibly give him slants that were 
 fresh and were real. The times were changing, and Thomas 
 King Carroll sensed that the aristocratic class could hold 
 30 
 
its place in society and in politics only by changing or ad- 
 justing along with them. 
 
 Most emphatically, he did not hold with the great John J. 
 Calhoun of South Carolina, nor with the others who held 
 the idea that "States' rights" were above the general good 
 of the nation. Some of these men were already talking of 
 secession. They were firm, rigid men, seemingly determined 
 always to hold on to the past, where Thomas was flexible. 
 
 Like his aged relative, the illustrious Charles Carroll, who 
 at ninety was backing the first steam railroad ever to open 
 for general operation in the whole United States, this younger 
 Carroll was turning his eyes to the West and to the future. 
 
 Aware of the strong forces from the frontier with which 
 he had to contend, Carroll supported Andrew Jackson 
 in his second try for the Presidency. Jackson was right, 
 Thomas said; position and privilege must be earned, they 
 should not be taken as an inheritance. He had made his per- 
 sonal, individual decision and could not be moved by the 
 scorn of friends nor by the rage of visitors who pounded 
 upon his desk and stormed, "No gentleman, suh, is a Jack- 
 son man!" 
 
 "My father will be what he likes, and do what he likes — 
 and so will I!" Anna, hearing some of this commotion, 
 burst through the library door. "No one called you, my 
 dear!" Her father silenced her with a look. 
 
 Later her mother called Anna aside to admonish her. 
 Anna must learn to control herself and her temper if she 
 were ever to be of any real help to her father. In this curious 
 world of politics, one could not say all he thought, Juliana 
 explained. "Let the person across the table try to guess what 
 cards you may have in your hand; it's a little like playing 
 loo!" 
 
 Humiliated and tearful, Anna promised to try, again 
 
 31 
 
and again. Both parents suggested that she had a tendency 
 to go to extremes, but that was Anna's nature. All or 
 nothing! She hated wishy-washy people who were neither 
 one thing nor the other. "Precious Father," she would say, 
 and then "dearest Mother," throwing herself into their arms 
 in a passion of adolescent devotion. 
 
 The Jackson partisans were pressing Thomas Carroll to 
 run for governor, but he had his hesitations. The battle would 
 be a brutal one, he knew well. He would be a target for 
 the filthiest of mudslinging and the most vicious of lies. Feel- 
 ing was running so high at that time that rival factions were 
 fighting with brass knuckles and eye gougers in the streets 
 of Baltimore. Election to the state legislature was as polite 
 and socially acceptable as riding to hounds. Thomas Car- 
 roll could finger there indefinitely, but he was ambitious 
 and still young. So he made his move. 
 
 With Juliana cheering him on, he entered the race for 
 the governorship. She herself would run the plantation while 
 he was out campaigning, she said — trying to keep any pos- 
 sible uncertainty out of her voice. The family would all 
 join him in Annapolis. Juliana had always wanted to five 
 in the Governor's Mansion. Never mind about the new 
 baby she expected, the eighth child. She and Millie would 
 manage somehow. 
 
 Anna Ella, now flaming over what the journals were 
 saying about her father, kept him informed to the best of 
 her ability. She, of course, longed to be at his side during 
 the bitter campaign, but Mother needed her too; Anna 
 could feel that. 
 
 Father could win — and he did! The Carrolls would not go 
 directly to Annapolis; Anna fumed at the slight delay but, 
 as a planter's daughter, understood it. The spring of 1830 
 was, like any spring, a crucial time to leave the planting, 
 the seeding of next year's crops to the hired hands of an 
 
 32 
 
overseer, or of anybody. Juliana must perforce stay to watch 
 and direct in the necessary absence of the master; the 
 Carroll fortunes at the moment were on a more precarious 
 balance than anybody would care to admit right out loud in 
 public. 
 
 Anna, writing out of sheer loneliness at home, said plain- 
 tively to her father that she had not been well. "If I had 
 not the kindest and dearest of mothers to care for me and 
 for us all, what should we do?" 
 
 Enough of complaints and self-sympathy. She was the 
 Governor's daughter now, and, while still under the age 
 of fifteen, his political aide. With an incisiveness that some- 
 how combined the impetuousness of a child with the 
 seriousness of an adult, Anna continued: "I understand that 
 your appointments have not been approved — by the milk- 
 and-water strata of the party, for certainly no thorough 
 Jackson man would denounce. ... It is my principle, as 
 well as that of Lycurgus, to avoid mediums, that is to say 
 people who are not really decided one way or the other. In 
 politics they are the inveterate enemies of the state!" Here 
 the ink spluttered from her quill pen. Anna was not one, 
 even then, to do things by halves. 
 
 "I hear there has been a committee appointed to visit you 
 on your return to The Hall, and present a petition for re- 
 moval of same." Anna was even then keeping an ear to 
 the ground, as her father had taught her to do. "They call 
 themselves 'reformers.' I want reform too, even in court 
 circles," she added with a slight touch of youthful flamboy- 
 ance. "But forever to be reforming reform is to be absurd!" 
 
 The gubernatorial duties pressed on Thomas Carroll, and 
 travel in those days was so slow her father could only 
 promise them a visit. Anna must be patient; and her mother 
 Juliana, weary of it all, was sometimes short with her 
 daughter. Anna Ella was not the only one who missed 
 
 33 
 
Thomas Carroll. Once the summer harvest on the planta- 
 tion was under cover, the grain threshed, and the tobacco 
 safe from mildew, they could make their autumn plans. 
 
 Baby Mary had her fresh layette, but still all the rest of 
 the girls had to have new wardrobes. As the Governor's 
 eldest daughter and at the ripe age of fifteen a young lady, 
 Anna had somehow to be dressed in the height of fashion. 
 Like her mother, she, too, must pass the cold critical eyes 
 of Annapolis society. 
 
 Almost like a princess, Anna pranced sometimes before 
 the pier glass, the mirror, in a rich blue silk that brought out 
 the deep, subtle color of her eyes. Leah had laced her so 
 tightly that the child could hardly breathe. Her new role 
 in society had its penalties as well as its rewards. The 
 tiny lace-bedecked parasol, the necklace of real jewels, the 
 poke bonnet decked with feathers instead of the daisies of 
 her childhood . . . 
 
 Princess Anna? That did not really sound well. Girls were 
 always changing their names, from Flora to Florabelle and 
 from Sarah to Samantha. The name of Anne seemed so 
 much more distinguished than Anna, plain old Anna, and 
 besides, it was truly the name of a queen! "Meet Miss Anne 
 Carroll," Anna called to her mother. Watching from the 
 hall below, her mother was watching her daughter's dig- 
 nified descent of the stairs. The girl was handling her new 
 finery quite well, but still she must be taught how to float in 
 her petticoats and not grip the rail. 
 
 "So it's Anne now, is it?" Juliana laughed at her daugh- 
 ter's whimsey. "I must be sure to remember." 
 
 The younger sisters were now sewing, along with the 
 plantation seamstresses, in the tiny, flying stitches Anna 
 (or Anne) had earlier thought such a great bore. Anna 
 did not care much for needlework, but the new Anne would 
 try it. She would, as a magnificent gesture, make her father 
 
 34 
 
a shirt! It must be easy; she had seen Leah do it a dozen 
 times. Henrietta helped her to cut to a pattern, and no 
 doubt giggled when one asked why bother with basting. Hen- 
 rietta was as clever about sewing as her sister was about 
 books. As she watched Anna- Anne's struggles with the 
 shirt, Henrietta's voice was honey coated. Perhaps with sis- 
 terly sympathy. 
 
 Somehow all was accomplished in time for the triumphal 
 procession up the eastern shore through the glories of the 
 Maryland autumn. Princess Anne was riding in the front 
 carriage with the "King" and "Queen," while the retinue 
 of smaller sisters and brothers followed well to the rear, un- 
 der surveillance. As Ann- Anna- Anne bowed to the crowd, 
 to the right and the left, and, with her mother, accepted the 
 bouquets of flower-blooms, Anne was still afraid that the 
 rear was a signal disgrace. She knew it — by the hoots that 
 indicated mischievous antics somewhere, right close. 
 
 Everyone had turned out — the innkeepers, the tinkers, 
 the fishermen, along with the planters and their people, 
 rearing on nervous steeds made more upset by the screech of 
 the horns and the fiddles and the flutes. As suited such an 
 almost-royal entourage, outriders, resplendent in the green 
 and gold livery of the House of Carroll — went on ahead to 
 arrange the nightly accommodations. Whatever his politics, 
 a plantation owner in traveling was almost always over- 
 whelmed by invitations from others of his social or eco- 
 nomic group. It was a time when travelers had their prob- 
 lems; the inns were abominable, infested with bedbugs, and 
 otherwise beneath consideration by the quality. 
 
 So the Carrolls took the journey of some seventy miles 
 in fairly easy stages; but it was over far too soon to suit the 
 younger Carrolls, shining as they felt themselves to be in 
 all the excitement and resplendence reflected from their 
 father, the sovereign of the state. Still, they were about to 
 
 35 
 
be ferried across the Chesapeake, and undoubtedly further 
 adventures lay ahead of them. Anne, her hair now ablaze 
 like an autumn leaf, stood at the rail as the ancient side- 
 wheeler churned its way across the bright blue waters of the 
 bay in the direction of Annapolis. 
 
 Long and long before they actually came to dock, she 
 could see ahead, on a slight rise, the white cupola of the 
 old State House where her own father had his offices, and 
 where General George Washington had resigned his mam- 
 moth commission as Commander-in-Chief. This had been 
 the seat of the new Congress of the then newly born United 
 States of America itself! And Anne could hardly contain her 
 desire to visit it; more than that, she could hardly wait to 
 understand it. 
 
 As her feet echoed across the polished floors a day or so 
 later, Anne paused perhaps before the glorified portraits 
 of Washington, or of Lafayette; she fingered the tattered 
 flags that the Maryland troops had carried through the 
 Revolution. With a youthful ardency, she thrilled to the 
 historic spot and hoped and wished that she, too, could some- 
 how play a vital role in the story of her country. 
 
 But as far as she could see now, she was in for nothing 
 but a long tedious term of polishing. Her father had several 
 secretaries now, professionals who made her amateur ef- 
 forts look quaint. And he, of all people, was now siding 
 with her mother in the insistence that Anne attend a regu- 
 lar school — one that taught little more than manners, music, 
 and French. 
 
 From Anne's viewpoint, it mattered little to learn how 
 to enter a room or flirt with a fan. "Girls, don't ever raise 
 your voices, keep them low and sweet." The elderly gentle- 
 woman who ran the school (restricted to the daughters of 
 first families) accepted Anne as a personal favor, of course, 
 
 36 
 
just as she had the other girls. It would be hardly genteel to 
 admit that she needed the tuition money. 
 
 In that perfumed and artificial atmosphere, the girls 
 "were taught how to blush, so that "dawn's rosy glow might 
 creep across the pallor of one's cheek." They were receiving 
 the finishing touches of an education not to be learned from 
 books; it was the subtle Southern art of entwining men 
 about one's little finger. 
 
 Pretend to know nothing whatever of serious subjects; if 
 you do have a mind, conceal it, as a cat does its claws. Be 
 quick at repartee. Turn away when the gentlemen press, but 
 not too far. Be a living model of piety and virtue, yet on the 
 saucy side. Know how to play the game of love so deftly 
 that you can avoid getting caught up in the flames. A girl 
 must remain upon a pedestal, to be adored from afar until 
 at last, overcome by "the darts of Eros," she might swoon 
 into the arms of her chosen cavalier. 
 
 Where years earlier Anne had been confined to the 
 plantation with the long, monotonous drip of the winter 
 days, she was now dressing for balls and cotillions. With 
 her radiant hair done high on her head by faithful Leah, in 
 a profusion of flowers and plumes, her skirt held wide by 
 seven petticoats, Anne was moving, along with her mother 
 and father, into her rightful place among the Carrolls, in 
 a world of elegance and utmost sophistication. 
 
 Trying at first to hide the daringly low cut of her flowered 
 silk ball gown beneath the folds of a gossamer shawl, Anne 
 soon decided to throw artifice aside. Her white shoulders and 
 arms were superbly molded, as even her schoolmistress had 
 observed, and a lady must assess her beauty points and make 
 the most of them. Her waist, of course, must be tiny. So, no 
 chocolates. And she must further be laced and corseted 
 almost beyond the breathing point! What a lovely swell of 
 
 37 
 
bosom a girl could achieve — unless she swooned and spoiled 
 the whole effect! 
 
 Vivacious and mettlesome, Anne speedily became an 
 Annapolis belle. She was soon mixed in a whirl of invita- 
 tions for morning canters, picnics at noon, and saunters by 
 moonlight up along the Severn River. The boys became a 
 sort of interesting blur to her, and in early spring of that 
 year of 1831 she was crowned by a fervent admirer as the 
 Queen of Love and Beauty. 
 
 Romance showered upon her, like the falling of apple- 
 blossom petals. The young men charged down the field, like 
 knights of old in tournament, lances a-tilt, to show their 
 skills and their manhood to their sweethearts. Anne's par- 
 ticular gallant of the moment won; she was the Queen. And 
 how filled with rapture a Maryland spring could be! 
 
 38 
 
Fall of a House 
 of Cards 
 
 Anne was caught in a spell of enchantment and 
 hoped with all her heart it would never break. 
 Why must she ever leave Annapolis, the first 
 city she had known? Her father, as governor, 
 had the official box at the theater toward which 
 actors bowed formally at the beginning and at the end of 
 each performance; one had the privileges of royalty with- 
 out its restrictions. As in her occasional strolls to the pastry 
 shop at the end of the street, Anne was tasting to the full 
 the frostings on her cakes. 
 
 Yet houses were already being closed up against the com- 
 ing oppressive summer. The ballrooms where Anne had 
 danced with her retinues of beaux were being sheathed in 
 the white of slip covers to protect the crimson velvet sofas 
 and the Aubusson carpets, as the families departed for the 
 cool, high air of the mountains. Anne had no real excuses 
 to linger further in Annapolis. Mother had returned earlier 
 to Kingston Hall with the younger children, and Anne must 
 join her there. Leaving Annapolis wistfully, but with a fond 
 hope of return, Anne did not guess that the book was closing 
 on the gayest chapter of her life. 
 
 Back at Kingston Hall she was romantic and restless, as 
 
 39 
 
might be expected of any girl of almost sixteen. The ac- 
 customed routines of home, dear as they were, bored her 
 sometimes to tears. She wished that she could take off for 
 Europe, like some of her classmates. Writing to her from 
 Paris and from Rome, they were a world and more away 
 from the Hall, and from the chorus of bullfrogs that Anne 
 heard every evening. She too should be dancing to the 
 music of exotic violins! 
 
 Impatient with herself and everybody after one of these 
 gushing letters from a former schoolmate, Anne could not 
 bear the fussiness of visiting relatives who had a way of 
 upsetting the household routine by demanding breakfast at 
 eleven instead of nine, or insisted that their bed sheets be 
 changed every day. Small annoyances, perhaps, but they 
 were large to mother, or Anne thought them so. Juliana 
 had much too much on her mind trying to manage the 
 plantation with father still away in Annapolis and Washing- 
 ton. There was now talk of his running for United States 
 Senator, and he was getting steadily deeper in the nation's 
 politics. 
 
 Anne, fresh from the capital of Maryland and with a 
 new perspective, could sense a change. Kingston Hall was in 
 some way uneasy, as she had never before felt it to be. She 
 was growing up, and she could see more than she had. 
 
 Plantations around them were crumbling, but Kingston 
 Hall would stand. It must! Thomas Carroll had not been 
 using his heritage as a stake on the gaming tables, nor had 
 he been pursuing beauties among the "high-yallow gals." 
 Far too many plantations were passing into other and cruder 
 hands, or even being deserted entirely to the blackberry 
 vines and the Jimson weed. 
 
 The masters had grown soft with the ease of old planta- 
 tion life. And now the creditors, in one form or another, 
 threatened to engulf them. Not only creditors and bankers, 
 
 40 
 
but the ever-burgeoning crops of black babies that over- 
 flowed the worn-out land. In the cycles of the seasons and 
 of the years, Tidewater tobacco could not compare with 
 the new Kentucky crop. Wheat was thin and hardly worth 
 the planting and the reaping. But the notes signed at the 
 bank could, it seemed, only be repaid by the sale of slaves 
 to the West, or down the river. 
 
 Slavery was a hideous evil. Abolitionists in the North 
 were only beginning to proclaim the facts of life that 
 Thomas Carroll and other Southern leaders like him had 
 long been facing; it involved a deep problem that many were 
 trying in vain to solve overnight. Carroll and many of the 
 other plantation owners saw the institution of slavery purely 
 in the absolute terms of the individual black folk they 
 "owned" and loved. What could they do to see that a hun- 
 dred Mingos, Sallys, Fortunes, Millies, and their children 
 and grandchildren were safe and secure? 
 
 Planters signed notes for each other at the bank in an 
 endeavor to postpone the day of reckoning, and, still living 
 extravagantly, pretended the day would never arrive. In 
 reality, the burden had become so great that they them- 
 selves were in a way enslaved! At Kingston Hall alone, the 
 original hundred and fifty slaves of Thomas Carroll's in- 
 heritance had almost doubled in number, while the work 
 for them to do had almost as rapidly diminished. Unlike 
 the factory owners in the North, the planters could not dis- 
 miss workers when times were slack; they could not turn 
 their backs on the aged or close their eyes to hunger. The 
 planters had never been truly rich, except in land, and now 
 even this was failing them. 
 
 While her father was deeply engaged in large affairs of 
 state and of the nation, Anne watched her mother trying to 
 add up accounts that would not balance, and trying at the 
 same time to maintain a hospitality that the Carrolls could 
 
 41 
 
no longer afford. Anne said nothing about her need for a 
 new ball gown, and was a bit harsh when her sisters de- 
 manded new slippers or her brothers wanted boats. They 
 must learn to manage with what they had and not always 
 be bothering Mother. No! They were not going back to 
 Annapolis, and please, please stop asking why not? 
 
 Juliana was pale and drawn. She had tried too hard and 
 too long. She collapsed, dropping the reins. Millie as always 
 did her best, bringing the hot flatirons for her mistress' 
 feet, the smelling salts, and the herbal potions. But what 
 Mother really needed was Father. Anne, as temporary head 
 of the family, dispatched a letter with Mingo. But it would 
 take days to reach him, and days for him to come. Still, it 
 was the best that the young and worried girl could think of. 
 
 It had all been too much for Juliana; eight children and 
 several miscarriages in too short a span of years. A husband 
 whom she adored but who was often harsh, demanding, 
 and difficult — who was expecting Kingston Hall to run 
 itself. A crisis, inevitable and long in the formation, was 
 upon them. 
 
 From the wide expanses of his dreams for the Senate 
 and a great political future, Thomas Carroll must return 
 to the narrow, outdated world of Kingston Hall to try to 
 save both it and his Juliana. The house of cards was falling; 
 these cards dealt from one gentleman to the next. Besides 
 his own considerable debts, Thomas Carroll had rashly 
 assumed those of others of his friends and compadres, for 
 whom he had co-signed notes at the banks. As a man of 
 principle, he would pay them, no matter what it really cost 
 him and his family. 
 
 While the old plantation improved under his renewed, 
 constant attention, the odds were against him and his ilk. 
 True, food was abundant — food from the lush gardens 
 tilled by the Negroes, ducks from the marshes, and the 
 
 42 
 
fish that teemed in the rivers and the Bay. What the Carroll 
 family really needed was ready cash, and finally Anne her- 
 self suggested an idea — the idea of a school! 
 
 Kingston Hall had plenty of room for a school, and she 
 would teach in it. With all the ardor of her youth, she was 
 still somewhat vague about the curriculum, but what did 
 that really matter in a finishing school such as the one she 
 herself had attended in Annapolis? The faded gentle- 
 woman who ran that school must have made pints of money 
 — or so it seemed to Anne. And the old lady was not half so 
 smart as Mother. 
 
 It was, perhaps, a harebrained notion. Both of Anne's 
 parents dismissed the idea at first, and then later recon- 
 sidered. Juliana recalled letters from her friends in Balti- 
 more, asking whatever on earth they could do with their 
 daughters until the dear girls married and settled down? A 
 genteel boarding school, run under such auspices as that of 
 the Carrolls of Kingston Hall, might be an answer for them, 
 and for the daughters of the newly rich Baltimore mer- 
 chants. It would, perhaps, have what would be later known 
 as snob appeal. 
 
 Juliana brightened at the prospect. She was strong enough 
 now to teach music, piano, and voice, and as the daughter 
 of a famous doctor, perhaps physiology. Manners would 
 be part of the course; Anne, with her odd but surprisingly 
 comprehensive education, could fill in the gaps with Euro- 
 pean history and Shakespeare. Anne, of course, agreed en- 
 thusiastically to all this. They would teach girls to use their 
 brains. 
 
 Anne had never heard of Emma Willard, or of her Troy 
 Female Seminary up North, where students were shocking 
 their elders by learning algebra and Latin. Elsewhere, 
 throughout the country, girls were still regarded as lesser 
 beings, capable of little more than reading, writing, arith- 
 
 43 
 
metic, and polite accomplishments, or, on the frontier, the 
 primitive domestic crafts their mothers had taught them. 
 
 Glimmering in the sunset of Kingston Hall, the school was 
 a success. Horseback riding was a more popular subject 
 than European history, but Anne could teach either one. 
 She was no real crusader in the field of education; if the 
 girls attended school only for a lark or a break in the routine 
 of living, it was not important to Anne — as long as then- 
 bills were paid. 
 
 She was helping her family in one of the few ways then 
 open to a woman. Still under twenty, she was prone to 
 youthful vagaries which could make her forget which one of 
 the group was supposed to be teacher, and which pupil. 
 Juliana and Millie had them all under their figurative wings, 
 and it added up to a chattering flock of embryo belles which 
 no doubt sometimes drove Thomas Carroll to distraction. 
 
 It was, however, the sort of finishing school that almost 
 all of the parents wanted; a waiting time until the girls 
 could be signed, sealed, and delivered into the arms of suit- 
 able husbands. With the Carroll stamp of approval upon 
 her, a girl of humble origin might aspire to be an aristocrat. 
 If wealth could buy charm and presence, most fathers did 
 not quibble at the cost. 
 
 Her name and her background — Carroll of Carrollton — 
 were capital like money in the bank, as Anne was dimly be- 
 ginning to discover! 
 
 44 
 
7 
 
 Facing Facts 
 
 There were still so many facts of life to be faced, 
 
 so many little sisters and brothers somehow on 
 
 Anne's shoulders! With her mother still but a 
 
 shadow of her former self, and with Thomas 
 
 Carroll deeply depressed at the fading of his 
 
 political future and of his personal fortune, Anne felt deeply 
 
 the weight of it all — the weight of all the Carroll family 
 
 tradition and its pride. 
 
 Just as the education she had received, mainly from her 
 father, had forced her beyond the usual pattern of a South- 
 ern belle of the time; so now the ubiquitous and obstreperous 
 Anne tried gallantly to assume a responsibility for her five 
 sisters and two brothers, a sense of responsibility rarely, if 
 ever, found in a girl of her age. 
 
 The Carroll family must keep up appearances so that 
 the girls could marry well, and the boys prepared for medi- 
 cine or for the law. While the real inner Anne scarcely 
 fancied herself in the role of schoolmistress, she was happy 
 now to be bringing money into the Hall and helping to 
 stem the tide of disaster. It might all be just a small bucket 
 poured into an ocean of debt — but from Anne's viewpoint 
 it was better than sitting back and doing nothing at all. 
 
 45 
 
Yet as financial ruin swept the country with the panic of 
 1837, the pupils of the Carroll school were one by one with- 
 drawn. Fortunes far more secure than the Carrolls' had 
 been of recent years were crumbling. Hundreds of banks 
 had failed; thousands of businesses were in bankruptcy, and 
 unemployment was rife. 
 
 It was all the fault of that roaring, radical Westerner, 
 Andy Jackson — the conservatives were quick and eager to 
 place the blame on him for everything. Locally, the banker 
 appealed to Thomas Carroll and to other prominent plant- 
 ers; all made a last-ditch effort, but the times were out of 
 joint. And Carroll went to the wall, as the saying goes. 
 
 The Carroll family now had to face the difficult, perhaps 
 tragic, decision they had been trying to avoid. There seemed 
 now no other possible alternative to selling at least some of 
 their slaves to the dealers in human flesh who hovered about 
 the vicinity like vultures. With their long, greasy, unkempt 
 hair, their smartish goatees and their brutal faces, these 
 men were to Anne subhuman creatures. They were preda- 
 tors. Ethically and emotionally this course would be dev- 
 astating as well as infra dig; it would almost be the equiva- 
 lent of selling the members of one's own family! But even 
 despite the current depression, the Carroll slaves would 
 still fetch a top price; they were among the finest and 
 strongest in all Maryland. 
 
 The plantation, despite its two thousand acres, would 
 never find a purchaser in times like these. Thomas Carroll 
 knew this, and knew it far too well. He had gone to Balti- 
 more and Washington, and, pocketing his pride, had 
 knocked at every possible door. 
 
 It was at this crossroads that Providence intervened. A 
 distant relative returned to Maryland from somewhere in 
 South America; he was not exactly loaded with Inca gold, 
 but he had grown somewhat rich with trade, and he did offer 
 46 
 
to buy Kingston Hall. With the property he would purchase 
 at least half of the slaves and treat them well, or so he 
 promised. While this distant cousin drove a hard bargain, 
 he had principles and could be trusted. The black folks 
 would not go down the river nor to the cotton fields. 
 
 While all this seemed a most unhappy choice, the Car- 
 rolls had no other. They must obviously leave great Kingston 
 Hall forever, but they could perhaps buy a smaller planta- 
 tion and take with them there the best-loved among their 
 household servants. Families need not be broken up, nor 
 would all the field hands be lost. The solution seemed to 
 be expedient and merciful. 
 
 Some distance up the Bay, along the winding Chop tank 
 River, Thomas and Juliana Carroll came upon a place 
 known as Warwick Fort Manor. The plainish red-brick 
 residence was not too impressive — not after the grandeur 
 of Kingston Hall. It was a considerable comedown in the 
 world. Yet it would somehow hold all of them, and the 
 smaller acreage would at least provide them with food. 
 Thomas Carroll's debts had cut them all down to a very 
 narrow margin, despite the sale of the Hall. The Carrolls 
 were grateful for this haven. 
 
 Anne and her sisters (and perhaps even the small brothers 
 too) declared that they preferred the new place, the wider 
 staircase here, and the girls spread their petticoats as proud 
 as peacocks. (Which of course is silly; it is the peacock who 
 is proud, and the peahen who follows after! ) But not so with 
 our Anne. They suddenly found, these Carroll girls, a host 
 of new beaux from the countryside around. And the sisters, 
 often engaging in nonsense to cheer up their depressed par- 
 ents, cried only alone and in secret and in the dark corners 
 of the night, for past, lost glories. 
 
 Once the Carroll family felt somewhat settled, Anne 
 felt free enough to make an announcement. She was going 
 
 47 
 
off to Baltimore to make her own living, and further, to 
 send some money home. How she would do all this was a 
 question she had not really asked herself, or answered. 
 Still, she had the germ of an idea, and with the spirit and 
 strength of her early twenties she was determined to ride 
 forth like a plumed knight and strive to conquer dragons. 
 How long ago had been those light and carefree days of 
 tournaments in Annapolis, when she had felt herself to 
 be a fragile flower that might perish in the noonday sun. 
 
 Leah would of course come along with her. Anne could 
 not see herself ever really separated from Leah. Dearer to 
 her in any real sense than any of her natural sisters was this 
 slim, handsome, understanding black girl. Leah was, in a 
 sense, Anne's alter ego. She was an expert seamstress and 
 could always easily find work. At least, this was what Anne 
 told her naturally anxious parents. As for herself, she was 
 beginning to learn how to look mysterious. With a toss of 
 her flaming locks, that probably fooled nobody, she told 
 them not to worry. 
 
 Off on her great personal adventure, with dear Leah be- 
 side her, Anne stood firm on the deck of the trim white twin 
 wheeler. Perhaps at the moment she was a little inclined to 
 wish for a round-trip ticket! Anne knew little of big cities, 
 except for her brief experiences in small Annapolis; and 
 Baltimore was then second in size only to New York. As the 
 steamboat raced alongside a rival vessel, whistles split the 
 air; home was behind her, far back across the Bay, and that 
 was where she really felt she belonged. 
 
 How noisy the great cities were! Anne could see little 
 of metropolitan glories here along the dingy waterfront, 
 where porters were diligently banging her and Leah's 
 trunks as if determined to destroy them utterly. Ragged 
 urchins thrust newspapers at them, and fishmongers cried 
 their smelly wares above the tumult. Heavy carts rattled 
 
 48 
 
along the cobbled streets; and gangs of Negroes, their backs 
 gleaming with sweat, unloaded the heavy cargoes of deep- 
 sea vessels to a deep and monotonous chant: "Lemme go 
 home — I feel so bad I wanta go home!" 
 
 As their carriage wound its way through the narrow, 
 crowded streets, past the wide-open taverns where sailors 
 and roustabouts caroused, and past the wheezy laboring 
 of iron winches lifting cargo — bundles and bags that smelled 
 of coffee and spice — Anne was both excited and afraid. 
 She clasped dear Leah's hand, to stop either's trembling. 
 Anne was still only a young girl, determined to become a 
 woman all at once. At this period, and perhaps sometimes 
 later too, she asked a great deal of herself. She was relieved 
 when finally they came into the more respectable sections, 
 the old streets lined with rows of red-brick houses all alike, 
 with white marble stoops and polished railings. These 
 seemed to her to be the real Baltimore. 
 
 And yet how could anybody tell which house was his, 
 except by the number on the door? What a queer way to 
 live, Anne thought, nostalgically remembering plantation 
 days. 
 
 She leaned out of the carriage for a better look at the 
 fashionable shops on North Charles Street. Scarcely a ship 
 came from Europe that was not stocked with the finest 
 silks, satins, and millinery from Paris. And she knew that 
 ladies from all over the South came here to purchase their 
 wardrobes. Hard by were the jewelers and the silversmiths; 
 it was to Anne a truly magnificent array. "Look there — and 
 there!" Leah, coming out of her first nervous fright, was 
 now becoming as excited as her mistress. 
 
 They were now seeing a wonder of the age, a splendid 
 building seven stories high! "Isn't anybody in the world 
 who don't know about Barnum's City Hotel," said the 
 driver proudly, as if he owned it. They would soon be sink- 
 
 49 
 
ing ankle-deep into the carpets from Persia, and viewing 
 themselves in the gorgeous mirrors that stretched from 
 floor to ceiling and back again. 
 
 With her eager young face, and her hair glowing bright 
 even against the dingy old upholstery of the hired carriage, 
 Anne was perhaps even enhanced by the presence of her 
 faithful, loving attendant. Leah was the granddaughter of 
 African queens, and showed it. Each of these young women 
 was burgeoning with her own kind of beauty and of youth, 
 and passing gallants whistled and made remarks. It was a 
 little unusual to see such toothsome, attractive specimens 
 of womanhood alone in the streets in a shabby, hired vehicle. 
 
 Anne was no doubt glad indeed to escape, at least mo- 
 mentarily, from the stares of the gallants — into the gen- 
 tility of a boardinghouse, which had been recommended to 
 her father by some authority as "correct." Since Anne was 
 determined to be on her own, Thomas Carroll and his 
 Juliana were wisely letting her try it, naturally with a few 
 parental recommendations. Anne also had the names of 
 many, many friends of the family, of relatives of the Car- 
 rolls and the Kings, in her reticule; perhaps she would call 
 on some of them later. But now she had a deep desire to 
 be upon her own! 
 
 We can — from this perspective — only imagine the hour 
 when Anne fell across the bed, with her stays unloosed, 
 while Leah sympathetically washed her face with lemon 
 verbena. Anne was now trying, without any immediate 
 success, to still the countless, confusing thoughts that 
 whirled through her pretty and acute head. However, 
 really what could she, even as Thomas Carroll's beautiful 
 daughter, find to do — to really do — in Baltimore, where 
 there were, for her at least, no familiar, friendly lanes? 
 And the houses all looked exceedingly like! 
 
 These problems could not be solved easily or tonight, 
 
 50 
 
nor immediately in the days to follow. The boldness, so 
 easy to achieve in her girlish dreams, was now receding 
 against hard pressures of reality; the actual realities of a 
 young, booming city, a pressing city full of people who 
 knew their way around, or seemed to at least. And who- 
 ever in the world had ever heard of a young woman of 
 gentle birth making her own living as anything but per- 
 haps a poorly paid governess, a teacher, or a seamstress? 
 Up in the North, girls were working in the textile mills, but 
 that seemed the full extent of opportunity for women, of 
 whatever class or background. 
 
 Longing to dare and do, Anne pondered her course. If 
 she were a man, she could readily enter some law office 
 and study and qualify. She was actually already widely read 
 in the law, and was better equipped to enter into actual 
 practice than many young men who had already had the 
 temerity to hang out their shingles. Anne's mind, as always, 
 was bouncing, but she was confined still by the arbitrary 
 restrictions placed on her sex, the "dead hand of the past," 
 as Spencer said. 
 
 Anne liked being a woman, and she adored the gallant 
 attentions she was always receiving; yet she was not prepared 
 to seek this easy way out. At least she could not follow the 
 format of the other pretty Baltimore belles; the early mar- 
 riage, the social patterns, the many children, the gracious 
 movements into the past, economically and socially. Anne 
 could not accept this, not until she should meet a man to 
 whom she could give her whole heart! To one of her ardent 
 temperament, it was all — or nothing. 
 
 Anne's family needed her financial help, and in this sort 
 of interim period she was determined to assist. Once she 
 took the step, once she married, she would, according to 
 the laws of the time, be classified as an inferior being. Anne, 
 trained in the legalities of the period, was already keenly 
 
 51 
 
 OF IJLLi 
 
aware of the potentials. Only a very few exceptional, under- 
 standing men, such as her father, could even bring them- 
 selves to admit that the fair sex had brains. 
 
 Now, however, she must use them! Anne had heard far 
 too much of liabilities and responsibilities in the past years; 
 now she was trying to think of positive things, of assets. 
 She had a busy pen, an always-ready pen, long used to 
 assist her father in the writing of political pamphlets, com- 
 posing articles for the newspapers, and planning magazine 
 articles to further his projects. From Thomas Carroll she 
 had learned a great deal about how certain political strings 
 could be pulled. Most important of all, the Carroll name 
 was a talisman that could open many doors for Anne and 
 enable her to move in the highest echelons of Baltimore 
 society and business and politics. 
 
 Slowly but steadily, Anne began to feel her way into a 
 career that was, at the time, unnamed. It was unheard-of, 
 at the time — this strange, new profession of publicity, and 
 all these contacts and counsels that would sometime come 
 to be known as public relations. 
 
 Her own personal charm and her social graces could 
 perhaps be combined with the sharp incisiveness of her 
 mind to further her growing ambitions. She would, if she 
 could, blend the belle with the businesswoman. 
 
 52 
 
Glimpses into 
 the Beyond 
 
 No one really understood what Anne was about 
 in those days in Baltimore, and perhaps least 
 of all the other people at the house. They raised 
 their eyebrows, no doubt, over her comings and 
 goings on the horse cars. Some were young mar- 
 ried couples, who were only stopping here as a sort of step 
 between the honeymoon and the eventual home of their 
 own. Some were old folks gossiping in the parlors, with 
 nothing much to talk about but the past or their present 
 ailments. There were spinsters hoping, and bachelors de- 
 ferring. The boarding house in early America was an in- 
 stitution, with definite categories, into none of which Anne 
 fitted. 
 
 Recent blushing brides, glancing up over their embroidery 
 hoops, envied her. Anne seemed so free, so sure of herself, 
 so meticulously dressed. None of these ladies could know 
 how it really was with Anne, this glamour-girl whom many 
 of them envied. They could not know how sorely the Car- 
 roll family needed the few silver dollars that she was send- 
 ing home from her own maiden ventures into the workaday 
 world and from dear Leah's earnings in a Baltimore mantua- 
 maker's shop. 
 
 53 
 
The fashionable clothes the brides admired were, as 
 often as not, given the new season's twist by Leah's clever 
 fingers. The mantuamaker was a fashion arbiter for a 
 wealthy and somewhat discerning clientele, one which de- 
 manded the very latest (whatever it was) from Paris or from 
 London. 
 
 Leah worked in a sort of rainbow of silks and satins, and 
 in a flurry of fashion plates that could be later quietly copied 
 at home for her mistress — from the remnants of materials, 
 if need be. Always alert to gossip among the ladies at their 
 fittings, Leah also brought to her mistress word of new 
 shops and business enterprises from which the talented 
 Anne could sometimes pick up a small fee by writing 
 clever letters to selected mailing lists, and doing publicity 
 puffs for the newspapers. She also wrote the small, flam- 
 boyant notices that made up the advertising of the period. 
 Anne was pioneering in a new field, one that as time went 
 on would give employment to many thousands of career 
 girls. Her office was largely in her bonnet, and her brief case 
 was a reticule. 
 
 But it was all grist to her mill — the fanfare over the ar- 
 rival of a clipper ship from China with rare oolong teas 
 fit for an emperor, or over the latest appearance of Junius 
 Brutus Booth, the celebrated tragedian and a great Balti- 
 more favorite, accounted the leading Thespian of his time. 
 The baby brought on stage, when the play required it, was 
 dark-eyed little John Wilkes Booth, younger son of the 
 great Junius, who was himself destined to grow up to be a 
 matinee idol over whom the ladies swooned. He was also 
 to take a pistol one night into Ford's Theater in Wash- 
 ington, and with it write the bloody lines of one of the na- 
 tion's greatest tragedies, the cruel and useless assassination 
 of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Anne was now well off on her own course, rubbing shoul- 
 54 
 
ders with tradesmen and actors, a shocking departure from 
 the prescribed behavior pattern for a young gentlewoman. 
 She was soon, in certain circles at least, almost ranking 
 with the weather as a favorite topic of tea-table conversa- 
 tion. This astounding Carroll girl! 
 
 Which was something, because all Baltimorians were 
 (and many still are) deeply versed and interested in their 
 city's changeable and unpredictable weather. They boasted 
 that their hailstones were bigger, their storms more fero- 
 cious, their summer heat more stifling than anywhere else; 
 and they sometimes dramatized their two-inch snowfalls 
 by calling them "blizzards" and keeping the children home 
 from school. They had a way of affirming that no one, at 
 any season of the year, should venture forth unequipped 
 with jacket and umbrella, and they often tried to top one 
 another in the use of descriptive adjectives. The citizen 
 who called a day "dank and miserable," was rivaled by some- 
 one else who termed it "unspeakably damp and filthy," or 
 by the less imaginative "just horrible." 
 
 As for Anne, words sometimes failed even her, though 
 she was less interested in the weather than in the changing 
 climate of the country. It was a time of ferment. Charles 
 Carroll's influence had made the city of Baltimore a center 
 for the infant railroads that now, in spite of the recent fi- 
 nancial panic, were growing and extending by leaps and 
 bounds into strapping adolescence. 
 
 Even to the end of his long, useful fife, Carroll was a 
 brilliant and driving force. Now, in the several luxurious 
 homes his wealth and acumen had provided for his many 
 descendants, Anne was a guest who came and went with 
 the proverbial ease of kinfolk. These were places where 
 young, ambitious men gathered, the future railroad mag- 
 nates, the entrepreneurs, the drivers. These were the men 
 who were rapidly divorcing Baltimore from the easygoing 
 
 55 
 
South of tradition and making it into a modern metropolis. 
 
 Anne was also modern, in the sense that she knew now 
 that she must make her own way with her own talents and 
 her own strengths. She had more than mere beauty; she 
 sparkled with an intelligence and an understanding that 
 made her magnetic; and she found out how to catch the 
 attention of men who could recognize and use her counsel. 
 Also, she had learned how to use men, period. 
 
 Her early training in Annapolis had made her adroit. 
 Subtly seeming to invite masculine attentions, she could, 
 at the psychological moment, turn the conversation into 
 other channels. Luscious and lovely, Anne was on her 
 way; she was outgrowing the realms of the little shops and 
 the small tradesmen and moving into the world of high 
 finance and of politics. 
 
 Public acceptance (and public investment) in the new 
 railroads must necessarily be solidified before there could 
 be the laying of the ties and tracks that must shimmer into 
 the future, to tunnel through the mountains and swing 
 across the plains and bind the nation together. Public opin- 
 ion must be guided and shaped to accept the new era — 
 through pamphlets, articles, and other more subtle forms 
 of persuasion. Lavish dinner parties, with fists of important 
 guests carefully screened and seated according to etiquette 
 and protocol could sometimes sway the course of legisla- 
 tures. Anne, with her feminine intuition and her increasing 
 know-how, could be extraordinarily useful to the rail mag- 
 nates, and they to her. 
 
 In a city like Baltimore, famous for its beauties and for 
 the glitter of its social life, Anne was a unique figure; she 
 was a phenomenon little understood and much talked about. 
 Appearing in public now on the arm of this important man 
 and now again with another, she behaved with a freedom 
 
 56 
 
that in anyone but a Carroll would have been deemed 
 scandalous. 
 
 Outwardly frivolous and gay, Anne often sought private 
 sanctuary in the book-lined study of the Reverend Robert 
 Jefferson Breckinridge, pastor of the Second Presbyterian 
 Church in Baltimore, and an old friend of her father's. She 
 worshiped at the church with regularity, and from the 
 minister gained the guidance to sustain her through the in- 
 creasing mazes of her life in Baltimore — and perhaps some 
 of the spiritual and personal balance she felt she required. 
 She was very devoted to this wise and eloquent Kentuckian 
 — as she was soon to be devoted to and adore Henry Clay. 
 
 Her own father had now left the embattled ranks of the 
 Jacksonians to rejoin the Whigs, gathered at the moment 
 in convention right there in Baltimore. Introduced formally 
 to Mr. Clay, and with her little hand clasped in his long, 
 nervous fingers, Anne felt a sort of electricity, a personal 
 attention. The great Whig leader had a certain knack for 
 this sort of thing; with the mild flattery he was inclined to 
 extend to any attractive young woman, he asked her opinion 
 about the coming election. Did the Whigs have a real 
 chance? 
 
 Obviously Mr. Clay expected only a fluttering, feminine 
 generality from her, but he did not get it. "I'm not so sure," 
 Anne answered slowly and thoughtfully. "I've been hearing 
 about the organized powers working against you. They are 
 strong. They are also underhanded. And they are getting 
 the immigrants naturalized about as soon as the people get 
 out of steerage. Ready to drive them to the voting polls like 
 a flock of sheep, with instructions in their hands. But of 
 course, Mr. Clay, you know all this — " Anne finished, 
 flushing. 
 
 In her youthful eagerness to express her indignation at 
 
 57 
 
these illegal procedures, Anne had for a moment forgotten 
 that Henry Clay was a great man; he seemed as of now so 
 human, so real. Perhaps, she had been somewhat presumptu- 
 ous to think that so experienced a politician, so astute a 
 statesman, would care to hear the reactions of an apparent 
 amateur. 
 
 "Yes, I do," said Henry Clay. "But how did you discover 
 it? Women do not usually bother their pretty heads about 
 such heavy matters." His gray eyes were deep and penetrat- 
 ing, and yet somehow they surrounded her with a luminous 
 warmth. "I think I would like to talk more to this daughter 
 of yours," Mr. Clay said to her father, and then went on 
 to invite them to a small, intimate soiree at his hotel the 
 following night. That was to lead to the beginning of many 
 things, at least for Anne. 
 
 The convention itself was her first real experience of na- 
 tional pohtics. Through her father, she had a ringside seat 
 directly beneath the thunderous oratory of Daniel Webster. 
 Webster was quite as she had imagined him; he looked like 
 one of the English country gentlemen she had seen in prints, 
 impressive in his bulk. As he strode about the platform, 
 making his points with flashing eyes and golden tongue, 
 she had the feeling that here was a man who could force 
 other men to believe — but who could not, like Henry Clay, 
 win them. Besides, Daniel Webster was a Yankee, still an 
 alien breed to Anne. 
 
 Both men were fiercely ambitious to be President. And 
 both of them had been by-passed for the coveted nomina- 
 tion by William Henry Harrison, the so-called military hero 
 of Tippecanoe, "and Tyler too!" The great gathering, the 
 convention in Baltimore, was in a way a sort of organized 
 protest, taking the spotlight away from the Democrats and 
 rebuilding political fences or building new ones. 
 
 During the next busy years Clay, always in the heart of 
 
 58 
 
things, used acuteness, even feminine acuteness, whenever 
 he could find it, to augment his own strength. He had been 
 quick to detect special things in Anne Carroll — under- 
 standing to an extraordinary degree. They met at more and 
 more social gatherings, where of course there was more 
 politics going on than simple sociability. These were parlous 
 times, as Anne was beginning to know. 
 
 Like many other partisans, young and old, she came un- 
 der Henry Clay's strange personal spell. It seems that she 
 even fell in love with him. Not romantically, we must hastily 
 add. Clay was sixty-three, and incredibly ancient in her 
 young eager eyes. But she loved the ardor of his spirit and 
 of his acute, incisive mind. Yes, he too was a slaveholder; 
 but he deplored the very institution of slavery almost as 
 deeply as Anne's own father did. 
 
 Clay hated too such upstarts as John C. Calhoun, who 
 held purely sectional interests above those of the Union, 
 and who, back in 1832, had seriously threatened to lead 
 a secession group away from it. Mr. Calhoun, Clay observed, 
 used his fine mind but never his heart, if he had a heart at 
 all! But there were many, many like him. Far too many, for 
 the good of the country. 
 
 Yet Henry Clay's actions, his life's behavior pattern, 
 were far less violent than his words, many of which words 
 he would only speak in private to trusted friends. He was 
 a man who usually chose the middle way; he was a man of 
 intelligent compromise. It was in his thinking that, if some 
 day both sides gave a little, the really deep issues might be 
 settled or compromised. Both sides, he thought, must give a 
 little, retreat from certain grounds, if the really deep is- 
 sues were ever to be resolved. Clay was a man of stature 
 and of spirit; he was also a man who could capture the 
 imagination of an impetuous young disciple like Anne, and 
 he had the wisdom and skill to direct it, too. Clay saw the 
 
 59 
 
problems of life and of the nation too, in a deeper sense; 
 nothing was all clear — nothing was all black or all white 
 or all anything. Mr. Henry Clay believed firmly in the 
 sensible gray, the so-called middle ground. 
 
 Perhaps busy Anne often forgot some of these angles in 
 her work for the coming political campaign. Why could not 
 everyone see, as clearly as she herself did, that Henry Clay 
 was the only possible man who could be the next President 
 of the United States? It was plain as day, to her. He was a 
 deep, thoughtful, patriotic gentleman, and in Anne's mind 
 the nation would be everlastingly lucky to have him at its 
 helm. 
 
 But sometimes, in moments of reflection, perhaps she 
 checked herself. If it was true that it was not easy to find 
 an easy solution to her country's life, it was in a way equally 
 difficult for her to find her own paths. But she felt them — 
 and she would find them. They were there. 
 
 60 
 
Under the Magnolias 
 
 Walking alone underneath the sweet-scented 
 
 magnolias in the moonlight, Anne longed to 
 
 give it all up and to abandon herself to romance 
 
 and domesticity. The feminine side of her heart 
 
 cried out for that easier way; but her deeper 
 
 heart, and her deeper mind, could not really accept any 
 
 man she knew. Her sisters were easier to please. One by 
 
 one, they were marrying. 
 
 If only Anne could really believe in the flowery proposals 
 that came to her now and again! Couched of course in 
 proper Victorian language, they seemed to her as unreal 
 as lines written for an actor to deliver upon a stage. She 
 had her individual dreams, and these did not fancy the 
 Baltimore gallants she had met. She dreamed of a man 
 who could sweep her off her feet. But she had known these 
 Southern gentlemen too long and too well; she had known 
 their families and their histories and had heard about their 
 excessive gambling debts. 
 
 Sometime, somewhere, she might find the mate, the 
 man she was seeking. Meanwhile she must amuse herself by 
 being "in love" with somebody — or not. She would enjoy 
 the rosy clouds; but out of them now and then, her despair 
 
 61 
 
would not be too deep. She had her work, and she enjoyed 
 it; she really loved living and she flourished like a banner her 
 basic joie de vivre. She was also a woman born ahead of 
 her time, and one trying to do too many things all at once. 
 Work could dispel even the pitter-patters of ugly dread; 
 of the creatures of the night that seemed to enlarge into 
 absolutely ghoulish things, haunting her and pressing her. 
 
 As the debts at the new, smaller plantation, Warwick 
 Fort Manor, continued to mount sky-high in spite of all 
 the gallant efforts of her father and in spite of what she 
 herself was doing and trying to do, Anne could form a 
 mental picture of the oncoming inevitable — or so it seemed 
 sometimes — conclusion. She could not bear to see any of 
 her dear black friends led in chains across the mountains 
 or sent down the river. 
 
 Her younger sisters, as one by one they married, were 
 taking such choice portions of the slaves as they could use 
 and protect. But Anne's brothers were still too young to 
 be of any real assistance. The law of the time was excep- 
 tionally cruel. If a man did not pay his debts, his property 
 could be legally attached, and that could mean human prop- 
 erty too. Slaves, black friends, members of the family . . . 
 
 Anne's brother Tom was studying medicine, and Harry 
 was taking up the law. Perhaps, in the course of time, the 
 boys could, according to their growing, individual abilities, 
 take over, but certainly not yet! 
 
 Meanwhile a few of the Carroll's blacks had escaped 
 into the North via the underground railroad. But when 
 they got to New England, to Boston, or even up as far as 
 Canada, what was there for them to do? Freedom yes — but 
 what freedom? The fervent Northern abolitionists who set 
 up and to some extent financed this route to the North must 
 somehow be brought to realize that freedom is indeed an 
 
 62 
 
idle promise, if a man has no bread for his belly, no meat 
 cuts for the family stewpot — where was he supposed to go 
 from there and what was he supposed to do? 
 
 "If a big beautiful black girl got no home . . ." Anna 
 Ella Carroll was most concerned about these younger slaves, 
 the sturdy young men and the lovely, physically attractive 
 young women. These were the ones who would first attract 
 the eyes of the slave traders. As Anne considered the prob- 
 lem in its entirety, an idea came to her. She herself would 
 somehow buy these slaves from her father. If registered in 
 her name, they could not ever be taken to pay her father's 
 debts — if the foreclosure came. 
 
 Anne was contributing regularly to the Carroll family 
 income. Now perhaps they could repay her — with legal 
 deeds to slaves at a nominal $400 each, which was certainly 
 a minimal price. They would then remain upon the planta- 
 tion, but Anne herself would be the legal owner. It was an 
 ingenious solution with a serious catch to it. Should the 
 plantation be entirely lost, as seemed possible, Anne her- 
 self would be held personally responsible for the board and 
 keep of these slaves, these friends, these human beings. It 
 was a most daring step for a young woman not yet thirty 
 and still living only by her wits to undertake. 
 
 She could not afford to fail either these or her family. 
 Now, too, Anne was working feverishly in the cause of 
 Henry Clay. He finally had been nominated for the Presi- 
 dency, and, like many another ardent young idealist through- 
 out the land, she felt that the nation needed him at the 
 helm. 
 
 In Illinois, an obscure, gawky thirty-five-year-old coun- 
 try lawyer named Linnkin or Lincoln, or something like 
 that, was an equally dedicated Whig. The ship of state was 
 in a serious difficulty, beset by great and increasing storms. 
 
 63 
 
It required a great statesman to pilot it through these 
 troubled waters. 
 
 Antislavery agitation was increasing, what with the 
 furious debates over the proposed annexation of Texas; and 
 war with our southern neighbor, Mexico, loomed in the 
 offing. 
 
 As the first results of the election came in, Anne was sure 
 that her man had won. Then it began to appear that James 
 K. Polk of Tennessee was gaining ground, and the wait for 
 final conclusive results was agony for Anne. Counting the 
 votes back in those days was an agonizing and also a tedious 
 process. Communications were slow, and soon the elec- 
 tion — which had at first seemed such a quick and easy vic- 
 tory for Clay — started to slip away from him. 
 
 "Fraud at the polls!" cried the embattled Whigs, and 
 with reason. In Baltimore alone hundreds of quick nat- 
 uralization papers had been issued to immigrants on the 
 very eve of the election, and folks had been proved to have 
 sold outright the identity papers of the dead to be used by 
 the living and the unqualified. 
 
 Daniel Webster, addressing a crowd in Boston, stated 
 forthrightly that many foreigners who had been in the 
 country less than a month, and who were as ignorant of 
 American ways as they were of its language, had been 
 transformed into voters and used by the unscrupulous op- 
 position as tools. Whisky had bought other votes; ballot 
 boxes had been stuffed so outrageously that some areas 
 handed in a count that well exceeded the total number of 
 adult males. 
 
 Fraud had certainly been flagrant; it walked boldly in 
 the streets, and yet it had barely swung the election. Of 
 two and a half million votes cast Clay lost by less than 
 40,000! 
 
 64 
 
Anne, exercising a woman's privilege, wept unashamedly 
 at the bitterness of life. Why could not the highest honor 
 in the land come to the man who so richly deserved it? The 
 question was one that, in another form, she was to ask of 
 herself years later. 
 
 65 
 
1 
 
 Washington Belle 
 
 As her public relations work for the newcoming 
 railroads claimed more and more of her time, 
 Anne somehow found herself moving in closer, 
 more and more, to this odd mixture of politics 
 and business. Indeed, at the time the two were 
 becoming so basically interlocked that any thinking per- 
 son like Anne had to face the fact that each of these eco- 
 nomic facets of society was becoming so deeply entwined 
 with the other that they were almost interdependent. 
 
 Anne at that time, in her eager way, was sharing the 
 dreams of a whole continent, a growing new world to be 
 someday held together by the span of the shining, silvery 
 lines that would lead across the prairies and through the 
 mountains and which might really weld it into one nation, 
 indivisible. 
 
 As she prepared what in our time would be called pub- 
 licity releases, or press blurbs — and which at the time were 
 only considered pamphlets or letters to the editor — she could 
 also perhaps laugh now at the memory of her own childish, 
 girlish thrills on the great occasion when the first railroad 
 train went out of Baltimore. 
 
 There had been a great fanfare, and Anne being Anne, 
 
 66 
 
had hung onto every detail of it all, as told to her by her 
 father. There had been the great parade through the 
 streets of Baltimore. There had been her relative, old 
 Charles Carroll, in his elegant carriage, preceded by danc- 
 ing youths dressed "as Mercuries, with wings on their feet"; 
 and the procession was augmented by marching bands from 
 the various trade guilds, blowing their heads out and their 
 hearts out — heavy on the brass, as critical musicians would 
 say. But those were the days. Those were Anne's days, as 
 the record shows. 
 
 In that first trip of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, they 
 ran on wooden rails a distance of little more than twelve 
 miles. The "locomotive" had been a horse or maybe a team 
 of horses. 
 
 But soon they would experiment with steam power and 
 would come into competition with Mr. Peter Cooper's little 
 "Tom Thumb," no match for the horse that was placed to 
 race against it. Still, automation had moved in. Men and 
 horses cannot compete with stronger powers: human 
 muscles and equine muscles can do so much and no more. 
 
 Now, in Anna Ella Carroll's short span of years, the 
 Baltimore and Ohio had become a power, as had the other 
 new railroads, because of the tying together of a burgeoning 
 nation, the seemingly limitless possibilities of high-speed, 
 economical transportation; so that the crops grown in the 
 new, unfolding West could reach the hungry markets of 
 the East. Surely, Anne thought, wonders would never cease! 
 Samuel Morse had just recently invented the telegraph, and 
 the first line had been installed — all the way from Baltimore 
 to Washington! How strange it all was! Imagine messages 
 actually traveling over wires. Perhaps in some future day 
 people would be even able to communicate, to talk with 
 each other, from far-distant cities. It was a notion almost 
 too extravagant and radical to contemplate; even the first 
 
 67 
 
telegraph alone was so startling that people were making 
 fun of it and implying that it was just a parlor magician, 
 pulling a rabbit out of a hat. 
 
 Yet Anne, sharp as a tack, had heard some of her rail- 
 road associates say that the telegraph could be perhaps 
 very useful to them; they might even adopt this new method 
 of instant communication someday. "What hath God 
 wrought!" This was the first message sent by Morse; it was 
 symbolic of the dawn of a new era. And it was all enough 
 to make Anne feel historic, at the age of twenty-nine! 
 
 The railroads were paying her very well for her public 
 relations and publicity services; and any increase of currency 
 in her pocketbook would enable her to buy freedom for 
 another slave, who could then perhaps go forth and be 
 treated with his rights as a human being. But while Anne 
 might be altruistic in her motives, the railroad magnates 
 were certainly not. Fortunes were to be made, and some 
 were then being made through stock and bond manipula- 
 tions and through the grant of public lands. As everybody 
 knew, minor politicians could be bought any day, a dime for 
 a dozen. But the major figures in the scene must be won 
 over by less simple and obvious means, and through a 
 coercion so tactful that the victims were almost unaware 
 of its very existence. 
 
 Anne had been practicing some of these devious arts 
 down in Baltimore, but now the Big Time beckoned. She 
 must transfer herself to Washington. Among her many 
 sponsors and gallants, Anne had a close friend and associate 
 in R. J. Walker, a dry whisk of a man with a personality 
 stripped right down to the bone. He happened to be the 
 political boss of Mississippi, and he had one real interest in 
 life: the pursuit of wealth and the power that goes with it. 
 Already immensely rich, he was at the time backing a new 
 
 68 
 
railroad through his part of the South that he thought 
 someday might possibly even extend to the far Pacific. 
 
 Anne, with her inner fire and her drive and her public- 
 relations know-how, could be of exceptional assistance 
 even to this cold and calculating man, and well he knew it. 
 Somewhat like the new railroads, most of them still with 
 their vast, extending plans on paper only, the capital city of 
 Washington was in a way just a dream of what the future 
 might bring. But it was still a platform, a stage, for Anna 
 Ella Carroll. She must use it, somehow, someway. 
 
 As the celebrated English author Charles Dickens had 
 pointed out during his recent tour of the American provinces, 
 the city of Washington was still just "a city of magnificent 
 intentions." Only by taking an eagle's-eye view of it all, 
 from overhead the still unfinished Capitol, could anyone 
 really comprehend the magnificent designs that were in the 
 hearts and minds of the builders and architects! 
 
 But at the moment the city of Washington was in a foul- 
 up: spacious avenues began in a sea of mud and led nowhere. 
 Streets miles long waited hopefully for houses and inhab- 
 itants, for public buildings — and for a public. In the wide- 
 open empty spaces, a person like Anne could easily fancy 
 now and then that the season was over, and that the dwell- 
 ings-to-be had left town with their masters and mistresses. 
 
 Perhaps really the most unconcerned among the populace 
 were the swine who served as garbage collectors, and who 
 in this cheerful but unofficial capacity grunted in the 
 courtyards of the best hotels and even accompanied the 
 carriages and coaches to and from shops and restaurants. 
 There were pigs all over! The Whigs humorously gave them 
 the names of leading Democrats, who acidly returned the 
 compliment as soon as possible. 
 
 Once Anne was ensconced (with dear faithful Leah) in 
 
 69 
 
a boarding house on Pennsylvania Avenue that served as 
 a jumping-off place for Congressmen, Senators, and other 
 prominent politicians, mostly Whigs, she suddenly found 
 many new doors opened to her in Washington. Through 
 her father and other family connections, she already knew 
 most of the members of the Maryland and of the Virginia 
 bar; the then-powerful Seaton family which ran and pub- 
 lished The National Intelligencer; Winfield Scott, Chief of 
 Staff of the army; and many other influential personages. 
 A branch of the Carroll family was among the richest in 
 all Washington. Ties of blood and friendship eased Anne's 
 way into a half -built but surging city where a beautiful and 
 respectable young woman, living on her own, was so rare 
 that certainly, without her name and her social entree, she 
 would probably have had to meet the vilest of suspicions. 
 
 Women at best were somewhat scarce in the Washington 
 of that day; at worst, they ran notorious establishments 
 where lonely politicos found solace and comfort — of a 
 dubious sort, indeed. By and large, Washington was a city 
 of men, a city for men. Their families had been left at home, 
 because living was expensive here, housing difficult; and 
 also, as in the case of Juliana Carroll, sometimes wives must 
 remain behind to keep a thoughtful eye on the thousand 
 and one business and intermingled human-business, rela- 
 tionships of the plantation. Or the ancestral homestead — 
 or whatever! 
 
 If Anna Ella Carroll had been seeking easy conquests, 
 she could undoubtedly have had men falling into her lap, 
 like ripe apples from the tree. But this was not Anne's way. 
 She sought the difficult, perhaps sometimes the unattainable. 
 She was drawn to men of stature, such as John Minor Botts 
 of Virginia, a man black-haired, blue-eyed, thunderous, a 
 man who always argued furiously with her; they agreed 
 upon practically nothing. They fenced verbally as though 
 70 
 
to keep the necessary distance between them: they dared 
 not come too close. Drawn by a mutual attraction, they must 
 still deny it: Botts already had a wife. 
 
 Emotionally, Anne was far safer serving as hostess for 
 such a man as Senator Tom Corwin of Ohio, who was of 
 her father's age. A temporary bachelor, Corwin was one 
 of the quickest and wittiest men in Washington, and his 
 special personality drew dozens to his hearth. In this semi- 
 Bohemian world of so many men without women — men 
 who gambled, drank their whisky straight, and Uttered their 
 rooms with cigar ashes, a lovely and intelligent woman like 
 Anne added the missing touch of femininity and gracious 
 formality that cleared the air of dust and smoke. Political 
 debates ranged behind such closed doors as these, with 
 often a frankness and an honesty that illuminated the facets 
 of many issues, facets never disclosed in the halls or on the 
 floors of Congress. 
 
 Slowly but surely she was grasping from these Ohioans 
 and others from "up Nawth" a more national point of view, 
 including the North. It all tended to broaden the point of 
 view of this Southern belle: she was seeing things with a 
 new scope. 
 
 And some of what she saw frightened her. Even in 1845, 
 the grim outlines of the catastrophe to come were apparent 
 to such men as Henry Clay. Often a guest at his soirees, his 
 Whig gatherings in his suite at the National Hotel, Anne 
 began to share his deep concern over the annexation of 
 Texas. It was to be admitted to the Union as a slave state — 
 but how long could the Union endure with such friction be- 
 tween its individual parts as the recent controversies had 
 revealed? The free states were drawing up in firm opposition 
 to the institution of slavery; and public opinion, which had 
 long been somewhat formless, was beginning to take shape, 
 perhaps alarming shapes. All this could, as Anne was be- 
 
 71 
 
ginning to see, lead to conflicts far more serious than war 
 with then feeble Mexico over the borders of Texas. 
 
 The Whigs were a gregarious, stimulating crowd, but 
 Anne did not spend all her time in their circles. As a 
 protege of R. J. Walker, now Secretary of the Treasury, it 
 was part of her business to associate also with Democrats 
 and thus find out what both sides were thinking. 
 
 James Buchanan was often her escort to these Democratic 
 parties and balls; Anne accepted him only as a sort of con- 
 venience. To her, even though he was then Secretary of 
 State and now talked about as a possible future President, 
 he was the epitome of the two-faced man who sold his soul 
 to the Devil at the very gates of the church. Anne could 
 place little or no trust in a statesman who had sold out 
 the country for his own personal gain. He had been proved, 
 as much as any individual could be proved, responsible 
 for the shocking election frauds that had led to Henry 
 Clay's defeat in the Presidential election. 
 
 Still, Mr. Buchanan clung to her like a leech. Further, 
 to add to her dismay, she discovered that all top Washing- 
 ton circles were now saying that she was about to marry 
 him! Buchanan was wealthy and successful, and, unlike 
 most of the other politicos Anne had met, was really a 
 bachelor. 
 
 Many women were after him; he was an excellent catch. 
 And he was so gallant, so attentive that wily Anne, with a 
 woman's intuition, sensed that just now she must watch her- 
 self. Mr. Buchanan was useful to her in a business way, in 
 political ways. And she must, in any way possible, avoid 
 that final showdown, that moment when he might pro- 
 pose, and when she would have to say "No!" 
 
 She would gladly sell her services as a publicist, as a 
 skillful lawyer — even though she had not technically quali- 
 fied and as a woman in those days could not possibly be 
 72 
 
admitted to the bar — but she was just a social lobbyist. 
 Her affections were not for sale or lease. 
 
 Meanwhile, among the Democrats, she was beginning to 
 appreciate the brilliant thrusts and the indomitable per- 
 sonality of Stephen A. Douglas, the "Little Giant" from 
 Illinois. Slightly over five feet in height, he had the massive 
 head and shoulders of a much larger man; he had the drive 
 that was already making him one of the real leaders of the 
 Democratic Party. Douglas had a magnificent voice and a 
 personality that could charm — or crush. 
 
 Another male personality whom Anne found interesting 
 was one Jefferson Davis, who was to be called "ambitious 
 as Lucifer, and cold as a lizard." He was a complicated and 
 difficult man with a devious mind and at the time working, 
 as was Anne herself, for the interests of R. J. Walker. 
 
 Walker had brought Jeff Davis into Washington from his 
 native Mississippi and had started him on his political 
 career as Congressman — and as a Walker tool. At only 
 thirty-seven, Davis was a man with an icy perfection of 
 manner and with a driving desire to forward his own 
 interests. 
 
 He had a young wife about half his age, Varina. Daugh- 
 ter of a Natchez planter, Varina had readily assumed the 
 graces of a Southern belle. But like her husband she still 
 had a certain awe of the older aristocracy of Tidewater 
 country, as typified by Anne. Anne was the real "quality" 
 toward which newer planters or landholders out in the 
 farther West and Southwest aspired desperately; and they 
 recognized that she knew — even if she did not say — the 
 difference. 
 
 Jefferson Davis was then among the war-mongers in 
 Washington who were rattling the sabers. They were urg- 
 ing war against Mexico, our southern neighbor, already 
 torn with its own strife. It was said that privately Jeff Davis 
 
 73 
 
admitted the war with Mexico could lead to many things, 
 perhaps even to the conquest of other Latin lands, to the 
 unlimited extension of slavery, to possibly almost fabulous 
 extensions farther down the pike — to exploitation and em- 
 pire. Anne trembled; she shook within her heart at the 
 thought of a nation, or even a world, controlled or even 
 swayed by the twisted personal ambitions of a man such 
 as Jefferson Davis. 
 
 Henry Clay had wisely advised against this essentially 
 pointless, needless war. Anne, being close to him, knew 
 something of his inner sadness as he had to watch his be- 
 loved son go off to the fight. There were now premonitions 
 of disaster to come, seen perhaps as clearly by Anne as by 
 the great Henry Clay himself. It was a time of trouble, 
 increasing trouble. Clay's son was killed in combat, and 
 the aftermaths of this small war were to bring the whole 
 young, emerging nation close to tragedy. 
 
 74 
 
n 
 
 Rumbles of Thunder 
 
 Since her impetuous descent upon Washington 
 about a year before, Anne had been a frequent 
 guest at the home of venerated General Win- 
 field Scott. He was still Army Chief of Staff 
 and by far the most able and experienced mili- 
 tary man in the nation. Now a tangle of political jealousies 
 held him in the capital city, preventing him from taking 
 actual command in the field. He was pacing the floor with 
 frustration, spluttering at the ineptness of General Zachary 
 Taylor, who was, at least from Scott's point of view, doing 
 everything absolutely wrong. 
 
 Winfield Scott was a past master of the arts of war. His 
 published works were supposed to be required reading for 
 young officers, yet all too often they were lightly perused 
 and cast aside. One of Scott's few really serious listeners 
 now was Anne; he took pains to explain to her how and 
 why Taylor's invasion of Mexico by way of Monterey was 
 utter foolishness. 
 
 "It doesn't strike straight at the target, at the heart of 
 the country! It all leads nowhere." And then he pointed 
 to the map upon his wall and traced with a firm finger the 
 outlines of the formidable barriers of mountain ranges that 
 
 75 
 
divided the Monterey area from Mexico City. "Remember 
 this, my girl, it is usually pure geography that can win a 
 war or lose it. Terrain, and its extensions." 
 
 Geography, Anne knew, was there forever: firm and 
 solid as the granite of the ages, or sometimes seemingly 
 as circuitous as the rivers of her childhood. It depended 
 upon where one was sitting — from what vantage point one 
 saw or tried to see. 
 
 Always eager for knowledge, Anne could, with this ex- 
 perienced, this excellent teacher, begin to understand some 
 of the strategies of war. She was then absorbing not at all 
 out of small feminine curiosity, but out of a deep eagerness 
 to defend this grand man, this man of stature, this de- 
 voted servant — one with rank, one with brilliant ideas and 
 insight, but one who was being left somehow outside. 
 
 Anne was now being more and more herself, able to 
 see the deeper patterns, the things behind the things, and 
 she was beginning to form new mental patterns for herself. 
 
 Many men of position in politics scoffed at Scott, some 
 of them urged by then President Polk. They called Winfield 
 Scott "Old Fuss and Feathers" because of his insistence 
 on military formality. All this made Anne furious. Scott 
 wasn't old; he was a vigorous sixty. If he seemed fussy, it 
 was only because he was playing by the rules, and because 
 some others were stupid or calculating and wanted to make 
 up some new rules of their own. 
 
 And perhaps there was another angle here. President 
 Polk very much did not want Winfield Scott to emerge as 
 the hero of the war. It might swing the balance, or several 
 balances. Having been twice a doughty candidate for the 
 Whig nomination for the highest office, Scott could cer- 
 tainly win it this time, as a victorious general, and sweep 
 the Democrats out of Washington. 
 
 Now all six-feet-four and all 300 pounds of Winfield 
 76 
 
Scott were bubbling and fuming and about to explode. 
 Finally the floundering, the absolute ineffectiveness of 
 General Taylor became so popularly obvious that the 
 President yielded and put the reins back in the hands of 
 a man who could drive. 
 
 Scott took the field with the sureness of an expert, an 
 old pro, and struck Mexico tactically at the port of Vera 
 Cruz. He captured the supposedly impregnable fortress, 
 the gateway to the inner heart, and was soon on the march 
 to Mexico City. Following his strategic movements on the 
 map, Anne was impressed with their logic, their sense, and 
 their effectiveness. They worked out as well in action, these 
 military theories, as they had come up on paper. The 
 battles were so quick and decisive that in one of them 
 Generalissimo Santa Ana lost his wooden leg in precipitate 
 flight! Within a few months' time, Winfield Scott and his 
 forces had claimed and won the victory. 
 
 Caught in the turmoil of the period that followed this 
 small and senseless war, Anne struggled to keep her own 
 ideals bright. They had indeed suffered with the political 
 defeat of Henry Clay in the last Presidential race. And now 
 General Zachary Taylor was being called the true, re- 
 sounding hero of the Mexican war. His minuscule, periph- 
 eral victory at Buena Vista was by some so-called authori- 
 ties being ranked high above the vital capture of Mexico 
 City and Chapultepec, and Taylor was seemingly the man 
 of the hour! To Anne, all this was so blind, so unfair and 
 unjust. Politicians would try to have the public believe that 
 black was white; they would twist the truth into odd forms 
 just to serve their own devices of the moment. Anne was 
 a woman fierce and determined in her devotions: her tem- 
 per was not a cool one. Things added up or else they 
 didn't; two and two had to make four! 
 
 And at the moment Jeff Davis was riding high on the 
 
 77 
 
crest with Zachary Taylor, his former father-in-law. Davis 
 as a young West Point graduate had married Sarah Taylor, 
 who had fallen victim to malaria and died within a few 
 months. Davis was making the very most of the somewhat 
 tenuous relationship he had with Zack Taylor — and 
 proudly displaying the scars of the minor wounds he had 
 received in the engagement; he was also declaring, along 
 with Buchanan, that "destiny beckons us to hold and to 
 civilize Mexico!" 
 
 Financially, Anne was now doing better than ever be- 
 fore since she had gone off on her own. But she was still 
 uneasy. Material security did not reassure her, not in the 
 face of the serious questions that the Mexican war had 
 raised. Organized opposition to the extension of slavery 
 into new lands flamed afresh. 
 
 When the United States agreed to pay the tottering 
 Mexican government fifteen million dollars for the fair 
 province of California and the far Western territory then 
 called New Mexico, but which even included parts of the 
 later states of Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, and 
 Wyoming, Jeff Davis and other extremists deplored the 
 transaction. Why pay a penny for these hundreds of thou- 
 sands of acres when they could have been grabbed, along 
 with Mexico itself? And why stop there? What was to 
 keep slaveholders from extending their domains clear down 
 into Central America? 
 
 Davis was a man who would be king, and he was not 
 alone in his thinking. Southerners generally were becom- 
 ing alarmed at the attitude of the North. Men up there 
 were saying in press and pulpit that the institution of 
 slavery should not be allowed to spread further, not even 
 within the boundaries of our own country. Perhaps the 
 time had come, some radical Southerners felt, for the South 
 
 78 
 
to leave the Union altogether and to make its own decisions. 
 
 Rumbles of thunder resounded with frightening force 
 in Washington, and re-echoed through the land. Horrified 
 by the violent secessionist ideas expressed so volubly by 
 Jefferson Davis and others of his ilk, Anne still felt con- 
 vinced that this was not just bravado. Certain documents 
 were coming her way, to which she had access through her 
 work for the Southern railroads, which showed all too 
 clearly that the groundwork for secession was being laid, 
 even to the actual timing of it, and as to which state would 
 be the first to make the break. To men like Henry Clay 
 and Daniel Webster, and to Anne herself, this was the 
 work of traitors. 
 
 The Union must be saved, whatever the cost to the am- 
 bitions of individual men, in spite of hurt sectional pride 
 and stubbornness that masqueraded as patriotism. In the 
 name of common sense, both sides must yield! Clay was 
 in his seventies now, his spirit broken by the loss of his 
 beloved son, his ambitions to be President gone. The years 
 had taken their toll of his strength, but had left unimpaired 
 his qualities of statesmanship. He was masterly at compro- 
 mise, and now for the last time he would bring his incom- 
 parable art into play to try to strike the chord of unity. 
 "One nation, indivisible," the whole gaining strength from 
 its separate parts, which standing alone would be weak. 
 
 The situation was crucial and increasingly delicate, the 
 issues so involved that any one of them could blow up at 
 the slightest jar and burst the nation into bits. Anne, some- 
 times taking her preferred place in the visitors' gallery of 
 the Senate, felt the electricity of tension and suspense. 
 John C. Calhoun was in a wheel chair. Henry Clay was so 
 exhausted with preparation of argument that she had seen 
 a friend all but carry him up the steep Capitol steps. The 
 
 79 
 
fire of Daniel Webster, too, was soon to be extinguished, 
 as the giants of the Senate came to grips and engaged in 
 what was to be their final battle. 
 
 Either the aristocratic, chauvinistic South must continue 
 to dominate and have its will prevail, as it had for most of 
 the seventy-five years of the nation's history, or it would 
 secede. This was Calhoun's grim but sincere conviction; 
 his was a profound dedication to the doctrine of States' 
 rights. Too weak sometimes to read his own words as the 
 days passed, Calhoun sat swathed in flannels there in the 
 Senate, his great deep eyes flashing as a friend read from 
 manuscript the speeches of this powerful and distinguished 
 champion of nullification and the institution of Negro 
 slavery. Tossing the gray mane of his hair, Calhoun was 
 taunting the North, demanding the impossible; he was 
 doing his utmost to provoke a break. With the canny in- 
 stincts of a veteran politician, he realized that this was the 
 time, if ever, for the South to strike out. It was still strong 
 by comparison with the North, but the years were coming 
 when it might be overwhelmed. 
 
 More than once during these debates, Anna Ella Carroll 
 stormed out of the visitors' gallery, her temper to be calmed 
 only by such feminine distractions as getting her hair done, 
 planning a ravishing new sapphire-blue silk dress with a 
 sweeping train for her next theater date with a new beau, 
 and a determination to be frivolous for an entire evening 
 without a word about politics. 
 
 But she could not stay long away from the Senate, not at 
 this time. Too much was bubbling; too much was impend- 
 ing. By the time Henry Clay finally took the floor, feelings 
 were so impassioned among the Senators and for that mat- 
 ter throughout the country at large, that chances for civil 
 war were evident and increasing. No one, not even the great 
 Mr. Clay, could bridge the gap with compromise. Every 
 
 80 
 
point he proposed provoked further animosity, further 
 schism. California should be admitted to the Union as a 
 "free" state. "Never!" cried the Southern bloc. The South 
 insisted on a drastic law for the return of fugitive slaves. 
 "Not while we can defeat it!" Northern gorge had risen. 
 
 Anne and the others in the Senate gallery were watching 
 one of the greatest dramas of history, or at least in the his- 
 tory of the United States. The scenery of subterfuge and 
 concealment had all been shoved aside, and the chief actors 
 were performing with the bare bones of their beliefs ex- 
 posed. Like many anxious newspaper readers North and 
 South, the audience had a sense of personal participation; 
 what was being determined here might be their own future, 
 their own individual destiny. 
 
 Henry Clay, a Kentuckian and a slaveholder, was said to 
 be making concessions to the North, and thus making him- 
 self a traitor to his own section. Answering the bitter gibes, 
 Clay's voice rang out with his devotion to the nation, which 
 was equally as strong as Daniel Webster's. Clay said, "I 
 have heard something said about allegiance to the South. 
 I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I 
 owe any allegiance!" 
 
 His oration, moving and inspiring almost beyond mortal 
 ken, lasted for two days. It was almost as though his aged 
 strength was being sustained by some miraculous, higher 
 power. When at last he finished, a great hush fell over the 
 crowd gathered within and without the chamber. And then 
 suddenly they stormed him, men and women alike hysteri- 
 cal with adulation. Anne had never so loved old Henry 
 Clay, nor had she been so completely swept into the cause 
 for which he was devoting the last full measure of his life. 
 
 It was only a brief interlude before Clay's plea for union 
 and for compromise was torn to bits by angry men. And 
 as the days and weeks of that bitter spring passed into the 
 
 81 
 
summer of 1850, minor figures came and went, trying to 
 get into the act, as they say in show business. Journalists 
 scribbled their pencils to the nubs, and the ears and minds 
 of the public were choked with verbiage, mostly sound and 
 fury signifying nothing. Of all or most of this, Anne was an 
 interested, a fascinated, and an increasingly devoted and 
 thoughtful observer. 
 
 In the midst of the rising tumult, Daniel Webster sat 
 grimly silent, listening to the contestants, weighing his 
 doubts. When he at last arose to give what perhaps was his 
 greatest or at least most extraordinary oration, it was with 
 the air of a man fully aware that his weight could deter- 
 mine the outcome. Speaking with a mighty eloquence, he 
 also, like Clay, disclaimed all sectionalism. "I wish to speak 
 not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but 
 as an American. Hear me for my cause!" 
 
 Any other course but compromise was ruin for the na- 
 tion, he said. And then with magnificent courage he went 
 on to disappoint the fervent Northern abolitionists by not 
 expressly excluding slavery from the new Western terri- 
 tories and by supporting in part the South's demands for a 
 forcible Fugitive Slave law. 
 
 After a checkered lifetime, marked with roaring ambi- 
 tion and self-seeking plans, the golden-voiced Mr. Webster 
 destroyed himself politically with this speech, but in the 
 minds of many at last reached noble stature. 
 
 With the final passing of the Great Compromise of 1850, 
 the ominous rumbles of thunder receded to mutterings. 
 By heroic and costly personal sacrifice, Henry Clay and 
 Daniel Webster had averted the dread day of decision, or 
 so it seemed. 
 
 82 
 
n 
 
 Lightning Forks 
 the Sky 
 
 Tensions relaxed, and again the capital city of 
 Washington returned to its social merry-go- 
 round. With highborn Southern women keep- 
 ing a firm hold on the reins, society there was 
 frequently termed the main business of life. 
 Upstarts and newcomers found it practically impossible to 
 work their way into the gilded circles where Anne had been 
 received as part of her birthright and where she was now 
 becoming famous as a hostess. 
 
 It was no secret that the more lavish of the Washington 
 affairs were given to promote political and commercial in- 
 terests and paid for accordingly behind the potted palms. 
 Most of Anne's parties were no exception to this rule, and 
 yet she still had a definitive edge. Hers was a unique com- 
 bination of beauty with brains, of Southern aristocrat with 
 efficient businesswoman. Thus, her major parties gave a 
 social cachet to those invited, and her guest list was a 
 roster of who-was-who at the moment in Washington. 
 
 Satin trains swept up the steps of exclusive hotels, enter- 
 ing from polished broughams. Gentlemen praised the su- 
 perb cuisine and the choice of wines. Diamonds glittered 
 on bosoms that were none of them more curvaceous than 
 
 83 
 
Anne's, as, making graceful introductions and smoothing 
 the way for important contacts, she made her parties bubble 
 like the glasses of champagne which flowed so freely. 
 
 It was inevitable that many women were jealous of her 
 and her freedoms. Among them were her several sisters. 
 Reading the society columns in the quiet circumspection of 
 their Tidewater homes, they preferred to forget that it was 
 only Anne, among all the Carroll girls, who had dared to 
 brave the outside world and try to do something to save the 
 failing family fortunes: they criticized her endlessly. She 
 was, in their eyes, much too bold, much too much in the 
 public eye, too adventurous in her romances, real or im- 
 agined by them. 
 
 Women seeking grounds for criticism found it readily. 
 Among these was Mary Todd Lincoln, who though not 
 personally acquainted with Anne, resented the snubs of 
 the entire Washington social system which had fallen into 
 such rigid forms of caste. A former Kentucky belle of status, 
 Mrs. Lincoln had hoped to promote herself and her husband 
 socially in Washington but had found herself ignored. 
 Moping in a dreary boardinghouse, she brooded and fumed. 
 They couldn't do this to her! Though the system was noth- 
 ing of Anne's devising, she would someday be made to 
 suffer for it. 
 
 Incandescent as the sought-after Miss Carroll might ap- 
 pear in public, she had sometimes a wistfulness in private. 
 It was a quality that a fashionable portrait painter for whom 
 Anne sat had the perception to catch. Her coloring was 
 splendid on canvas, hair deepening now to an auburn that 
 mingled with Titian red and burnt sienna and the umber of 
 a painter's palette to frame an ivory-white complexion. The 
 blue eyes were bright with spirit and intelligence; shoulders 
 and bosom revealed "a fine figure of a woman." It was only 
 the artist's rendering of the mouth that revealed the other 
 84 
 
side of Anne — appealing, tender, a fervent pursuer of 
 dreams. 
 
 Often, wearied by the strenuous times in Washington, 
 she would return to the peaceful, lazy rivers of her child- 
 hood and the security her father's presence always gave. 
 Juliana was no longer there except in memories close and 
 dear. Surrounded by law books that managed to smell of 
 wisdom and old leather, Anne for a while forgot the turbu- 
 lence of the times in which she was living so vividly and 
 the ominous storm warnings of the conflict to come. She 
 threw herself down upon the sweet-scented grass of summer 
 and looked at the happy sailing clouds overhead. 
 
 Tidewater country was always the same; it had an all- 
 pervading and ageless charm to which one could easily 
 succumb — but she could not completely forget the acrid 
 debates in Congress on the Compromise of 1850 and the 
 strident fierceness between South and North. It could no 
 longer be tempered by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster. 
 They had dared to transcend party politics, no matter what 
 the personal cost, but lesser men had succeeded them. 
 
 Forces beyond the control of any individual were cease- 
 lessly at work to destroy the union of the states. The times 
 were moving inexorably from the agrarian civilization of 
 the eighteenth century, which the South still embodied, into 
 the modern world. Could the transition be made without 
 bloodshed? 
 
 Rash heads were prevailing and rash words being spoken, 
 making slavery the excuse that far transcended any other 
 issue. The North was churning with the wheels of industrial 
 progress, run by steam and energy and new ideas. The West 
 was rising with the yeast of a new free America, where 
 any man might swing an ax and clear a farm, read law at 
 night, debate with his neighbors, and by his own efforts 
 rise to prominence. The country was static only in the 
 
 85 
 
South which clung to its traditional ways of life with a 
 growing desperation, the desperation of bewilderment and 
 fear. A proud section would not willingly become a poor 
 relation outvoted by all the new free states — Wisconsin, 
 Iowa, California and others crowding — and furthermore 
 be called a sinner! 
 
 The owning of slaves, black slaves, had become an essen- 
 tial way of life in Dixie. In the North, the slaves were 
 white and were called factory help but subjected to toil as 
 grinding as any in the cotton fields. But the economic 
 course of the nation was against black slavery; too many 
 hands for too little work. It would disappear of its own 
 weight, thoughtful men were saying and writing, given 
 time. . . . 
 
 Unfortunately, many reformers and abolitionists were 
 impatient at the slow course of social evolution. They saw 
 in slavery an evil that should be destroyed immediately, as 
 one might scourge a visible devil with a tail and cloven 
 hoofs. Both sides quoted from the Bible and from the Con- 
 stitution; press and pulpit hurled denunciation, and com- 
 mon men took sides. 
 
 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its 
 slanted picture of Simon Legree lashing Uncle Tom, with 
 Eliza crossing the river and leaping from one cake of ice 
 to another with her baby in her arms just ahead of the 
 bloodhounds, did nothing to smooth things over. It was, 
 if ever, a time that called for sanity and sense; for the cool 
 quiet voice of reason. Raised still by some men, it was 
 a voice seldom heard above the thunder of the approaching 
 storm. . . . 
 
 Going about her business in the North and the middle 
 South, Anne smelled the ozone of lightning that streaked 
 the sky above a nation that might not long endure. Daugh- 
 ter of a border state, she could see both points of view, as 
 
 86 
 
had her mentor, Henry Clay. Whatever the years ahead 
 might hold for the nation, she had her personal and ever- 
 present involvement with the slavery problem. She was 
 mortgaging her future to solve the immediate segment of 
 it that came within her own control. 
 
 Through the earlier arrangement with her father, she 
 had already purchased twenty black girls who had re- 
 mained on his plantation, eating him out of house and 
 home. Some of the girls were mothers now; black boys were 
 growing into stalwart men, and — as always — the slave 
 traders hovered like vultures. Under the new and rigorous 
 Fugitive Slave Law, none could be permitted to "escape" 
 into the North without the severest of penalties levied 
 against the frail and aging Thomas Carroll. 
 
 Anne had planned to free the girls she owned, but now 
 there was no help for it. She must use their market value 
 as collateral to back the notes she was signing to protect 
 the other young folk from being snatched as prizes to cover 
 the debts her father had incurred, and was always incurring, 
 to maintain them. The older slaves, past the age of useful- 
 ness in the fields, were not in danger. 
 
 Several wealthy abolitionists, among them the noted and 
 always generous Gerrit Smith, came to her aid with money, 
 but a shameful proportion found it convenient merely to 
 wish her well and Godspeed. As Anne went about her quest 
 in Washington and New York, pocketing her pride to plead 
 for other human beings, her thoughts must have been bitter 
 ones. How easy it was for Northern orators to prate of 
 freedom in the abstract where it would cost them nothing! 
 When it came down to the particular, how tight they tied 
 their purse strings! 
 
 Through the years, Thomas Carroll had had various 
 political appointments, but they had been of short dura- 
 tion. Her brothers Tom and Harry had given help when 
 
 87 
 
they could; but, like the sisters, they were involved with 
 their own lives and left it to Anne to bear the brunt of their 
 common human inheritance. 
 
 Anne was clever and strong. She would manage; she 
 always had. She moved in a glamorous world, knew every- 
 body of influence, and made money easily, or so it seemed 
 to them. Tom was now a country doctor, beloved by his 
 patients, but more often than not paid off by them only in 
 hams and sides of beef. Harry was in and out of one busi- 
 ness after the other, never successfully. Her sisters, mostly 
 married now, were restricted by their husbands and by the 
 conventions then placed on gentlewomen. They were also 
 burning with sibling jealousies at the obvious preference 
 Thomas Carroll had for his first-born; and, while Anne had 
 overthrown the taboos against a lady's making money, her 
 sisters were not of her mettle. 
 
 A woman should be able to stand on her own two feet 
 if need be, Anne had often said, looking down at the dainty 
 slippers that encased two of her most admired beauty points. 
 Seeing her at a party, vibrant and gay, with the erect car- 
 riage and the air which always distinguished her, few could 
 suspect the burden that lay across her fashionable shoulders 
 with such deceptive lightness. 
 
 As though fate were shifting the scene from the problems 
 in and around Washington which appeared to be insoluble, 
 the discovery of gold in California had precipitated a 
 fevered rush to the West. A new hope and stir were abroad 
 in the land. Wheels of prairie schooners rolled across the 
 Great Plains, despite the threat of hostile Indians, high 
 mountain passes, and trails that often led to death. Sailing 
 vessels headed into the winds for the long and perilous jour- 
 ney around the Horn and up the thousands of stormy Pa- 
 cific miles that led to California and to the mother lodes 
 of gold. 
 
 88 
 
Enterprising men were hurrying plans for a shorter route 
 by rail or canal through Nicaragua. Now Anne was work- 
 ing for Cornelius K. Garrison, the gentlemanly but astute 
 entrepreneur, in his efforts to best a formidable rival in the 
 person of another Cornelius, the ruthless Vanderbilt. Garri- 
 son had been in the steamboat business on the Mississippi 
 and he was a friend of Anne's uncle in St. Louis, but he 
 had come East to speed his operations and to enlist her 
 particular skills. By this time Anne — while of course not 
 permitted to practice — was an extremely competent and 
 experienced railroad attorney. 
 
 It was the lure of gold, too, that was giving impetus to 
 the hue and cry for a railway which would span the entire 
 North American continent from Atlantic to Pacific. As 
 forces rallied to fight for government support and public 
 support of a northern or a southern route, Anne's special 
 services and know-how were at a premium. 
 
 Professionally, she had grown up with the east coast 
 railroads. Now her expertise in the legal technicalities and 
 in finding a way through the tangled web of personalities 
 and politics that could impede or implement action 
 brought her fees large even for a man, and so extraordinary 
 as to be unheard-of for a mere woman. 
 
 Gravitating between New York, Washington, and Balti- 
 more, and between secret conclaves and her littered writing 
 table, Anne was putting her various pamphlets and miscella- 
 neous writings into the form of a book that would be some- 
 thing more than an impressive publicity piece to plead the 
 railroads' cause. Star of the West was all of that, of course, 
 but she managed to give it the wider scope of her own 
 national vision. She pointed out that railroads, extending 
 their web of networks, were actually iron bonds holding 
 the Union together — or could be. Communication between 
 the divergent, widely separated parts of an enormous new 
 
 89 
 
country; quick transportation of people, freight, foodstuffs 
 and, if need be, of munitions, too, were vital to the whole- 
 ness of the nation. 
 
 As with the book she had published in the previous year 
 (1856) The Great American Battle, Anne posed challeng- 
 ing questions. The book had been a fearless and forthright 
 attack upon the exploitation by unscrupulous politicians of 
 the immigrant vote, as an attempt to distort the American 
 dream of democracy. Anne saw great injustice in using 
 these newcomers, many of whom spoke no English and 
 who knew nothing about the issues involved, until at least 
 they had been somewhat assimilated into the melting pot. 
 The book had sold thousands of copies and had made her 
 name known far outside Washington and her usual circles 
 of influence. She never had any pretensions to great literary 
 genius, but she wrote with a force and flamboyance that 
 attracted and interested widely divergent groups. Anne was 
 a publicist, and she had a knack of being timely, with her 
 slender fingers on the national pulse. 
 
 Publicly she enjoyed the trust of many influential men, 
 but her private life was her own affair. All of the letters and 
 notes that came to her were certainly not concerned solely 
 with business. Addressed to "My dear Miss Anne," some 
 glowed with an old-fashioned ardor which their discreet 
 phrasing could not entirely hide, and many of them bore a 
 foreign postmark. 
 
 Millard Fillmore, sojourning in Italy, was turning to her 
 as a confidante. She had always been drawn to Fillmore 
 and had come to know him well during the stormy days 
 of debate that had led to the Compromise of 1850. As 
 Vice-president under Zachary Taylor, he had been the 
 presiding officer of the Senate until the summer of that 
 crucial year. With Taylor's death in July, Fillmore had 
 become President and had lent the full force of his office 
 
 90 
 
to passage of the bill that had saved the Union, for a time, 
 anyway. 
 
 Unlike Buchanan, he was a man she deeply respected and 
 admired. While there were some who might call him a 
 mere politician, she knew well that Fillmore had the cour- 
 age of conviction. He was not brilliant, like Clay and Web- 
 ster, but he stood steadfast where lesser men would have 
 quailed and capitulated. He was self-made — no inherited 
 privileges his — -and he was wealthy. With her deep sensi- 
 tivity to emotional as well as to political undercurrents, 
 Anne knew that Fillmore had marriage on his mind. But 
 should she encourage him? The question was a hard one 
 to decide. From every rational point of view, Fillmore 
 would make an excellent choice for a husband. He could 
 give her comfort, companionship, and security. He was 
 still active in politics, and she could share in his ambitions. 
 With Fillmore she would not be going it alone and need 
 not tremble over the menacing lightning flashes and the 
 rumble of thunder — "the thunder on the left" as the ancient 
 Romans called it, which presaged great and terrible events. 
 
 Yet if she married him, she would no longer be Anna 
 Ella Carroll; she would just be Mrs. Millard Fillmore. It is 
 possible that her hesitation came from a subconscious re- 
 luctance to change her status from that of a free agent to 
 that of a satellite; that she remembered that her mother 
 Juliana had died prematurely from too much childbearing, 
 and that her sisters after marriage had become practically 
 nonentities. 
 
 And Anne was a free soul, a woman completely feminine, 
 yet with a man's mind in one sense. She thought for herself. 
 
 With Fillmore's return to America, she began to promote 
 him most actively as Presidential candidate for the new 
 American Party formed largely of the respectable elements 
 of the expiring Whig party, but embarrassed by a radical 
 
 91 
 
fringe of irresponsible "Know-Nothings," who were riding 
 on the Whig coattails. It was a mix-up of a party, reflecting 
 the ferment of the times, and Anne soon became a target 
 for the more vicious of the partisans. She was interested in 
 Mr. Fillmore, rumor had it, not because he was a man who 
 could again help to preserve the Union but as a prospective 
 husband; she was, they said, promoting herself for the posi- 
 tion of First Lady. 
 
 Actually Anne was doing all that lay within her feminine 
 power to try to prevent the country's choice of one who 
 could only be a weak President — James Buchanan. A 
 figurehead such as he was could not possibly carry the ship 
 of state through the storms that lay ahead. With Buchanan's 
 election, she must have laughed wryly at those who had 
 been sneering and deriding her efforts. She could well have 
 been Buchanan's lady. Did no one remember earlier tales 
 that had romantically linked their names? Did no one, not 
 even her family, know what kind of person she really was? 
 
 Anne could never, never settle for a marriage of con- 
 venience, not even with a man she sincerely admired, as 
 she did Millard Fillmore. He did not excite her; he did not 
 overwhelm. And she was not a woman who could let her 
 head rule her innermost heart. 
 
 92 
 
i 
 
 The Storm Breaks 
 on Lincoln 
 
 It was enough to make Anne's blood boil — 
 idealism and patriotism marred and smeared 
 with an ugly tarbrush! The "Know-Nothings, " 
 jubilant over their alliance with the new Amer- 
 ican Party, were using it as a cover up for secret 
 machinations. They were groups of men who, when ques- 
 tioned about violent acts against immigrants, retreated be- 
 hind a cloak of silence. They "knew nothing." They ter- 
 rorized elections in such centers as Baltimore by organizing 
 themselves into clubs that bore such unattractive names as 
 "Plug-Uglies," "Rip-Raps" and "Blood-Tubs"! The great 
 poet and journalist, Edgar Allan Poe, in the fading incan- 
 descence of his genius and his despair, had been one of their 
 earliest victims. Even his premature death has been blamed 
 upon a senseless beating they gave him. At any rate, during 
 this period decent citizens remained indoors at night, fear- 
 ful of the gangs of toughs that roamed the streets. In fact, 
 Baltimore was earning the unenviable title of "Mob-town"! 
 Yet the foreign vote was no longer a major issue, as 
 Anne herself was quick to realize. Events were moving so 
 swiftly, precipitated by civil war in Kansas, that another 
 new political party known as "the Republicans" could well 
 
 93 
 
be the tinder that would ignite the entire country, like the 
 blast of a prairie fire. The Republican Party had started in 
 a little white schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin, and it was 
 firmly opposed to the further extension of slavery. 
 
 Anne, with her intimate connections through the South, 
 was only too sharply aware how little provocation its hot- 
 headed leaders needed to make their long-planned and final 
 break with the Union. She happened to know that a seces- 
 sion party had been formally organized at Jackson, Missis- 
 sippi, as early as 1849, and that Jeff Davis and his col- 
 leagues had already sketched a constitution for a Southern 
 Confederacy, of which Davis, of course, would be president. 
 
 Anne's work with R. J. Walker had made available to 
 her much supposedly secret correspondence, such as that 
 which passed in 1850 between Governor Seabrook of South 
 Carolina and Governor Quitman of Mississippi: 
 
 Let me, however, reiterate the assurance that South Carolina is 
 prepared to second Mississippi or any other State in any and 
 every effort to arrest the career of a corrupt and despotic major- 
 ity. She is ready and anxious for an immediate separation from 
 a Union whose aim is the prostration of our political energies. 
 May I hope that Mississippi will begin the patriotic work and 
 allow the Palmetto banner a place in the ranks. 
 
 Later, in her historic Reply to Breckinridge, she was to 
 make public many such letters that had aroused her atten- 
 tion. 
 
 The Great Compromise had been, at best, a patch-up 
 bandage over wounds that continued to fester. Was there 
 a man alive who now could forget sectional interests and 
 emerge with a cure? Plenty of men were eager to try. And 
 Anne, recovering from her deep disappointment over Fill- 
 more's defeat, was well acquainted with the more promi- 
 nent ones. 
 
 94 
 
Stephen A. Douglas was almost certain of the next Demo- 
 cratic nomination. And Whig factions combining with Free- 
 soil Republicans were talking about running William H. 
 Seward of New York. Anne still had hopes for her old 
 friend John Minor Botts and the American Party, but these 
 were fading. 
 
 The national brew was certainly in a stew! Anne, revert- 
 ing to one of the Tidewater expressions she liked to use, 
 said that everyone was ready to put in the potatoes and 
 onions but none had fetched the rabbit! 
 
 As the limelight played on Douglas and Seward, both 
 brilliant national figures of some years' standing, few were 
 watching the gawky, uncouth, relatively obscure Spring- 
 field lawyer, Abraham Lincoln. Anne herself had known 
 Lincoln casually when they were both neophyte Whigs in 
 the orbit of eager young workers in Washington that had 
 encircled Henry Clay. Lincoln had made no great splash 
 here, or as a Congressman. 
 
 But now, as Anne began to hear his name mentioned 
 again, she recalled that in some ways he resembled Henry 
 Clay. They were both men whose faces, ugly in repose, 
 came alive when they spoke, their features luminous. And 
 each had, in his utterances, the pith and force of the lan- 
 guage of the frontier. 
 
 Sitting silent, Lincoln had been grotesque, as Anne re- 
 membered him. Clothes had hung upon his long, gaunt 
 frame as upon a scarecrow; teacups slipped from his knees, 
 and social persiflage embarrassed him. He was a curious 
 man; one almost might say an oddity. He had not worn a 
 coonskin cap, but Anne could easily imagine him in one! 
 
 Yet times had changed. The situation called for strange 
 deeds, possibly only to be performed by strange and un- 
 orthodox men. Anne knew little of the prairies and the 
 dust of distant Illinois, and yet a voice was ringing from 
 
 95 
 
them, this summer of 1858, striking a note of truth. Lin- 
 coln, Republican candidate for Senator, and Douglas, the 
 Democratic nominee, were stomping the state in a series 
 of public debates. Everywhere enormous crowds were gath- 
 ering to hear them and, encircling the various towns with 
 their campfires, giving the whole the color of some huge 
 carnival or county fair. The strongest man who swung the 
 mallet and rang the bell at the top of the pole was to win 
 the box of cigars. That was the way it was; that was the 
 way they did things out West. Or did all this have far 
 greater significance? 
 
 Swinging in a hammock at Castle Haven, the Tidewater 
 home her father now shared with brother Tom and where 
 she was always welcomed with open arms, Anne wondered. 
 Trying to relax from the turmoil of Washington, she was 
 electrified instead. The press was covering the Lincoln- 
 Douglas debates with legions of reporters, and in the Tide- 
 water, as elsewhere throughout the country, there was talk 
 of little else. 
 
 Through the columns of the New York papers, Anne was 
 watching the little-known, presumably shambling and in- 
 experienced Mr. Lincoln parry, thrust, and throw "the 
 Little Giant" Douglas on the day's most burning issues. 
 With what clarity the man spoke — and with what knowl- 
 edge of the Constitution and all that America should stand 
 for! 
 
 Accustomed to politicians and their highflying verbiage, 
 their play upon public emotions for their private, immediate 
 purposes, she began to feel that Lincoln might be different. 
 Often the man from Springfield struck a deeper note than 
 any she had heard. And earlier, in the speech with which 
 he had accepted the Republican nomination, he had said: 
 
 If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tend- 
 ing, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. . . . 
 96 
 
'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this 
 government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
 I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I do not expect the 
 house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will 
 become all one thing, or all the other! 
 
 These were ringing words. It was a time that called for 
 greatness. Could Lincoln possibly be the man? Abstracted 
 in deep thought, Anne heard the wail of her little niece. 
 The child had brought her a bouquet of field flowers, and 
 Auntie Anne had unwittingly pulled off all the petals. Anne 
 cradled the little girl in her arms as they both rocked in 
 the hammock. How could one explain to a child that some- 
 times grownups were thinking so hard they didn't realize 
 what their hands were doing? 
 
 Anne and her father had many visitors these summer 
 days, but not, as of yore, for purely social reasons. Neigh- 
 bors and friends were deeply troubled. They wanted to know 
 from Anne what really was going on in Washington, as 
 though she or anyone else could tell them! The great trees 
 that surrounded the ancient mansion and made it an oasis 
 of coolness, and the green lawns that sloped down almost to 
 the bay, were the setting for impromptu debates far less 
 theoretical than those out in Illinois. Here in old Maryland, 
 a border state, folks were talking about the problems of 
 slavery and abolition from the pages of their own lives, 
 and about Union or secession with a personal involvement 
 with which one might discuss continuing a strained marriage 
 or asking for a divorce. 
 
 Should civil war actually come, Maryland could go either 
 way. Retreating from the clouds of hungry mosquitoes 
 which swirled over the lawn at night, Anne and her father 
 often sat long in the study with Thomas H. Hicks, who had 
 a small plantation nearby and also ran a line of steamboats. 
 Beneath his mild manner, Hicks was a strong Union man, 
 
 97 
 
and she and Thomas Carroll were stirring up his political 
 ambitions to run for governor of the state. 
 
 She could do nothing about Lincoln out in Illinois. He 
 had, as most people expected, lost the Senatorial election; 
 and few were yet convinced that he was the man of the 
 hour. He was reputed to be capturing the imagination of 
 the West, but most Easterners were dubious. They much 
 preferred Seward as a Presidential candidate, a man of 
 tried performance as Governor of New York and long its 
 Senator, to an unpredictable individual who had not even 
 been able to carry his own state. 
 
 Nevertheless, people were curious about Lincoln and 
 would not dismiss him utterly without an actual hearing. 
 They were to have it in New York City in the early spring 
 of 1860. Lincoln was to speak at Cooper Institute, gathering 
 place of the city's intelligentsia. And Anne was among the 
 scores who hastened up from Washington to attend. Slip- 
 ping across icy streets and wading through mud and slush, 
 she entered the hall where William Cullen Bryant, literary 
 idol of the East, was already ensconced upon the platform. 
 Beside him was the great editor, Horace Greeley. Indeed, 
 as one reporter remarked, no speaker had faced such a 
 general assemblage of culture and intellect since the days 
 of Clay and Webster. 
 
 Anne had forgotten how tall Lincoln was, how his long, 
 bony frame unlimbered with his stride. Swiftly arranging 
 his notes upon the lectern, he faced the crowd with a self- 
 possession that had not been his in earlier years. The unruly 
 shock of black hair, the swarthy complexion, the features 
 carved ruggedly as though by strokes of his own ax — all 
 this she remembered. The years had not polished him much, 
 she thought. 
 
 As he began to speak, his mouth lost its ungainliness, his 
 heavy eyes their listlessness; and presently he was clearing 
 
 98 
 
cloudy issues with a lucidity of reason and judgment that 
 made a profound impression upon his sophisticated audi- 
 ence: 
 
 ... It is exceedingly desirable that all parts of this great con- 
 federacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, one with another. 
 Let us Republicans do our part to have it so. Even though much 
 provoked, let us do nothing through passion and ill temper. 
 Even though the Southern people will not so much as listen to 
 us, let us calmly consider their demands, and yield to them if, 
 in our deliberate view of our duty, we possibly can. . . . 
 
 The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: we 
 must not only let them alone but we must, somehow, convince 
 them that we do let them alone. . . . 
 
 Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone 
 where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising 
 from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our 
 votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national terri- 
 tories, and to overrun us here in these free states? If our sense 
 of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly 
 and effectively. . . . 
 
 LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, 
 AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO 
 DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT! 
 
 For two hours Abe Lincoln had entranced his listeners; 
 no man ever before had made such an impression on his 
 first appeal to a New York audience. Here was no "Black 
 Republican" carried along upon the extremes of abolition. 
 Lincoln was middle-of-the-road, seeing both sides of the 
 question as Henry Clay had, and as Anne herself was trying 
 to do. Still, she could not believe that Lincoln would ever 
 be elected President. 
 
 She would work instead for Stephen A. Douglas, who 
 had proved himself a vote getter. Douglas was a known 
 
 99 
 
quantity, and he was opposing ever more forcefully the ex- 
 tension of slavery. As a close-to-professional politico her- 
 self, Anne could not afford to back a mysterious X factor, 
 eloquent though he be. 
 
 Anne was shocked when the Democratic Party splintered. 
 It had seemed the most whole and cohesive of any of the 
 parties, but it seemed that anything could happen in these 
 hectic days. Southern delegates had bolted rather than 
 accept Douglas, and they named John C. Breckinridge. 
 Breckinridge — what an insolent, opinionated pup he was! 
 Anne's anger knew no bounds. He was the nephew of the 
 pastor whose friendship and advice had meant so much to 
 her during her early days in Baltimore; now he must be 
 breaking the old man's idealistic and loyal heart! 
 
 Now, whomever the Republicans nominated was sure to 
 win the election. Seward had everything in his favor, every- 
 thing in the bag, except that the nominating convention 
 was to be held in Chicago. The West was moving in against 
 the East; and the American Party, still strong in many sec- 
 tors and in which Anne was still a leader, was conscious of 
 its not inconsiderable remaining weight. 
 
 Chicago was determined that Lincoln, the rail splitter, 
 born in a log cabin, the friend of the poor and the pioneer, 
 should be the country's choice. To this end, the young 
 enterprising city on the shores of Lake Michigan had built 
 a huge, ramshackle structure known as the Wigwam for use 
 as a convention hall, a name as laughable to wealthy, influ- 
 ential Easterners as the fact that they must make the long 
 trek out to Illinois. It was all crude and ridiculous. 
 
 But the rough, raw city was putting on a great and 
 startling show. As one of the Eastern newspaper corre- 
 spondents reported to his editor, "I am writing this under 
 every obstacle — a cannon is exploding on the roof!" It was 
 not to be a polite or "fancy" convention; and the effete 
 
 100 
 
Easterners must accept the rough-and-tumble of Western 
 pohtics, pohtics in the raw with no holds barred. As for 
 the Southerners, God help them! 
 
 The special trains rolled in from the East, decorated 
 with many banners and filled with smug contingents of 
 delegates who looked askance at the boardwalks that 
 raised Chicago only inches above the seemingly bottomless 
 mud. Sneering at hotel accommodations which were cer- 
 tainly on the primitive side (three and four to a room and 
 sometimes as many to a bed), they assured themselves that 
 the convention was a cinch for Seward. A bit too noisily 
 and confidently, perhaps. American Party delegates in other 
 delegations were testing the atmosphere and reporting all 
 reactions by telegraph to Washington. Which way should 
 they swing? 
 
 Anne wished that she could be there in Chicago to see 
 it all firsthand, to hear how it was when absolute pande- 
 monium broke loose with the introduction of the name of 
 Abraham Lincoln. Up until then Seward's nomination had 
 been greeted politely, if calmly, as an accomplished fact. 
 For Lincoln, however, the galleries had been packed, and 
 roared their preference, so the reporters wrote, hastily filing 
 their releases. From smoke-filled rooms in Chicago, the 
 telegrams sped to smoke-filled rooms in Washington, where 
 Anne and others of the American Party had assembled in 
 a council of war. The word came in: First ballot: Seward 
 173% votes, Lincoln 102. Needed to nominate: 233 votes. 
 
 In the tension-packed period of the minutes between 
 telegrams, Anne said that she had decided she favored 
 Lincoln and would work for him. She said it quietly, so as 
 not to sway the others. This was a vital decision each indi- 
 vidual must make for himself. But others nodded and fell 
 in with this beautiful, brilliant, influential, Titian-haired 
 woman. It was soon settled. The American Party would 
 
 101 
 
join other still powerful factions and go all out for Abraham 
 Lincoln. 
 
 Third ballot: Lincoln 231% votes. Needed to nominate: 
 233. The Ohio delegation by instruction shifted its vote, 
 and Abe Lincoln, the rail splitter, was the nominee! 
 
 At the announcement of the vote, men leaped in the air 
 and screeched like wild Indians, as one might perhaps ex- 
 pect in so barbarian a convention hall as the Wigwam. 
 They had (it was said), as was typical of so uncouth a 
 convention performance, succeeded in nominating "the 
 Baboon." Eastern cartoonists were quick to sketch Lincoln 
 in this role, their pens dipped in acid and prejudice. And 
 the radical antislavery men shook their heads too. Lincoln 
 wasn't the man to be stern enough with the "wicked" slave- 
 holders, who were sure to outwit him. 
 
 At the same time, all through the South, men prepared 
 to follow their firebrand leaders. It was now almost a fore- 
 gone conclusion that Lincoln would be elected, due to the 
 split in the Democratic Party, and they would have none 
 of him. They had been told that he was a "Nigger lover" — 
 forgetting the calm, fair phrases of his speech at Cooper 
 Institute. 
 
 Strong winds were blowing every which way. Would 
 nobody listen to the calm voice of reason? Anna Ella Car- 
 roll and many others were raising their voices now, voices 
 that were lost in the din. Anne wondered why these hot- 
 heads could not see that Lincoln alone among the candi- 
 dates stood neither for the North nor for the South, but 
 for a whole and united nation that belonged to all of them. 
 
 Hers was a reasonable mind. She felt that this was a 
 nation built out of revolution against the tyranny of a 
 British king, built by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Frank- 
 lin, and Anne's own kinsman, Charles Carroll, Carroll of 
 Carrollton. These men had risked their necks and often 
 
 102 
 
lost their fortunes to give their descendants a common 
 heritage, the United States of America. And now extrem- 
 ists were seemingly about to bring it to destruction. 
 
 Divided, the States would become again the prey of 
 Europe and the old regimes. England, defeated eighty-some 
 years ago by the valor of our ancestors, held to a stalemate 
 in the War of 1812, could now easily rejoice that this mad 
 experiment in democracy without the rule of kings and 
 potentates could so easily fall back into ermined laps and 
 servitude. 
 
 While the "Wide-Awakes," knowing little but shouting 
 much, marched through the streets of Northern cities in 
 torchlight processions glorifying "Old Abe, our next Presi- 
 dent" — (and not many of them having the slightest idea of 
 what he was or what he stood for) — others less naive were 
 busily removing much of the nation's supply of small arms 
 to Southern arsenals. Anne was hearing about it all from 
 one Lemuel Evans, who was working in a semisecret ca- 
 pacity for Winfield Scott. 
 
 Evans was emphatic about what he knew, even to his 
 reasons why the lovely Anne should marry him right now, 
 before the War. It was, he felt, coming. There was now no 
 escaping it. It was as inevitable as their love for each other. 
 He was a Western intellectual gone from Tennessee to 
 Texas; she was a Southern aristocrat and many other things 
 besides. Caught in all this turmoil, they had found an ex- 
 traordinary response in each other. . . . 
 
 Yet now what time had they, or anyone, for private 
 lives? The long-impending storm was breaking upon the 
 head of the newly elected President, the man who had 
 tried hardest to avoid internecine war, the rail splitter, 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 103 
 
14 
 
 "It Gives Me Deep Pain" 
 
 The years of foreboding, of the shadowy dread 
 that lurked about the hearths, the doorsteps, 
 and the meetinghouses like a palpable presence, 
 were moving into harsh reality under the 
 ghastly light of November and December days 
 of that year of 1860. 
 
 The Republican Party was not committed to abolition, 
 nor was the South, prior to Lincoln's election to the Presi- 
 dency, committed to secession. But the seeds of dissension, 
 planted through the years by fanatics on both sides, were 
 now about to bear their deadly harvest. 
 
 As in all great conflicts, the surface issues that rose to 
 the top of the seething cauldron were given as excuses. 
 They were clearly visible and could be translated into slo- 
 gans. The South was for Slavery; the North was for Free- 
 dom. The South stood for States' rights above the welfare 
 of the nation. It was a vast simplification, or oversimplifica- 
 tion, of the facts — the working of economic forces that, 
 like the slow process of erosion through the action of rivers, 
 winds, and rain, finally were splitting the United States. 
 
 And now Jefferson Davis was having the effrontery to 
 suggest that Anne and her august father might join the Con- 
 
 104 
 
federacy! Thomas King Carroll could still exert great in- 
 fluence; he could have a position that accorded with his 
 name. "Not if you gave him the whole South!" Anne made 
 the decision and flung the words into Davis' face. 
 
 The atmosphere of Washington was poisonous with the 
 breath of secession and impending civil war. By December, 
 South Carolina was out of the Union and beckoning to her 
 sister states. Before Lincoln had as much as set foot in the 
 White House, Davis was President of the rival Confederate 
 States of America! That included South Carolina, Missis- 
 sippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, 
 with more soon to join them. 
 
 As March 4 and the inaugural approached, plots were 
 being laid to prevent Abe Lincoln's ever living to take the 
 oath of his office. Working closely with fine old Winfield 
 Scott to protect the President-elect, Lemuel Evans told 
 Anne that they expected attempts at assassination either at 
 Springfield or somewhere along Lincoln's route to Wash- 
 ington. Lincoln was characteristically refusing to take the 
 slightest of precautions, and his guardians were frantic. 
 
 Thomas Scott, no relative of Winfield's but a business 
 associate of Anne's as vice-president of the Pennsylvania 
 Railroad, was sharply alert to certain conspiracies foment- 
 ing in Baltimore, in "Mob-town." Should the Presidential 
 Special arrive there with Lincoln aboard, wild men with 
 knives were waiting to take his life. He must consent to 
 being spirited through the city in a quite ordinary railroad 
 car in the early hours of the dawn. He finally saw that there 
 was no help for it. 
 
 From the very beginning, Abraham Lincoln avoided as 
 much as possible all attempts to give him proper protection, 
 however well meant. He was, perhaps, a fatalist. But, while 
 triumphal arches and enthusiastic crowds had marked Lin- 
 coln's progress through the rest of the trip, Maryland's 
 
 105 
 
greeting was planned assassination! To Anne's mind, her 
 home state was behaving as disgracefully as South Carolina! 
 
 Thank goodness, Lincoln had reached Washington safely 
 and before any guns were fired. If now he could only make 
 the South understand that he was a reasonable man, per- 
 haps war could still be averted. Multitudes were listening 
 as he gave his inaugural address, and multitudes, North and 
 South, were praying. 
 
 A month later, Lincoln got his cold answer. With the 
 bombardment of Fort Sumter, all hope of peace vanished. 
 Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas left to 
 join the Confederacy and swore to make all-out war. 
 
 The heartstrings of the nation were breaking as families 
 were torn apart by their allegiances. Brother prepared to 
 fight against brother, cousin against cousin, friend against 
 friend, in what was to be, proportionate to the numbers in- 
 volved, the bloodiest war in history. 
 
 Since Mr. Lincoln's election to the highest office in the 
 land, Anne had been engaged in a fury of letter writing 
 to her far-flung connections: "Support Lincoln whether you 
 like him or not, he's our only hope!" Now she had, close 
 at hand, the immediate problem of Maryland. Her own 
 family was as divided in its loyalties as the rest of the state. 
 Maryland inclosed, as a nugget to be prized, the District of 
 Columbia. Located on land that originally had been part 
 of the State, the site of the Federal government would fall 
 to the Confederacy should Maryland secede. The Confeder- 
 ate States of America could call itself the official govern- 
 ment and be recognized as such abroad. 
 
 By the powers, this should not take place! Anne was 
 determined that this could not and should not take place. 
 As a mere woman, she could not bear arms to serve the 
 Union's cause. Yet she could call upon weapons far more 
 powerful than rifles and bayonets and howitzers. She had 
 
 106 
 
the ardor of her spirit, the acuteness of her mind, her skills 
 as a publicist. And she had the weight of the Carroll name, 
 that — wooed by Jefferson Davis as a symbol of the old 
 aristocracy — could be used with equal force against him 
 and what he stood for. 
 
 Groundwork laid earlier by Anne and her father had 
 led to the election of Thomas Hicks as Maryland's governor. 
 Now she would do her utmost to reinforce his precarious 
 stand as a Unionist. Planting loaded articles in the nation's 
 press, Anne sought valiantly to encourage Hicks, warned 
 him to stall for time. "Postpone another meeting of the 
 legislature as long as you can," she advised him. "Give 
 events a chance to work on our side. Let people calm down 
 a bit. If the legislature assembles again, it will almost cer- 
 tainly vote for secession. I have asked around, and I am 
 sure of this. . . ." 
 
 And then came one James Randall, to write, to an old 
 German tune, the stirring words of "Maryland, My Mary- 
 land!" which said in one version what Anne was saying 
 every day. 
 
 Writing Governor Hicks almost daily, Anne remained at 
 her post in Washington. Should she leave the District of 
 Columbia and perhaps join her friend Hicks in Annapolis, 
 other women might panic. Knowing how very close her 
 association with present Southern leaders had been, they 
 would be sure that she was evacuating, that she had had 
 some advance notice of assault upon the capital city. Every- 
 one there was jittery, and even senators were known to 
 be keeping sawed-off shotguns in their offices, ready close 
 to hand. 
 
 The whole North was watching Governor Hicks, she 
 wrote him. He must try to stand firm, despite the fearful 
 pressures being brought to bear, while she worked upon 
 public opinion in the state to bring it around to his [or her] 
 
 107 
 
side. Time was of the essence, she realized all too well. 
 Troublemakers were inciting Marylanders to open riot, and 
 Massachusetts troops en route to Washington had been 
 attacked by Baltimore mobs. 
 
 Could it be possible that John C. Breckinridge, too, was 
 trying to hold his own border state to the Union? Despite 
 her deep misgivings about this Kentuckian, she was forced 
 to admire the courage with which, almost singlehanded, he 
 was battling the rest of the Senate. He had not left his seat, 
 as had others of Southern sympathy; shunned on every side, 
 he might yet be the spokesman for the moderates and the 
 channel through which their voices could be heard. 
 
 One could hope against hope that this were so, and that 
 John was not playing a role that, in these halls, was traitor- 
 ous. Earlier, Anne had asked him point-blank if he were 
 for the Union, and he had calmly said he was. For the sake 
 of his uncle, her dear friend, Anne would in her own mind 
 grant John Breckinridge every benefit of the doubt. 
 
 Yet now she heard that Breckinridge was coming to 
 Maryland to try to sway her state toward the South. Right 
 upon the heels of his speech in the Senate which had pro- 
 claimed, "A terrible accounting will be rendered by those 
 who are plunging their country into the vortex of ruin under 
 the pretense of maintaining the Constitution!" 
 
 John had come out into the open at last. Anne finally 
 knew just where he stood. He was threatening Maryland, 
 her adored Maryland, and she was ready for the fight. 
 Through the suffocatingly humid days of that mid- July and 
 early August, Anne ransacked her files and records and 
 poured words upon paper in what, first intended only as 
 another article for the press, was expanding far beyond such 
 limits. She was determined to write it all down, everything 
 she had discovered through the years, all she had studied 
 and believed. 
 
 108 
 
She was making her astounding Reply to the Speech of 
 the Honorable J. C. Breckinridge — now one of our great 
 historical documents. His speech, full of sound and fury, 
 had been delivered before the Senate, July 16, 1861. His 
 premise was tenuous, his lies were dangerous — because 
 many people were apt to believe them and him. He had 
 denounced Abe Lincoln as a despot. He had said on the 
 floor of the Senate that Lincoln had destroyed personal 
 liberties, was taking money from the national treasury un- 
 lawfully for the support of an army, and was in fact ex- 
 ceeding all his powers as President. He was, in short, a 
 tyrant who had provoked the war. So said Breckinridge. 
 
 So Anna Ella Carroll, a force to be reckoned with, opened 
 up all her guns. She began her Reply with what for her was 
 the utmost of restraint. She had read the speech of Breckin- 
 ridge, she wrote, with deep pain, and with still deeper pain 
 was observing his appearance in Maryland to use "the 
 fallacies of that speech" to stimulate and strengthen the 
 Confederate rebellion. "Evidently his purpose is to incite 
 the military uprising of the people in this State against the 
 Government, in aid of Southern Treason, and to prepare 
 them for action whenever the leaders shall give the signal." 
 
 Anne apologized for not acting sooner. "I have in the 
 spirit of friendship, repeatedly repelled by my pen, the 
 charge of disunion heretofore made against him. I could 
 not bring myself to believe that one belonging to a family 
 so illustrious in our annals as his own . . . should at last 
 prove himself recreant to the Union's cause." 
 
 Now it was all too clear that Breckinridge, in his very own 
 words, was charging that the "President, in violation of the 
 Constitution, has made war on the Southern States for 
 subjugation and conquest, has increased the army and 
 navy, called forth the militia, suspended the writ of 
 habeas corpus, and, without warrant, arrested private per- 
 
 109 
 
sons, searched private houses, seized private papers and 
 effects. ..." 
 
 Harsh words to be used against a small-time lawyer from 
 Springfield! John C. Breckinridge was asserting that the 
 State of Maryland was abolished and that her people were 
 "under the shadow of a broad-spreading military despotism." 
 
 Anne, in her historic Reply, agreed that these were grave 
 charges. "If true, the President should be made to suffer 
 the extreme penalty of the law." She was, indeed, leading 
 Mr. Breckinridge on, as though in a courtroom argument. 
 Meanwhile dear Leah bathed her throbbing temples and 
 wrists with the fragrant coolness of cologne; Anne was too 
 deep in what was going on in Washington even to think of 
 the soft temptations of the Chesapeake, of the Tidewater. 
 This was no time for vacations. 
 
 "The argument turns wholly on the question of fact, 
 whether the overt act of treason which the Constitution 
 defines to be levying war against the United States, has 
 been committed? Whether the Confederate States of the 
 South commenced the war?" Anne was now drawing her 
 keen sword from its scabbard. "There can," she wrote with 
 a boiling pen, "be no equivocal position in this crisis; and 
 he who is not with the Government is against it, and an 
 enemy to his country." 
 
 She went on. "The major premise of the Senator [Breckin- 
 ridge], namely, that the President made war upon the 
 South is untrue, and I proceed to show that no one in Amer- 
 ica knows this better than that gentleman. . . ." 
 
 It was the time, Anne thought, to reveal to the nation the 
 full extent of the Southern conspiracy made ten years be- 
 fore and clearly revealed in the secret correspondence she 
 had intercepted and shown only to Henry Clay. The mul- 
 tiple letters between the various governors, with places and 
 dates, she quoted, full out. Her Reply to Breckinridge was 
 no 
 
growing into a sizeable pamphlet. Anne would publish it 
 at her own expense, as she did, and in the immediate emer- 
 gency rush copies the length and breadth of Maryland and 
 even beyond! She would not stop until she had told the 
 whole story. Leah, dear Leah, brushed her fire-red hair, 
 brushed the moist tendrils from the cheek of her adored 
 mistress, or went out to try to find another chunk of ice 
 over which the fans could bring refreshment. With a lump 
 of ice, Anne could cool herself momentarily, even if she 
 could not cool her suite. 
 
 "Here," she wrote, "we have every idea on which the con- 
 spirators are now acting." The ink on the letters had per- 
 haps faded in the interim, but not the ideas, the rancid, angry 
 ideas, of the men who had written them. And Anne was, 
 and had been for years, on the inside of it all. While some 
 of the writers of the letters to which she referred might be 
 in their graves, their ghosts began to walk with the firing 
 on Fort Sumter. That overt act had drawn the blood that, 
 according to the calculation of certain people, would cement 
 the Southern states into a Union of their own. 
 
 "The Southern people back in 1851 would not sustain 
 the leaders in sufficient strength to enable them to carry out 
 their treasonable designs at that period," she went on. 
 Would it were so in these days! "The chiefs of the con- 
 spirators went to Washington after the election [of Lincoln] 
 and assumed the direction of the entire treason movement, 
 and proceeded to organize a military force for the purpose 
 of seizing the government, expelling Lincoln, and inaugurat- 
 ing their man Breckinridge." 
 
 Anne paused only slightly for breath and a refilling of 
 her inkwell. "In the sight of these astounding facts, the 
 President issues his Proclamation, appealing to the pa- 
 triotism of the nation for the salvation of the Union, and 
 Mr. Breckinridge grossly insults the intelligence of the coun- 
 
 m 
 
try by charging that the President made war against the 
 South!" Anne's legal mind was at work; facts were facts 
 and evidence was evidence. The man Lincoln was all they 
 had to hold things together, and they must work with him. 
 A fragile, human raft in stormy seas! 
 
 "The facts adduced establish beyond controversy that the 
 President did not make the war as charged, but that the 
 traitors made the war, which now threatens the subversion 
 of the Government, and endangers our national existence. 
 Under this fearful exigency, I proceed to inquire what are 
 the duties imposed upon the President by the Constitution?" 
 Anne proceeded from wide knowledge and deep study to 
 describe them. Since they had been attacked by Breckin- 
 ridge, and since the present situation was quite without 
 precedent, she felt entitled to interpret the broad terms of 
 the Constitution into particulars, simplified for the average 
 reader. 
 
 "The executive power is vested in the President ... in 
 the event of rebellion or insurrection assuming such pro- 
 portions as to overthrow the 'republican form of govern- 
 ment guaranteed to every State in the Union' . . . the 
 President is required by his oath of office 'to preserve, pro- 
 tect, and defend' this supreme law. For this purpose the 
 sword, by the Constitution, is placed in his hands. . . . 
 
 "The express grant of the war-conducting power con- 
 ferred upon the President carries with it the implied power 
 to use every belligerent right, every instrument known to the 
 law of war. ... By virtue of the express and implied 
 powers of the Constitution just indicated, it is impossible 
 to question the duty of the President ... to annoy, to 
 weaken, to destroy the enemy until its armies are over- 
 thrown and civil authority is re-established. . . ." 
 
 Martial law had prevailed all through the Revolutionary 
 War. Breckinridge was in ignorance to have proclaimed it 
 
 112 
 
otherwise. As an earnest student of American history, Anne 
 proceeded to show proof of her points through several pages 
 of this amazing and powerful document. She was leveling 
 her guns, and her fire was accurate and devastating. Her 
 final volley was an explosion of rhetoric: 
 
 "Better that Washington had perished like Hampden! 
 That Jefferson had never drafted the Declaration of In- 
 dependence . . . than that this Union, created to be the 
 daylight to break the night of the ages, should finally col- 
 lapse, and traitors be permitted to write the epitaph, 'It lived 
 and died!'" 
 
 The words scorched the paper as Anne at last threw down 
 her pen. She had, in the three weeks it had taken her to 
 document and write and revise this epic work, succumbed 
 to the Chesapeake breezes. She was signing it with the 
 proud name of Carroll, in her beloved state of Maryland, 
 August 8, 1861. 
 
 113 
 
1 
 
 Advisor to Lincoln 
 
 Desperate times called for desperate measures, 
 
 and lies must somehow be combated with the 
 
 truth, as Anne saw the truth. She desperately 
 
 wanted the people of Maryland, her people, to 
 
 listen — and they did! Hovering at the very brink 
 
 of secession, they did not, as a state at least, plunge over 
 
 it. While hundreds of individual Marylanders might join 
 
 the Confederate armies, the state remained in the Union 
 
 and was to contribute its fair share to national defense. 
 
 Earlier Anne had flooded the state legislators with letters, 
 and she took pains to supply General Winfield Scott with 
 lists of troublemakers to be watched, and if necessary ar- 
 rested. The cost of printing and circulating her pamphlet, 
 The Reply to Breckinridge, was already running into hun- 
 dreds of dollars more than she had expected to pay. 
 
 And now, in this crucial time, Anne's mind was running 
 faster than her own finances could support. With sudden in- 
 spiration, she outlined further strategy to her friend Thomas 
 Scott, now Assistant Secretary of War, and her message 
 sent him rushing to the President. The order called for 
 50,000 copies, and Lincoln agreed that the Government 
 must foot this bill. 
 
 114 
 
The Hon. Mr. Breckinridge had found her "net for 
 traitors" drawing closer and closer, and her reply really 
 unanswerable. Early in September he resigned from the 
 United States Senate and announced that he was joining 
 the Confederate Army. Anne was ready for him; here, she 
 figured, was the time to clinch her argument throughout the 
 border states and farther North. Here was excellent use for 
 the 50,000 copies, and more! Speeding all this literature 
 through the manifold channels she had learned about as a 
 top publicist, now thousands of newspaper editors, gov- 
 ernors, congressmen, or others with public or private in- 
 fluence could read it for themselves, could attempt to judge 
 which side indeed was really trying to plunge the nation 
 "into the vortex of ruin." 
 
 Anne was, without realizing it, turning out to be a latter- 
 day Thomas Paine, a spokesman for liberty and democracy. 
 To Anne the Union came first, as it had to Clay and Webster. 
 She was out to defend the position of the Chief Executive 
 and his war powers, very remarkably stated in her pamphlet, 
 but at the time it had not really been for Lincoln himself. 
 He was still to her just a figurehead, a symbol, still just an 
 Illinois lawyer who had accidentally been elected to the 
 highest office in the land. He had as yet done little to win 
 her confidence and that of many other thoughtful people. 
 
 He was fumbling; the whole North was fumbling. And 
 the first clash of arms between the North and South, be- 
 tween brother and brother, between the Union armies and 
 the Confederate armies in that brutal July of 1861, had 
 been an embarrassment, to tell the truth. Anne, preoccupied 
 with the work on her Reply to Breckinridge, had not ac- 
 companied the gay folks from Washington who had ridden 
 out to Bull Run, as though it were to a picnic. The battle, 
 presumably won by Union forces at 3:00 p.m. of that broil- 
 ing afternoon, had turned and had become a horrible rout 
 
 115 
 
by four in the afternoon. The senators and their ladies, 
 complete with picnic baskets, were thoroughly upset. 
 
 But the South meant business, and no quoting of facts or 
 figures strongly in favor of the North (on paper) could 
 give real reassurance. The population of the Northern, of 
 the loyal states was about twenty- two million; that of the 
 Rebels less than ten million, of whom more than a third 
 were Negro slaves. In fighting men, the North outnumbered 
 the South three to one, in wealth at least two to one. 
 
 With such preponderance of power, it seemed to Northern 
 leaders that it should be a simple matter to crush the Re- 
 bellion in the space of months or weeks. But Bull Run was 
 shattering to such placid overconfidence; suddenly certain 
 thoughtful people began to grasp the fact that this war 
 might last a long, long time. 
 
 Confronted with a thousand confusions, faced with a 
 thousand decisions, Lincoln had read in Anna Ella Carroll's 
 pamphlet an extraordinary clarity of thought and force of 
 logic. She had somehow struck through murk and fuzziness 
 and controversy to come to her essential points, and she 
 had made them stunningly. 
 
 While Lincoln and Anne had met socially several times 
 since he had taken office, the President now wished an in- 
 tensive interview. She was not to wait, his secretary said; Mr. 
 Lincoln was expecting her. Secretary John Nicolay, a rather 
 young and impressionable man, eyed this fashionably 
 dressed, attractive woman curiously — so this was the Miss 
 Carroll everybody was talking about! 
 
 Anne herself hesitated on the threshold of Mr. Lincoln's 
 sanctum, not wishing to interrupt an intimate family scene. 
 Little Tad Lincoln was sitting on his father's lap, begging 
 tearfully for a pony. Anne's first impression was — what 
 gentleness this man had! He was cradling the little boy as a 
 mother might. Then she went on into the sanctum sanctorum. 
 
 116 
 
"You get younger and better looking every week, Miss 
 Carroll," the President said with his mid- Western twang, 
 as he swept Tad off his knees and rose to greet her. "I can't 
 say the same for this old battered phiz of mine." The deep- 
 set eyes glinted briefly with an innate humor that lightened 
 the essential rugged sadness of his face. "I need your help, 
 and that's the truth of it!" 
 
 This man, Anne realized, had no side, no pretense. It 
 was impossible for her not to warm to the simple directness 
 and honesty of his appeal. 
 
 "You have already assisted me, perhaps more than you 
 may be aware of!" Lincoln sat back in his armchair, lacing 
 long, bony fingers across his knees. He was dressed in a 
 loose suit of excellent material that looked as if it had 
 never been pressed. "Your Reply to Breckinridge is only 
 the beginning of your work for this administration — at least 
 I hope, I most sincerely hope it is!" 
 
 Thus Anne was slipped into a role, unprecedented for a 
 woman, as advisor to the President. By Lincoln's express 
 order, she was to have access to the White House at any 
 time, day or night! In an unofficial capacity, she was to serve 
 through the War as practically a member of his Cabinet, 
 moving behind the scenes in wartime, confused Washing- 
 ton, in a position of absolute trust which Lincoln afforded 
 to few of those around him. His actual Cabinet was a spotty 
 one, composed of some dedicated and able men such as 
 Seward, Secretary of State, and others who were question- 
 able and appointed for purely political reasons, such as 
 Simon Cameron, Secretary of War. 
 
 While neither side was prepared for an all-out war, the 
 South had the driving force of decision, the gallant de- 
 votion to a cause, which was not true of the pedestrian 
 North. All over Dixie the women were sending their men 
 
 117 
 
off to war as though to knightly combat in a tournament. 
 How well Anne understood their spirit! 
 
 The preparations of the ladies of the South had about 
 them the aura of romance, as they packed hampers with 
 jellies, wines, and confections. They saw to it that their 
 sons, brothers, and sweethearts had inlaid dressing cases, 
 majolica shaving cups, and sentimental little books that 
 quoted from the poets, often with the most tender passages 
 underlined and marked with a cluster of pressed violets. 
 Recalling earlier, happier days, and imbued with the false 
 glory of war, they floated around in their prettiest dresses, 
 daintily marking the boxes "Captain," "Lieutenant," even 
 "Major." They had high hopes. 
 
 The women of the North were not similarly ardent. Per- 
 haps they were more realistic. Nor could much be said for 
 the self-seeking gentlemen who descended upon the capital 
 city and upon Mr. Lincoln, to demand officers' commissions 
 or fat government contracts. The city of Washington was 
 overrun, too, with Confederate spies and Southern sym- 
 pathizers, which was only natural since it was a Southern 
 city to all intents and purposes. 
 
 Without her own forthright writings to prove her basic 
 loyalty, Anna Ella Carroll would have been a leading sus- 
 pect. But Lincoln was a shrewd judge of human nature and 
 of character. He was quick to perceive her immense value, 
 her great potential. Despite the surface graces of her aristo- 
 cratic background, she was, as he said, "Sassy as a jay bird," 
 a quality he admired. Her general idea was "Let's stop 
 the nonsense, let's name names, and let the chips fall where 
 they may!" 
 
 She, too, had a double view of the scene, which, like the 
 stereopticon slides so much in vogue at the time, gave her 
 depth and dimension and perspective. 
 
 Part of her Tidewater birthright was an insight into the 
 
 118 
 
Southern mind, and her career had given her a working 
 knowledge of the North and its thinking. 
 
 Developing rapidly as a chief executive, Lincoln was wel- 
 coming excellent minds and spirits wherever he could find 
 them. Continued stupidity was leading now to heavy losses 
 of time, of money, and of what was far more important to 
 him — human lives. When it actually came to fighting an all- 
 out, great war they were all amateurs, Lincoln no less than 
 his Cabinet, his generals, and army. In what was to be the 
 first of modern, total wars, they had no precedents to guide 
 them. 
 
 In the struggle to create colossal military machines almost 
 overnight, the North had the advantage of numbers and 
 materials, the South that of elan and the skill of its officers, 
 whose superiority was immediately apparent. Neither side 
 had accurate military maps, and both were dangerously 
 ignorant of where they were going or how to get there. 
 The Government had no topographical information, ex- 
 cept for parts of the West, and generals on both sides were 
 planning campaigns from geography tomes they picked up 
 in bookstores! 
 
 The Secret Service, a rather formless security organiza- 
 tion, was singularly inept; spies were slipping back and 
 forth across the fines, into and out of Washington, with 
 little or no let or hindrance. Talk was loose. Southern 
 agents and sharp-eyed newspaper correspondents, with no 
 particular loyalties except to their papers or themselves, 
 were having a field day. Shockingly uncensored in both 
 North and South, the press was quick to report, without 
 conscience, both the rumor of the day and the actual facts 
 of military movements and preparations. 
 
 Starting out with almost no army at all, only 16,000 men 
 in uniform, the North also had few good weapons, no officers 
 well trained in the higher arts of warfare except old Win- 
 
 119 
 
field Scott, and an entire order of command as unwieldy as 
 it was out of date. Save for Scott and a few others of his 
 generation, not an officer had ever handled a unit as large 
 as a brigade! A handful of men had fought in the Mexican 
 war, but most had spent their Army careers building frontier 
 forts, "fighting" Indians, or in paper work. As for the rank 
 and file of Northern soldiers, they were farmers, factory 
 workers, city-bred clerks, now suddenly opposed to ram- 
 pageous Southerners who had lived in the saddle and who 
 were fast men with rifle or sword. Abraham Lincoln him- 
 self was a civilian who had served only briefly as a militia- 
 man in a minor Indian war; Jeff Davis was a graduate of 
 West Point. 
 
 The military mind, as it showed itself in the Northern 
 forces, was giving Lincoln not much reason to respect it. 
 Informed that a brigadier general had gotten himself cap- 
 tured by the Confederates, along with some horses and 
 mules, the President had said with quiet sarcasm: "I don't 
 care so much for brigadiers; I can make 'em! But horses 
 and mules cost money!" 
 
 While generals squabbled over seniority and almost every- 
 thing else, jealousies were also rampant in all branches of 
 the Federal government; and the press was almost uni- 
 versally "ragging" Lincoln and holding him personally re- 
 sponsible for every mistake. Now he came to consult with 
 Anne on many topics and problems presumably beyond the 
 ken of a mere woman. 
 
 Her brilliant Breckinridge pamphlet had demonstrated 
 to Lincoln, in a most dramatic way, the value of more in- 
 formation about the war for the general public, something 
 that, at least in modern times, would require a huge staff 
 and a whole floor of the Pentagon in Washington, or Rocke- 
 feller Center in New York City. Anne was the staff. This 
 woman could write dynamically, and she knew where and 
 
 120 
 
how to influence public opinion, people's thinking. She 
 was well versed in Constitutional law and, like the Presi- 
 dent himself, was deeply concerned with a quick end to 
 this useless bloodshed. For Anne, the war was a highly 
 personal matter; it was her kith and kin who had already 
 fallen or were about to be sacrificed, on one side or the 
 other. 
 
 Exploring many angles of the conflict, Anne spent many 
 hours with her old friend Winfield Scott, Chief of the Army, 
 and still the finest soldier in America. She went over ord- 
 nance maps with him, studying his proposed line of attack. 
 Dropsy confined him to his armchair these days, but he 
 was ever the master strategist, pointing out that, as in the 
 little war with Mexico, the place to strike was not around 
 the fringes but at the heart of the enemy itself. "We must 
 divide the South!" he cried, beating the floor with his cane. 
 "And the way to do it is via the Mississippi!" 
 
 His was the Anaconda Plan, named after the python. 
 Scott planned to squeeze the South to death. Troops would 
 move down the river and hold it, from Cairo to the Gulf 
 of Mexico. The South would then be cut off from Western 
 beef and grain. Slowly starving, it would be forced to sue 
 for peace. The North would win, without intensive land 
 invasion or attack. Also, this could take years! 
 
 No, said Lincoln. Anne agreed. They needed quicker re- 
 sults; the North was growing restive. Yet indeed the muddy 
 Mississippi could hold the key to this vast and spreading 
 theater of war. His attention directed to it by General Scott, 
 Lincoln ordered the shipyards of St. Louis to start building 
 gunboats. The people of the city could no longer snarl that 
 only the East was really profiting by the war and that New 
 England firms were being awarded all of the lush contracts. 
 
 All of Missouri was by no means loyal to the Union, as 
 Anne was hearing, with certain vehemence, from her uncle, 
 
 121 
 
Cecil Carroll. For many years he had been a prominent St. 
 Louis lawyer; he was also a deep-dyed Southern sympathizer, 
 and he was sure she had taken leave of her senses in using 
 her talents on the side of the Union. The North had nothing 
 but "a peacock" in command here, he wrote. General John 
 C. Fremont was putting on airs as the former hero of Cali- 
 fornia conquest and making himself and his cause ridiculous. 
 
 Lincoln would never find a general to compare with 
 Robert E. Lee. Who did he really have in the field but that 
 pompous ass, George B. McClellan? Anne could almost 
 hear her uncle snorting as she put down his impassioned 
 letters; like all the Carrolls, he had a fiery temper. Anne 
 found herself sighing deeply, because she was in at least 
 partial agreement. George B. McClellan — handsome, im- 
 pressive, and an excellent trainer of men — was a general 
 who was afraid to fight. The Confederates outnumbered 
 him, he said, again and again parading the splendor of his 
 troops through the city of Washington. He was always com- 
 plaining to Lincoln that he needed more men with whom 
 to attack, more supplies, more time, more of everything 
 except decisive action on his part. He was still resting on 
 laurels won in the spring, when he had helped the loyalists 
 of West Virginia in their secession from the mother state. 
 A relatively small thing, but he made much of it. 
 
 Anne knew as well as her uncle Cecil did that the Gov- 
 ernment was shaky. Undermined with doubt and the great 
 debts left over from the bungling Buchanan administration, 
 the U.S.A. was considered a very poor risk by the financiers 
 of Wall Street and Boston. France had seized the opportun- 
 ity, taken advantage of the situation to move into Mexico 
 with an eye toward American conquest. And England, 
 whose mills depended desperately on Southern cotton, was 
 all too eager to aid the Confederacy. 
 
 What Lincoln needed was a major victory that would 
 
 122 
 
show the world, and the South, that the Union was still a 
 power to be reckoned with. The North could not only spend 
 thousands of dollars in preparations for war, but it could 
 also fight one. A major campaign along the Mississippi 
 could not afford to fail. 
 
 Time was running out — time and also credit. It would 
 not take a good deal more fumbling and lost motion to lose 
 forever the hope of Union that had once been so proudly 
 held. Going its separate way, the South could be followed 
 by the West. Once the pattern of dissolution was set, there 
 could be no end to it, not until the former United States of 
 America lay in fragments, weak, quarrelsome, and an easy 
 prey for the schemes of European imperialism. As Anne 
 herself wrote earlier, its sad epitaph would be carved as on 
 a tombstone: "It lived and died." 
 
 She fidgeted in Washington, anxious now to go to St. 
 Louis and see for herself. As for the gunboats, she was a 
 woman raised beside the rivers and hard to fool. The boats, 
 she thought, would take up the least of her time. What she 
 wanted most to do was to talk to people, to get their re- 
 action, to test the sentiment of Missouri, which, from this 
 distance, seemed perhaps to be somewhat similar to that 
 of her own Maryland. 
 
 Lincoln could expect scant reassurance from the report 
 of Simon Cameron, Secretary of War. That pompous official 
 had already left for St. Louis, ostensibly to inspect the gun- 
 boats but, so his reputation shows, probably just to arrange 
 for a personal cut of the building profits. Pockets were being 
 generously fined by the sale to the Government of out-of- 
 date rifles, shoddy blankets and materials for uniforms which 
 melted in the first rain, of all types of substandard goods — 
 and fingers were pointing to Cameron. He was a man to 
 steal "practically anything except maybe a red-hot stove," 
 acidulous old Thaddeus Stevens had said, and his comment 
 
 123 
 
was being repeated the length and breadth of Washington. 
 
 Anne was now working on another pamphlet at Lin- 
 coln's direct order: War Powers of the General Govern- 
 ment, actually an amplification of that which she had al- 
 ready touched upon in the Breckinridge reply. She needed 
 time for research — and what was to prevent her from taking 
 it in St. Louis, which had an excellent library? She could 
 use its rare historic documents as an excuse for her ex- 
 ploratory trip. Along the way she could stop at various 
 Army camps, and she would come back loaded with a mine 
 of firsthand information. 
 
 A woman could delve without attracting the attention 
 that a man would. No one would suspect that her questions 
 were loaded. She could, if she were sufficiently clever, play 
 the whole journey as a pretty caprice! And she still had the 
 figure, the looks for it. 
 
 Weighted down with worry, Lincoln managed a faint 
 smile when she told him her plan. He was eating little and 
 sleeping less, sleeping hardly at all, and the energies and 
 ingenuity of this woman continued to astound him. Anna 
 Ella Carroll could get anything she wanted out of any man, 
 he was quite convinced. 
 
 124 
 
i 
 
 Secret Mission 
 
 As she planned for her momentous journey to 
 St. Louis, Anne included a riding habit and 
 boots against the eternal mud. She intended to 
 go everywhere in every kind of weather, and 
 refused to be always encumbered by her crin- 
 olines. These would not easily pack — all the hoops and 
 silks and petticoats that proclaimed essential femininity but 
 which still left scarcely room for a seatmate beside her in 
 the crowded train cars of wartime. She dreaded the inevitable 
 dust and the cinders and the interminable miles. Most of 
 her excursions, most of her work, had been along the 
 Eastern seaboard, and the West was a fresh adventure. 
 
 As a woman traveling alone, she had thought she would 
 perhaps be conspicuous, but now she found with some 
 relief that she was lost in a churning throng. Other girls 
 and women, ladies, were traveling without escort, the wives, 
 the daughters, the sweethearts en route to Army camps and 
 posts and hospitals to join their men. 
 
 Most of the ladies were dressed in black. For some these 
 were already widow's weeds, but for most they were merely 
 the practical shade for travel "on the cars." The grimy air 
 and the scene were but little enlivened by the hard-backed 
 
 125 
 
seats of green and crimson plush, nor by the audacious cries 
 of train boys starting their worldly careers by selling stale 
 sandwiches and stale newspaper headlines. None of these 
 would go as far as Thomas A. Edison who, at the ripe age 
 of fourteen, was pursuing a simultaneous career on the De- 
 troit-Port Huron run back up north in Michigan. 
 
 As the passenger cars were shunted back and forth into 
 side spurs to make way for the crowded troop trains, Anne 
 was crying over the hideous waste and cruelty of war, the 
 loss of hope and dreams, the end of the finest young men. 
 She was seeing the last farewells, the tears of the women, 
 the lads, fresh-cheeked and beardless, leaving home prob- 
 ably forever, with baskets full of fried chicken and coconut 
 cake in their hands. 
 
 All that Anne could do now was to reassure her fellow 
 passengers, many of whom had never before been on a 
 train, who clung to their belongings fearing that nameless 
 strangers might snatch everything away somehow in this 
 strange clickety-clack of wheels on track, and of moaning, 
 meaningless whistles. Dressed in their best, the women 
 found their starch wilting. Babies were bawling their little 
 hearts out. Each mother, each of the women, had her per- 
 sonal misery — and her suspicion. Yet they were traveling 
 together, into the night. . . . 
 
 It was a feminine world now, peopled only very sparsely 
 by men who asserted their masculinity by excessive chewing 
 and spitting on the floor, a fault noted earlier by European 
 visitors such as Charles Dickens and Mrs. Frances Trollope 
 as evidence of American bad manners. American men 
 chewed tobacco and they spat — as somehow a point of 
 pride. 
 
 Anne welcomed the frequent stops and change-overs that 
 allowed her briefly to escape. She could stroll along the 
 platforms during the change of engines or stops for fuel or 
 water or the complete change of trains, hoping against hope 
 
 126 
 
that her baggage hadn't been lost. Meanwhile she could 
 sense the glories of October; the land was ablaze with the 
 gold and scarlet of the maples, the abundance of the harvest. 
 They called it Indian summer out here, and said that the 
 purple haze was rising from the campfires of lost tribes, that 
 the corn shocks were the ghosts of Indian wigwams. 
 
 Anne was far from the huggermugger of Washington, 
 especially in spirit. Traveling the railroads, she was ex- 
 periencing anew the sinews of their strength and seeing 
 with new eyes their vital importance. She had often written 
 glibly about them, but now she was seeing how they actually 
 linked the towns of the nation together, how they con- 
 nected the lamps of lonely cottages and the lights in lonely 
 small- town depots as well as the gaslighted cities. It was 
 really one land, she thought. It must be one land, held 
 together by a common devotion. 
 
 Stopping off at the various Army camps, Anne found 
 some of her dreamy reveries harshly dispelled. The farther 
 west she went, the more disturbing her discovery that peo- 
 ple considered the Union cause all but hopeless. Even its 
 strongest adherents were beginning to despair; the Southern 
 doctrine of States' rights must triumph. Army officers at 
 the military posts were cordial to Anne, but frank. It was 
 a lost cause. 
 
 Lemuel Evans, for all his experience in the Secret Service, 
 had not quite prepared Anne for this shock to her dearly 
 held illusions. Perhaps, as her devoted suitor, he had been 
 trying to shield her from these realities. When next they 
 met, she would be furious with him! 
 
 Descending from the puffing train into the arms of her 
 uncle, finally actually in St. Louis, she was suddenly back in 
 the bosom of Family. An errant member, perhaps, from 
 some points of view, but still a Carroll. Given a little time, 
 her uncle was convinced that he could make her see the 
 light. She was wined and dined in eminent St. Louis circles; 
 
 127 
 
the people who mattered were as gay, it seemed, as though 
 the fact of war did not even exist! 
 
 The ties of blood were strong in the Carrolls, and pre- 
 sumably would convert Anne to the Southern way, the way 
 of gallantry and defiance. Like the powerful, muddy Mis- 
 sissippi on whose banks she stood, St. Louis was deceptive. 
 Sun-dappled and lazy on the surface, it had deep-flowing 
 undercurrents and dangerous snags and shoals. 
 
 So it was that fast tongues, unbridled by the wine of 
 social life, were talking freely in Anne's presence — and, 
 being Anne, her ears were always wagging. Albert Sidney 
 Johnston, Confederate Commander in the West, was mov- 
 ing into action so rapidly and forcefully that none of Lin- 
 coln's inept generals could possibly stop him — so they said. 
 What matter if Lincoln were building all those ridiculous 
 gunboats? 
 
 The important people of St. Louis scoffed at any notion 
 of secrecy or security. Everyone in the city knew about the 
 gunboats. And again and again they assured Anne: "The 
 Confederate batteries will cut them into bits. Send 'em down 
 the Mississip', and that will be the end of 'em!" And there 
 was more to this, Anne sensed, than mere braggadacio. 
 
 She determined to cultivate the powerful Mr. Johnston's 
 brother, librarian of the Mercantile Library. Working mean- 
 while on her new paper for Mr. Lincoln, she had an ex- 
 cellent excuse to go to the library for at least a part of 
 every day. She had met this Johnston socially, and now 
 it seemed that, like her Uncle Cecil, he was concerned with 
 her reform. He could not really believe that a Southern 
 gentlewoman could be so depraved as to support "the Black 
 Republican, Abraham Lincoln." 
 
 In the course of heated debates, the librarian revealed 
 more than he knew, or intended to. His brother's forces 
 could not possibly be as strong as he pretended, Anne 
 sensed. He was exaggerating and putting on a good face. As 
 
 128 
 
other St. Louisians gathered around and claimed that Mis- 
 souri would be redeemed and Kentucky overrun by spring, 
 she quietly questioned their protestations. 
 
 Yet she listened, too. "The party of peace will be fore- 
 most and will demand concessions from your government! 
 These sections will strike for state independence!" they 
 insisted, almost in unison. 
 
 "Independence, indeed!" Anne's temper was rising. "Be- 
 fore next spring, the boasted independence of your whole 
 Confederacy will be at an end!" 
 
 "And just how," they demanded, "will you reduce the 
 Mississippi?" 
 
 Surrounded, Anne fought staunchly back. "Yes, sirs, I 
 predict that before spring, all the strongholds on your Mis- 
 sissippi will have been reduced to rubble, will have vanished 
 into thin air!" 
 
 But Anne was assuming a confidence that, in this hostile 
 atmosphere, she did not really feel. Her apprehension of 
 climactic danger was increasing with every day that passed. 
 Lincoln was relying upon the Mississippi strategy to defeat 
 the gallant, well-armed power of the South; and everyone 
 in the know was saying that the river could never be 
 opened, that it was so strongly fortified that it was im- 
 pregnable! 
 
 The flicker of an inspiration came to her. Wasn't there 
 some other way? 
 
 She must study the problem, must concentrate, must 
 close her door against interruptions. Lavishly entertained 
 up to now in Uncle Cecil Carroll's house, she must remove 
 to a small hotel to have the needed privacy. 
 
 The ornate Planter's House was clearly out of the ques- 
 tion. While the most noted, most famous hotel in this part 
 of the West, it had also become a rendezvous for the flashy, 
 for the river-boat captains in town for a brief alcoholic 
 fling, for the gamblers with their cards (and sometimes 
 
 129 
 
their derringers) up their sleeves, and always the specula- 
 tors, as checkered as their vests. It was hardly a place for 
 a respectable woman alone. It was not for Anne. 
 
 She settled for the modest Everett House and sighed for 
 dear Leah — Leah to plump the hard pillows and to comfort. 
 Her only luxury here was a door that she could lock! 
 
 Anne was quite alone, except for the impetus afforded 
 her earlier by Lincoln and Scott, her drive to search through 
 the maps that she had brought with her from the effete East 
 and to relate them to present strategy. Unrolling them, she 
 thought a great deal about Winfield Scott. Many of the 
 charts and maps she had put together from bits and pieces 
 were actually more accurate than those the Chief of Staff 
 had to work with, but they were also so sketchy and dis- 
 ordered that she would never have thought of letting him 
 see them. 
 
 Any proper Army officer would have scoffed at some of 
 these hand-drawn projections. Anne had put them together, 
 acquired them sort of piecemeal, in the course of her work 
 with R. J. Walker and other railway magnates. The rail- 
 ways had to have accurate maps. Competent engineers had 
 charted them in an effort to use the valleys, skirt the moun- 
 tains, find a level way for railroads through the seemingly 
 impossible, up-and-down terrain. Many of those projected 
 railroads had never actually been built, but still the maps 
 and plans remained on the papers before her, and they 
 could, Anne realized, mark the route for whole armies! 
 
 She was on the ground here in St. Louis, with the Mis- 
 sissippi riddle to decipher. Why she was suddenly focusing 
 her whole attention upon it, perhaps she could not have 
 said. She was driven by what, in woman, is called intuition, 
 and in a man intelligence. 
 
 Now, as she spread out these maps and charts, she found 
 herself recalling other days and other times. She had worked 
 over all this with Jefferson Davis, and with Stephen A. 
 
 130 
 
Douglas, and there had been a time when it had all focused 
 on Mobile. It had seemed then most important to persuade 
 the extension of a railroad from Illinois to link up with the 
 Southern network. Mobile had always been the spider at 
 the center of that web. Commercial minds had fixed on it, 
 as a sort of North-South control, with easy entrance to the 
 Gulf of Mexico. 
 
 Mobile was not on the Mississippi! Here Anne had made 
 an intellectual and tactical break-through, but she was too 
 tired now to go further into the problem. Not today, not 
 tonight! 
 
 If only Lemuel Evans were here! She longed for his 
 presence, his advice. He always had a way of calming her, 
 made her feel that being a woman was just as important 
 as trying (usually in vain) to solve the problems of the 
 nation. 
 
 But Evans had gone off to Texas on a special mission and, 
 at best, would never find her here. Even if their roads ac- 
 cidentally crossed, he would never contact the Carrolls. 
 Lemuel had his dignity: he knew where he, as an upstart 
 Unionist, would stand with Uncle Cecil. 
 
 Suddenly Anne heard a tapping at her hotel door. "Come 
 in!" she said, expecting it was the maid to turn off her light 
 for the night or turn down her bed and expect the inevitable 
 coin. They were always hovering around Anne — the maids 
 and the waiters. 
 
 "Lemuel!" she cried joyously, unbelieving! He was ver- 
 itably an apparition in her doorway. He couldn't be real — 
 but he was. 
 
 "Just got back from the Rio Grande. Glad to see me?" 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll forgot how much she had wanted to 
 be completely alone; she forgot that at times she had been 
 furious with this man. They were in each other's arms and 
 for that wonderful moment everything, even the war, was 
 forgotten. 
 
 131 
 
117 
 
 There Must Be 
 Another Way 
 
 How odd it was, Anne thought, that this man 
 with his rough and easy courtesy, his Western 
 forthrightness and directness, could appeal to 
 her heart and spirit more than any of the pol- 
 ished gentlemen she'd known. She was deeply 
 in love with Lemuel Evans. And furthermore, it would be 
 good to have a stalwart man around in this confused and 
 lurid city. Anne was perhaps not quite so brave as she had 
 been trying to make herself believe she was. She was now, 
 out here in the hinterlands, seeing a sordidness, a reality, 
 that had been concealed from her when she was just the 
 protected and cosseted guest of the Carrolls. The streets 
 of St. Louis teemed with soldiers, brawling, drunk; bodies 
 marked with stab wounds were found floating in the 
 river. . . . 
 
 And a lone woman, with no obvious business to occupy 
 her or justify her presence in this hot spot, was laying her- 
 self wide open to suspicion of being a spy. Impassioned, 
 sectional feelings, inflamed by the red liquor that somehow 
 was always available when food and clothing and blankets 
 and guns were not, could possibly make her the victim of 
 the ruthlessness of the code of the frontier. Tempers were 
 
 132 
 
high everywhere. And she wondered whether perhaps dear 
 old Winfield Scott, always protective and kind, hadn't 
 actually arranged for this meeting with Lemuel Evans. 
 Figuratively, she blew General Winfield Scott a long-dis- 
 tance kiss. 
 
 Evans had his work to do in St. Louis, and Anne had 
 hers. While they could spend only brief hours together, it 
 was always a comfort for Anne to be able to turn to him, 
 especially on one memorable day. Anne had been horribly 
 unnerved by her sight of the battle-torn Union regiment re- 
 turning broken, after the battle of Belmont. She had watched 
 the wounded being borne up from the river boats — the boy 
 soldiers so tragically young and twisted with pain, the gray 
 faces of the men who were dying, the bloody bandages, the 
 riddled blue uniforms, and the empty sleeves. Her heart 
 was sick. 
 
 "There must be a way of escape, a way to end this miser- 
 able thing quick and fast!" she told her dear Lemuel Evans. 
 "There just has to be one, Mr. Evans!" 
 
 His face was grim. "Might as well give up if we don't find 
 it soon, Miss Carroll. Won't take much more fiddling around 
 for Napoleon and his French to grab Texas." 
 
 Forms of address, even between sweethearts and husbands 
 and wives, back in the 1860's, were formal and stiff. It was 
 always "Miss Carroll" and "Mr. Evans," in spite of their 
 close relationship. 
 
 Yet now Anne was somewhat in despair. What could she 
 go back and tell Mr. Lincoln about his cherished Mississippi 
 River plan, except that it could not possibly work? Lemuel 
 Evans, with his insight, was confirming everything that her 
 Southern friends and contacts had told her, and adding de- 
 tails out of his own firsthand knowledge. The Confederate 
 forts along the big river were well-nigh impregnable and 
 could rake the new gunboats with their batteries. Anne had 
 
 133 
 
also discovered that the speed of these expensive new craft 
 would be only five miles an hour, under full draft. Even 
 if they could take advantage of the current, they would be 
 sitting targets. Once crippled, how would they have the 
 power to make their way back upstream? 
 
 Anne had increasing doubts about it all, but, being Anne, 
 she checked first with the river pilots. Because it seemed to 
 her that the gunboats, and the brave young men aboard 
 them, would fall into the Confederate's bag like mallards at 
 a gun shoot. It just didn't make sense. 
 
 The chill of early November was penetrating everywhere, 
 and especially along the great river, as Anne, dressed in 
 the riding habit and boots she wore for these muddy water- 
 front excursions, trudged wearily along the streets that 
 led to her small hotel. She had shed the airs of a society 
 belle along with her crinolines, and somehow it was a re- 
 lief not to have to pose as the important Miss Carroll now — 
 with her heart heavy as lead. 
 
 Her talk with the river pilots, the horny-handed men with 
 the know-how, had been informative — and shocking. Al- 
 most to a man they had said that they would rather be 
 shot at sunrise than take the helm of one of those fancy 
 gunboats. "If we want to die we can handle it better some 
 other way, better than taking fool orders from some fool of 
 a general who don't know nothing about the old Mississippi, 
 and that's a fact, lady!" In other words, they took a dim 
 view. 
 
 Politicking with her father since her earliest girlhood, 
 Anne had learned that the best way to get information was 
 "straight from the horse's mouth." Men who made their 
 living by running the river were not apt to be far off the 
 beam on anything concerning the Big Water. They had no 
 foolish theories in their heads. 
 
 Still, Anne told herself sagely, there was a bare possibility 
 
 134 
 
that the men she had interviewed had all been Southern 
 sympathizers. It had been beyond her to check or sense their 
 actual affiliations. 
 
 Returning from her trip to the wharves, Anne became 
 suddenly aware of approaching footsteps behind her in the 
 gathering dusk. She quickly turned and was relieved to see 
 that it was a woman, and not entirely a stranger. Anne, 
 in her busy career, had met many people — this little fuss- 
 budget of a woman was somehow familiar to her — had it 
 been in Washington or Baltimore? 
 
 The pursuer stopped short. "You have a man who's still 
 out with General Grant?" 
 
 Anne held, and the woman came closer and introduced 
 herself breathlessly as Mrs. Charles Scott, another occa- 
 sional guest at the Everett House. Her husband was a river 
 pilot, and she was desperately worried about him. 
 
 "Is he loyal to the Union, then?" demanded Anne, getting 
 down to cases and realities. 
 
 Mrs. Scott was vehement. Her man had had a whole boat- 
 load of precious cotton ruthlessly confiscated by the Con- 
 federates, and he hated them with his whole heart, and so 
 did she. 
 
 What a stroke of good fortune! Anne wondered — could 
 she actually talk to this man, on his next return home? She 
 had ideas. She suddenly wanted to know the depth and 
 width of all the Western rivers. "For certain!" Mrs. Scott 
 nodded. She went on to say that her husband was a good 
 man to ask if anybody wanted to find out about rivers; he 
 knew more about all of them, large and small, than a cat- 
 fish! 
 
 Again that night Anne pored over her maps, as if per- 
 haps a fresh idea might arise from them. She was used to 
 seeing reality from symbols such as these, used to seeing 
 hills and rivers and valleys exemplified on a chart. And it 
 
 135 
 
made her angry and humiliated to realize that crafty Jeff 
 Davis was now using these lines, these railroads, that she 
 herself had helped to promote. For the first time in history, 
 railroads both of the North and South, transporting troops 
 and supplies, were the actual arteries of war! 
 
 "But the Mississippi can't be the only possible way." The 
 thought kept dinning in her fertile mind. "There has to be 
 something else!" But where to find it? What other course 
 could really divide the South, sever the railroad life line 
 of food and other supplies that were flowing across from 
 Texas? There must be a way to strangle the great General 
 Lee and his gray armies. As Anne, bent over her hotel 
 table under a feeble gaslight, let her glance run over the 
 map, it happened to fall upon the Tennessee. 
 
 She gasped with inspiration. Could this be the answer, or 
 perhaps, as an alternative, the Cumberland? No, the Ten- 
 nessee! According to the map before her, the conquest of 
 the Tennessee River could, if properly planned, do every- 
 thing that was being expected of the Mississippi Plan — and 
 could do it even better and with far less loss of fives. The Ten- 
 nessee was not strongly fortified and it flowed to the north! 
 No wounded gunboat need fall into Confederate arms dur- 
 ing an engagement, it could drift back with the current to 
 safety. 
 
 The Tennessee, Anne felt, was almost too good to be 
 true! From it, an army could readily cross overland to the 
 Tombigbee and then, descending it, capture the major 
 Southern port of Mobile itself! The Tennessee opened a 
 route all the way from Illinois to the Gulf of Mexico; it 
 could command the whole valley of the Mississippi. With 
 this area under Union control, the war that Anne so ab- 
 horred could speedily be brought to an end. 
 
 Daylight had long since faded, and the gas jet was be- 
 
 136 
 
ginning to sputter petulantly overhead as Anne started 
 scribbling maps of her own. She had always enjoyed drawing 
 maps; as a child it had been one of her dearest sports to 
 figure out on paper, mapwise, the best route to get from 
 where she was to elsewhere, from this plantation to another 
 plantation, or the crossroads, or anywhere. Now those early, 
 childish flings came home, in a sense, to roost. The times 
 were moot. And Anne realized that nobody else had even 
 thought of hinging a whole plan of strategy around the 
 Tennessee! There was a war on, a terrible, destructive war 
 that must be speedily concluded, and could it be possible 
 that nobody else, none of the military geniuses, had even 
 touched on that possibility? 
 
 In her excitement, Anne had still to fight off doubts 
 which — like mosquitoes — kept singing about her auburn 
 head. The Plan, the Great Plan, was becoming so clear and 
 obvious to her that indeed there must be something wrong 
 with it! 
 
 How could a mere woman see what experienced mili- 
 tary men had not? Who was she, Anna Ella Carroll, to pit 
 her mind against the dignified deliberations of a dozen gen- 
 erals? But, she reminded herself, "Old Marse," General 
 Robert E. Lee, was running circles around the Union lead- 
 ers. Yet were the "Rebs" really so much smarter than the 
 "Federals" — the "Yankees"? The honest answer, at least 
 so far in the conflict, had been "Yes"! 
 
 Anne had no pretensions as a military strategist, but she 
 had learned much from Winfield Scott. She had long 
 emerged from the silly conventions that restricted all, or 
 almost all, of the women of her era. Circumstances had 
 forced her to fight her way into making a living in a man's 
 world, had forced her to think about new problems in a 
 masculine way. She was also a stubborn, embattled patriot. 
 
 137 
 
When the actual existence of the nation was at stake, 
 it was the solution that was important, not the means. 
 Whether a man or a woman had found it — no matter! 
 
 Her concept was unconventional and extraordinary, just 
 as Anne herself was. Working far into the night, she was 
 step by step unraveling the knots that existed or might exist, 
 smoothing out the whole piece of strategy. She was con- 
 vinced that this attack, this plunge, would be successful, 
 and that the river Tennessee could be the road to victory 
 and peace. 
 
 Up to now the devoted, inspired Southerners had taken 
 and kept the initiative. The Union armies had been largely 
 on the defensive, getting there latest with the leastest. But a 
 real surprise attack . . . ? 
 
 Was the Tennessee deep enough to take the gunboats? 
 How far up was it really navigable? Was it equally navigable 
 in every season of the year or only during spring and sum- 
 mer freshets? These were deep and vital questions which 
 only an experienced river pilot could answer. She would 
 not even ask Lemuel Evans; she dared not even raise his 
 hopes until she was sure. 
 
 And her busy mind hit upon Pilot Scott. She had met his 
 wife. The good woman had said that her husband knew 
 all the "Western" rivers, but that could have been an ex- 
 aggeration. What about the actual Tennessee, the neglected 
 river that flowed the wrong way? Anne rushed out of her 
 room and down the corridor to check. In her eagerness, she 
 had forgotten how early in the day it was; and she hastily 
 apologized for her intrusion when she was met at the Scott's 
 door by a flustered lady still in her curlpapers and wrapper. 
 But no real matter — Mrs. Scott looked happy at the call, 
 and, as one woman to another, asked her in — and changed 
 the subject to ask Anne's advice about a new coiffure! Curls, 
 maybe, or bangs here? She finally settled down enough to 
 138 
 
say that her husband, the pilot, was presumably safe and 
 would be back tomorrow. Of course he had worked the 
 waters of the Tennessee! He knew it like he knew his own 
 pants' pocket! 
 
 So Anne must cool her heels and wait. She waited with 
 considerable impatience for this all-essential conference with 
 Scott, but meanwhile she sat down and worked out further 
 ramifications of The Plan. Politically, she saw, it could have 
 an immediate effect. She was of course well aware that the 
 farming interests in the eastern part of Kentucky and Ten- 
 nessee were loyal to the Union and opposed to the upsurging 
 planters farther west. Action in this sector would perhaps 
 encourage an uprising. Farmers are notoriously slow to 
 heat — and slow to cool! 
 
 When the summons to meet Charles Scott — veteran river- 
 boat pilot — finally came, Anne was trembling. What would 
 he say? What this experienced man might tell her could dash 
 her ingenious expectations to pieces. It was a strange but 
 important interview. Like most of the river-boat pilots with 
 whom she had talked, Scott had only scorn for the Mis- 
 sissippi project. He was, she was quick to see, a rough and 
 crusty individual who obviously knew his business, who 
 was irritated at having it interrupted by a war, and who 
 deeply resented generals so full of their own brass and spit 
 and polish and stars that they never asked the advice of 
 common folk — the folk who knew whereof they spoke. 
 
 "The Tennessee, ma'am? Now you're talking sense!" 
 Scott hit the table with a heavy fist. "It's deep enough; 
 boats can run clear up the stream to Muscle Shoals in Ala- 
 bama." It was deep enough for gunboats in any season of the 
 year, he told her solemnly. One could, however, count on 
 the Cumberland for only part of it. All rivers differed. 
 
 Excusing herself hastily, Anne ran to fetch Lemuel Evans 
 from his hotel room down on the next floor from hers. Sud- 
 
 139 
 
denly she felt the need of masculine support. She was but a 
 woman, after all! And Evans could think of many vital 
 questions to ask the very responsive Charles Scott that she 
 herself could obviously not. Tugging at his elbow to make 
 him hurry, like a little girl on the way to the candy store, 
 Anne managed to disclose breathlessly to him the whole 
 story of The Plan — she had hit upon the Other Way! 
 
 Many years later, Lemuel Evans, who had become Chief 
 Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, was to tell the whole 
 story in an official statement to the United States Senate: 
 
 When he [Scott] stated to her that in his opinion, and in that 
 of pilots generally who were familiar with the western waters, 
 that the naval expedition could not open the Mississippi; that 
 the gunboats were not fitted to fight down the river, and that it 
 was practicable for them to go up the Tennessee [it confirmed 
 her idea], that the Government should direct the Mississippi 
 expedition up the Tennessee River to some point in Northern 
 Mississippi or Alabama so as to command the Memphis and 
 Charleston railroad. 
 
 In a very earnest and animated manner she [Anne] communi- 
 cated this thought to me. Being a native of that section, and 
 intimately acquainted with its geography, and particularly with 
 the Tennessee River, I was at once impressed with the tremen- 
 dous value of her suggestions. She immediately introduced 
 Captain Scott to me, with a request that I would interrogate 
 him on all his special facts. He stated the number and strength 
 of the [Confederate] fortifications on the Mississippi and the 
 impossibility of gunboats to reduce them, the width and depth 
 of the Tennessee River, and the practicability of ascending with 
 the gunboats to the foot of Muscle Shoals, but did not think 
 they could pass above. 
 
 With the view of ascertaining the practicability of a naval 
 expedition to reach Mobile and ascend the Alabama and Tom- 
 bigbee rivers, I questioned him [Scott] as to the depth of these 
 waters also. We were so impressed with the fullness and accu- 
 140 
 
racy of his information, that Miss Carroll asked him to write it 
 down for her, to do which he declined from want of education, 
 but finally consented. . . . 
 
 In conclusion, I will state that having critically examined all 
 the plans of our generals and everything official which has been 
 published by the War Department on this point and every his- 
 tory which has been written upon the war, it is evident that up 
 to the time Miss Carroll submitted her plan to the Government 
 it had not occurred to any military mind that the true line of 
 invasion was not down the Mississippi, nor yet up the Cumber- 
 land to Nashville and then overland, but that it was the Ten- 
 nessee River, and on that line alone, that the Mississippi could 
 be opened and the power of the rebellion destroyed. 
 
 What a woman this was! Lemuel Evans looked down at 
 her tenderly, back in that little hotel room in St. Louis. They 
 had finished their momentous, their history-making, inter- 
 view with Pilot Scott. And there was Anne, Anna Ella 
 Carroll, a lovely woman standing amid strewn maps and 
 charts, a little white and strained, perhaps, with all this 
 thinking and planning of a way to end a war she never 
 wanted. But the eyes that sparkled into Lemuel's were as 
 radiant as the springtime bluebonnets of his own Texas. 
 
 141 
 
NEW ORJ-EANS 
 
 ^ULF OF MFXJCC 
 
 "Theater" of the Tennessee Plan 
 
 Note how simple and logical it all was after Anna Ella Carroll 
 
 had the genius to figure it out and supply the plan of strategy 
 
 that won the Civil War. 
 
The Great Tennessee 
 
 Plan 
 
 Anne lost no time in sending off a letter to 
 Thomas A. Scott in Washington, the only man 
 in the War Department that anyone could really 
 trust. Lincoln had just sent old General Win- 
 field Scott into honorable retirement and had 
 replaced him with George B. McClellan, a feeble reed to 
 lean upon if Anne had ever heard of one! Affairs in Wash- 
 ington must be frantic, she thought. And the quicker she 
 got back there, the better. 
 
 Her letter, however, gave Scott only a slight inkling of 
 her scheme; she dared not entrust more than a hint to the 
 mails. It seemed inadvisable to write her complete report 
 while in St. Louis; she would keep the gist of it safe in her 
 head, where there was no chance of rifling or intercepting. 
 Spies were literally everywhere. Letters, even official letters, 
 were opened. Anne had good reason to suspect that some- 
 one with access to her rooms at the Everett House was 
 methodically going through her desk drawers and her 
 wastebasket. 
 
 She had written to Thomas Scott largely to pique his 
 curiosity, and also to reassure him that she was going 
 through official channels and not straight over his head to 
 
 143 
 
the President, as she could easily have done. Scott had an 
 acute brain; he was actually running the War Department, 
 and his co-operation and enthusiasm could carry a good 
 deal of weight. Anne knew, from bitter experience, how 
 edgy men of authority could be, how jealous of their hard- 
 won positions. 
 
 She stopped off briefly in Ohio to discuss some of her 
 general ideas with old Whig friends and associates — men 
 who were leaders still, and loyal — but extremely dissatis- 
 fied with the Administration's ineptness. They would sup- 
 port her plan if need be, and so would Millard Fillmore, 
 still a power to be reckoned with. 
 
 But now to set her plan down on paper. She would draw 
 up her full account back in the calm of Tidewater, she de- 
 cided. There she could go into semiseclusion. No one need 
 know officially of her return, and there at home she would 
 have none of the interruptions that she would have to face 
 in Washington. 
 
 Back to Baltimore she came. But to her dismay, Anne 
 discovered that gloom and despondency had settled down 
 like a heavy fog all over the East. Thanksgiving this year 
 was a travesty, and the gathering at the Carroll family 
 board was small. With her brother's medical practice suffer- 
 ing severely because he was a Unionist, and several of her 
 sisters so strongly "secesh" that they scorned any pretense 
 of family reunion, the Carrolls who remained offered the 
 traditional prayers with a lump in their throats. 
 
 The document upon which Anne was engaged might 
 well change all of this. That was her avowed and devoted 
 purpose; to end this inter-family war! She did not dream 
 that with it she was to place herself among the great hero- 
 ines of history! 
 
 She had decided that she must present her proposition 
 from two angles. Mr. Scott, as Assistant Secretary of War, 
 
 144 
 
a former business executive and transportation authority, 
 must be won by incisive statements backed by facts and 
 figures, while Lincoln himself would be quick to grasp the 
 political and military significance of what she was so earn- 
 estly recommending. Above all, she must be brief. She had 
 long ago learned, as a public relations woman, to study 
 her clients and to anticipate their reactions. And now, as 
 she reviewed her journey to the West, "with a view of mak- 
 ing my own observations," she was drawing upon hard- 
 earned experience and waging her own special form of psy- 
 chological warfare. 
 
 Here in her own words: * 
 
 In the first place, the Civil and Military authorities are both 
 laboring under a grand mistake in regard to the true key [to 
 attack]. It is not the Mississippi, but the Tennessee River. 
 
 It is well known that the eastern part, or the farming inter- 
 ests, of Kentucky and Tennessee are generally loyal; while the 
 middle and western parts, or what is called the planting districts, 
 are in sympathy with the traitors. 
 
 Traitors, such as John C. Breckinridge, she thought but 
 did not add. Her blood boiled at the very thought of his still 
 being a power in old Kentucky, in the State of Henry Clay! 
 
 But except in the extreme western parts, the Union sentiment 
 still lives. Now all the preparations made by the military in the 
 West indicate that the Mississippi River is the point to which 
 they direct attention. On that river heavy risks must be in- 
 curred, and many battles must be fought, before any impression 
 can be made on the enemy. 
 
 As Anne wrote this, the faces of the mortally wounded 
 men and boys she had seen in the St. Louis military hos- 
 
 * From The Tennessee Plan, by Anna Ella Carroll, courtesy The Mary- 
 land Historical Society. 
 
 145 
 
pitals rose to haunt her . . . the sobs of the women, the 
 smell of death everywhere. . . . 
 
 All of this could be avoided by using the Tennessee River 
 [as an avenue of attack] which is navigable for medium-class 
 boats to the Mississippi line, and is open to navigation all the 
 year, and the distance is but 250 miles by river from Paducah 
 [Ky.] on the Ohio. 
 
 The Tennessee River offers many advantages over the Mis- 
 sissippi; we should avoid the almost impregnable batteries of 
 the enemy, which cannot be taken without great danger and loss 
 of life to the assailants, from the fact that our boats, if crippled, 
 would fall a prey to the enemy by being swept by the current 
 to him, and away from the relief of their friends. 
 
 But even should we succeed, still we will only have begun 
 the war, for then we shall have to fight to the country from 
 which the enemy derives his supplies. [Anne had explored the 
 situation from every conceivable angle.] Now an advance up 
 the Tennessee River would avoid all this danger; for if our boats 
 became crippled, they would drop back with the current to their 
 friends, and escape all danger. 
 
 But a greater advantage still is that its tendency would be 
 to cut the enemy's lines in two by reaching the Memphis and 
 Charleston Railroad, threatening Memphis, which lies 150 miles 
 due west, and no defensible point between; also Nashville, only 
 90 miles northeast, and Florence and Tuscumbia in north Ala- 
 bama, 40 miles east. A movement in this direction would do 
 more to relieve our friends in Kentucky, and inspire the loyal 
 hearts in east Tennessee than the possession of the whole of the 
 Mississippi River, and if well-executed would cause the evacu- 
 ation of all those formidable fortifications on which the rebels 
 have grounded their hopes of success. 
 
 Here Anne was coming to the very heart of the matter. 
 Attack by way of the Mississippi would amount to banging 
 their heads against a stone wall. The alternative that she 
 was proposing would lead to reducing the enemy forts from 
 
 146 
 
the rear! A fig for all the fancy phrases of military parlance. 
 And a pox on one-way, obtuse thinking. A civilian mind 
 like Mr. Scott's might have the imagination to see the whole 
 scope of her plan, and so, she hoped, would Lincoln's. 
 
 And in the event of our fleet attacking Mobile, their presence 
 [loyalists in Kentucky and Tennessee] in the northern part of 
 the state would be material aid to the fleet. 
 
 Again, the aid they would receive from the loyal men in 
 Tennessee, would enable them soon to crush the last traitor in 
 that region, and the separation of the two extremes would do 
 more than a hundred battles for the Union cause. 
 
 Anne's whole analysis must be as graphic as words, charts, 
 maps, and diagrams could make it. As Leah came and went 
 unobtrusively to keep the fire glowing in the grate and a 
 pot of tea at her mistress' elbow, Anne measured distances 
 on the maps with a pair of calipers until her lovely head 
 began to ache. It was Leah who scolded Anne into eating, 
 and it was Leah, finally, who turned off the gas jet night 
 after night and ordered her mistress to sleep. "No use to 
 make you'self sick, Miss Anne." 
 
 But Anne wrote: 
 
 The Tennessee River is crossed by the Memphis and Louis- 
 ville railroad and the Memphis and Nashville railroad; Ham- 
 burg, where the river makes the big bend to the east, touches 
 the northeast corner of Mississippi; entering the northwest cor- 
 ner of Alabama and forming an arc to the south, enters the 
 State of Tennessee at the northeast corner of Alabama and if 
 it does not touch the northwest corner of Georgia, comes very 
 near it. 
 
 Anne had double checked with her notes from Pilot 
 Scott and from Lemuel Evans. 
 
 It is but eight miles from Hamburg to the Memphis and 
 Charleston railroad, which road goes through Tuscumbia, which 
 
 147 
 
is two miles from the river, and crosses it at Decatur, 30 miles 
 above, by the road intersecting with the Nashville and Chatta- 
 nooga Road at Stephenson. 
 
 She was trying to give Scott, and Lincoln, the whole pic- 
 ture of the transportation network; her calculations were 
 concise and intensive. 
 
 The Tennessee river has never less than three feet to Ham- 
 burg, on the shoalest bar, and during the fall, winter, and spring 
 months, there is always water for the largest boats that are used 
 on the Mississippi river. Hence it follows, from the above, that 
 in making the Mississippi, or rather overlooking the Tennessee 
 river, the subject is not at all understood by the superiors in 
 command. 
 
 There! Her Tennessee Plan was all down on paper, under 
 the date of November 30, 1861. If they did not understand 
 its implications now, heaven help the nation! Drained by 
 her concentration, Anne was exhausted when she finished 
 setting this down on paper. The journey from the West had 
 been arduous, and she had rested scarcely a moment since 
 her return home. While dear Leah soothingly brushed the 
 tangles from her auburn hair, disarrayed as always when 
 she worked, Anne wished with all her heart that it could 
 be equally simple to unsnarl the affairs of state! 
 
 Without some slight breathing spell, she could not hope 
 to regain her presence, her usual buoyancy, nor to be in 
 shape to cope with Washington and its convolutions. She 
 must not, she would not, let herself succumb to the general 
 mood of discouragement! True, the government was near 
 bankruptcy, spending nearly two million dollars a day, and 
 had an army and navy that seemed inclined either to loaf or 
 to lose. 
 
 So it was not until a few days later that Anna Ella Carroll 
 was ready to gird herself for battle and breeze into the 
 
 148 
 
sacrosanct War Department. Travel-weary, as she had been 
 a few weeks ago, she could not have faced Scott or any- 
 body; now she was ready to face a hundred lions in any 
 arena! Bigger and better lions, indeed, than this man who 
 sat across the desk from her! He had so changed in her 
 absence that she was shocked. Naturally aggressive and full 
 of force, Scott had shrunk into himself with an air of hope- 
 less listlessness that covered the room like dust. He seem- 
 ingly could not believe that there was hope anywhere, and 
 he told her so. 
 
 "But I insist that you listen to me!" Anne stamped her 
 pretty, gaitered foot. She was a woman, playing a man's 
 game. But she drew all her maps and papers from her muff, 
 with the inference that if Mr. Scott did not care to look at 
 them, she would take the whole packet straight to the White 
 House. She hadn't really been on vacation. Hadn't Mr. 
 Scott read her note from St. Louis? 
 
 "Well then," he smiled faintly at the recollection of 
 earlier encounters with this ball of fire, this Anna Ella Car- 
 roll, who was indeed something to be reckoned with when 
 her cheeks were flushed. 
 
 As Anne began to read from her report, she could see 
 a quickening of his interest. Bombarding him with facts, 
 figures, logistics — and the force of her own personality — 
 she quite destroyed his apathy. He was now asking perti- 
 nent questions; his facile mind was getting at least into 
 second gear. 
 
 "Miss Carroll, I believe you have come up with a solu- 
 tion to the entire problem!" He whipped the papers from 
 her grasp and studied them with heightening excitement. 
 "I can't see a flaw!" 
 
 With scarcely a by-your-leave, he flung a coat about his 
 shoulders and sped away to the White House. Anne crossed 
 her fingers. 
 
 149 
 
1 
 
 Name the Master-Mind! 
 
 Years later, Scott was to describe the impact 
 of Anne's Tennessee Plan upon a sorely pressed 
 Lincoln, a President trying to carry a super- 
 human load compounded of anxiety, vicious at- 
 tacks from the newspapers, and the delays and 
 demands of his fumbling generals. It was this man who 
 had said humbly only a few weeks before, after being 
 snubbed by General McClellan who had gone coolly up to 
 bed while Lincoln waited in an anteroom to see him, "I 
 will hold McClellan's horse, if he can only bring us some 
 successes!" 
 
 Which McClellan hadn't and didn't and never would. 
 But as Abraham Lincoln reviewed Anne's brilliant plan 
 of strategy, an expression lighted his face that Scott was 
 never to forget; he had never before seen Lincoln show 
 such pleasure as he did at her deft and ingenious solution 
 to the great problem of ending the war. Hope, joy, and 
 relief flooded the deeply etched lines of his roughhewn 
 countenance; and from this hour, Scott told Anne, Lincoln 
 could "think of nothing else." 
 
 The miasma of despair that had settled over the capital 
 city was like the evil breath of a sodden swamp, or worse. 
 
 150 
 
With the turn of the year, Senator Wilson of Massachusetts 
 expressed the general attitude when he said before the 
 assembled Congress: "Why, sirs, you can be borne all over 
 this country upon the wave of popular murmur against the 
 Government ... it springs from the deep disappointment 
 of the people of the country who have poured out 500,000 
 men and hundreds of millions of dollars and see no results! 
 They see no policy in the administration of the country; 
 they see no plans; they read of no victories." 
 
 As supreme commander of the army and navy, Lincoln 
 had reserved for himself the control of the Mississippi ex- 
 pedition and had been waiting only for the building of the 
 necessary gunboats to embark upon the operation. Now 
 Anne was turning his mind, for the first time, into another 
 direction. The information with which she had supplied 
 him was so complete and clear and her arguments so logical, 
 that they knocked the props out from under the earlier 
 scheme. Yes, she was only a woman. Women did not plan 
 military strategy. Yet she was a woman in a million, and 
 Mr. Lincoln was wise enough to sense it. She was right. 
 It was the Tennessee that could well lead to the victory that 
 would revitalize the sagging North. 
 
 Scott confirmed this; it was the only way. Lincoln had 
 unbounded faith in this man's knowledge of the railroad 
 system and its potential use in the pursuit of the war. Anne 
 had given him grounds for equal confidence. Making the 
 crucial shift of operational planning from the Mississippi 
 to the Tennessee took courage, but Lincoln made his de- 
 cision and took immediate steps. 
 
 First of all, it was imperative that the notoriously ineffi- 
 cient Simon Cameron be ousted from the War Department 
 and be replaced, as Secretary of War, by Edwin M. Stanton. 
 Stanton had political backing, and he had ability and drive. 
 Whatever Lincoln's personal feelings about Stanton might 
 
 151 
 
be, they must yield to the good of the nation. Lincoln had 
 ample reason for his dislike and distrust; it was Stanton 
 who had, not many months ago, remarked publicly upon 
 the "painful imbecility of Lincoln," and had frequently re- 
 ferred to him as "the original gorilla"! 
 
 Nervous, tempestuous, contradictory, domineering — 
 Stanton was all of these, and yet he was a whirlwind of 
 energy. The War Department could use him, and Lincoln 
 pressed for his appointment. Thomas Scott must be left to 
 move about more freely, with the idea that he would go 
 to the West and increase the effectiveness of the army there 
 against the coming thrust. 
 
 Beyond Stanton, Scott, and tough, dynamic Ben Wade 
 of Ohio, chairman of the newly created Congressional Com- 
 mittee on the Conduct of the War, few other officials were 
 to know that the whole new concept known as the Tennessee 
 Plan was the work of a civilian and — what was even more 
 incredible — of a woman! 
 
 It was at the time all top secret — as secret as the Man- 
 hattan Project of a later time. But Lincoln sensed the need 
 for the utmost secrecy and caution, especially about the 
 origin of the plan. The bare truth would demoralize the 
 army and the North; the South would jeer. Imagine a petti- 
 coat general! 
 
 The wheels had begun to turn, but now Anne — aware of 
 how easily they could stall or reverse their direction — 
 pointed out to Mr. Lincoln that there was no reason what- 
 ever to wait until spring. Now or never! She was in close 
 contact with Pilot Scott, whose wife wrote his letters for 
 him since he was illiterate, ignorant in everything but the 
 ways of the waters. Passing further information on to 
 Thomas Scott, she added notes of her own to increase the 
 sense of urgency and to keep her cherished plan in the fore- 
 ground, as on January 10, 1862: 
 
 152 
 
Some weeks ago, on my return from the West, I gave you 
 my views of the Tennessee river [assault] as being the true key 
 to overcome the rebels. That river is never obstructed by ice 
 at any period of the coldest winter; while every year the Mis- 
 sissippi and Cumberland rivers are impeded by ice. Besides, 
 the gunboats are not well fitted to retreat against the current 
 of the western rivers, and as their principal guns are placed 
 forward, they are not so efficient against an enemy beneath them. 
 They have either to fight with their stern-guns, which are only 
 two, or else they must anchor by the stern, and thus lose all 
 advantage of motion, which prevents the enemy from getting 
 their range. Anchored, these boats present a target, and the 
 enemy will not be slow to improve the benefit. . . . 
 
 There is no difficulty [in navigating the Tennessee] through- 
 out the year. . . . Whoever will look at a map of the Western 
 states can see in what a position Buckner [famous Confederate 
 general] would be placed, if we would make a strong advance 
 up the Tennessee river. He would be compelled to back out of 
 Kentucky, as, if he did not, this force could take Nashville in 
 his rear and oblige him to lay down his arms. 
 
 In spite of her optimism about a drastic change in the 
 fortunes of the North, Anne was beginning to take a long 
 look at her own financial situation. She had shelved most 
 of her other projects to work for the Union, but her high 
 status in Administration circles was so unprecedented as 
 to be vague, to say the least, in terms of actual income. 
 Unlike the present day, when the President has a special 
 fund, accountable to nobody, for emergency use, the situa- 
 tion then was that financially Mr. Lincoln's hands were 
 somewhat tied. Anne had received some $1200 for her 
 Reply to Breckinridge, which was barely enough to cover 
 the cost of the thousands of copies that had been printed 
 and distributed. 
 
 As a businessman, Thomas Scott was troubled about 
 this, but all he could tell her was that: "It was understood 
 
 153 
 
that the Government would treat her with sufficient liberal- 
 ity to compensate her for any services she might render." 
 
 These were fine words, but they would not pay her bills. 
 All she had seen in actual cold hard cash was $1200. The 
 financial affairs of the government were in chaos, she knew. 
 And she also knew that millions of dollars were going into 
 graft. Manufacturers and go-betweens were making their 
 fortunes. The contrast was a bitter one. Common soldiers 
 in tattered, shoddy blue uniforms were dying in the camps 
 from dysentery and neglect, while new-made millionaires 
 were adorning their ladies with diamonds and egret plumes. 
 
 The enlisted men were giving all they had. Could Anna 
 Ella Carroll do less? Should she go on? While her reason 
 advised "No," her whole temperament, her warm and pa- 
 triotic heart, said "Yes!" 
 
 During those difficult days of winter, 1862, she stilled 
 her various doubts and anxieties by completing her work 
 on The War Powers of the General Government, Primarily, 
 she was stoutly defending Lincoln against the accusations 
 of "despot," but she was also defining what had never yet 
 been made clear. What actually were those powers? The 
 fathers of the American constitution, as on many other vital 
 points, had been vague. 
 
 Anne worked too hard and cared too much. Lemuel 
 Evans, stopping off in Washington occasionally from his 
 various missions to the West, tried to soothe her. She found 
 comfort and solace in his arms. With him at her side, she 
 could ignore also the increasing and obvious slights from 
 Mary Todd Lincoln. The President's wife saw in Anne 
 everything that she herself desired to be and was not; she 
 was viciously determined to make Anne pay for her hard- 
 won prominence in government and in Washington society. 
 
 Which is probably the real answer to many things. It 
 could not have been just because of "security regulations" 
 
 154 
 
that Anna Ella Carroll's real role during this crucial period 
 in the nation's history should have been kept secret for so 
 long. Was it "for military reasons" or because Abraham 
 Lincoln had an insanely jealous wife? An attractive, bril- 
 liant, charming woman who could see the President at any 
 hour. . . . Mary Todd Lincoln, insecure, disturbed, would 
 make the most of innuendo. 
 
 Coming into her room before one of the White House 
 receptions and pulling on his gloves, Lincoln would ask, 
 with his usual merry twinkle: "Well, Mother, whom shall 
 I talk to tonight? Shall it be Mrs. D ?" 
 
 "That deceitful, stuck-up woman? No, you shall not 
 listen to her flattery!" Elizabeth Keckley, the intelligent 
 mulatto modiste who had become Mary Todd Lincoln's 
 confidante and only true friend in the loneliness of the 
 White House, had an attentive ear and recorded what she 
 heard and remembered, for posterity. Scenes like this were 
 an everyday matter in the Lincoln household. 
 
 "Well then," said the President, "what do you say to 
 Miss C [meaning Anne]? She is too young and hand- 
 some to practice deceit." 
 
 "Young and handsome you call her!" Mary Todd was 
 in one of her furies. "You should not judge beauty for me. 
 
 No, she is in league with Mrs. D , and you shall not 
 
 talk to her! I do not approve of your flirtations with silly 
 women as though you were a beardless boy fresh out of 
 school!" 
 
 She took her husband's arm as they prepared to descend 
 the great staircase and meet the colorful assemblage, while 
 Elizabeth Keckley watched and listened. "There is Mrs. 
 
 D and Miss C in particular," continued the 
 
 shrewish First Lady. "I detest them both. They are the ones 
 I insist that you ignore." 
 
 The leaders of Washington society had not included 
 
 155 
 
Mary Todd Lincoln in their invitations when she had been 
 the ambitious, pushing wife of an obscure congressman 
 from Illinois. The wounds rankled, and Mary Todd was 
 determined to make these ladies suffer now, in any way 
 she could. 
 
 Had Mary Todd but known, receptions and teas and 
 protocol were the farthest things from Anna Ella Carroll's 
 mind at the moment. They were a hollow mockery in this 
 time of war. What was real and important was that it was 
 February of 1862. Her Tennessee Plan was taking form in 
 terms of an actual military campaign. The gunboats were 
 moving, not down the Mississippi as the Confederates ex- 
 pected, but up the Tennessee! They were escorting shallow- 
 draft steamboats that carried eighteen full Union regiments 
 under the command of Brigadier General (Hiram) Ulysses 
 S. Grant. He was not at the time a very illustrious figure. 
 According to all reports, he had been a failure most of his 
 life. Though a graduate of West Point, Grant was known 
 to the people of St. Louis as an itinerant who had been 
 peddling firewood to them at $10 a cord. He had drifted on 
 to Galena, Illinois, and when the war broke out, had been 
 selling cowhides. His income, at best, had been $800 a 
 year — in a good year. He had been on his uppers. 
 
 The South had little to fear from a nonentity such as 
 Grant. How could one compare him in the same breath 
 with "Marse Robert," the great, brilliant, patrician Robert 
 E. Lee? 
 
 Grant was an inarticulate man, who could express him- 
 self only in action. And in action he did, a great contrast 
 to the vacillating, timid McClellan. His action sounded with 
 a dit-dit-dash upon the telegraph wires leading east. With 
 land and river-borne forces working together, the gunboats 
 shelled Fort Henry. As Anne had shrewdly predicted, the 
 defenses of the Confederates along the Tennessee were 
 
 156 
 
weak. Union troops readily marched in and took the flag. 
 Any other Union general of the time would have rested 
 upon this victory, but not U. S. Grant. The main body of 
 the Rebs was fleeing overland twelve miles to Fort Donelson 
 on the Cumberland, and Grant methodically pursued them. 
 
 All this proof of her pudding made Anne's heart race, 
 as she heard the reports. The tide was turning! 
 
 It was characteristic of Grant that he should count little 
 upon the support of the Upper Mississippi fleet in the attack 
 on Donelson. Even in the assault upon so feeble a fortress 
 as Fort Henry, the gunboats had proved themselves to be 
 unwieldy. Many had been disabled, and only the upflowing 
 current had saved them from capture by the Confederates. 
 They would obviously have been pulverized if the action 
 had taken place on the Mississippi, as originally planned. 
 
 Grant was methodically settling in for a serious land 
 siege, with 27,000 men in blue. As balmy weather turned to 
 mid-February blizzard, the men were almost freezing where 
 they stood. Not daring to light fires for warmth for fear of 
 disclosing their positions, soldiers huddled together at night, 
 tried to find shelter behind bushes, and by light of day 
 pulled the triggers of their rifles with fingers that stuck 
 cruelly to the metal. Grant had but one idea: to strike hard 
 and brutally, and this he did. 
 
 Anne was with Lincoln and Stanton in the telegraph 
 office of the War Department when the dispatches began 
 to arrive. Thomas Scott had left, a week or so ago, to im- 
 plement work in the West, with these parting words to 
 Anne: "This is your plan, and if it succeeds, the glory is 
 yours!" 
 
 But she was not looking for glory. Anne was tense with 
 apprehension. So much was at stake! So much could go 
 wrong! Stretched out wearily on the couch he so often used 
 when pushed beyond his strength, Mr. Lincoln clearly ex- 
 
 157 
 
pected the worst. There had been so many disappointments. 
 It was hard for any one of the three people gathered here 
 to believe that the first telegrams did not hold out false 
 hopes. 
 
 The pauses between the messages from Donelson were 
 long. The receiving instrument was silent now, and the 
 operator had even taken off his shoes and gone to sleep. 
 It was high time, Anne thought, that she followed suit. 
 Donelson must have been another defeat chalked up to the 
 Northern cause. 
 
 Suddenly the instrument came alive and with it the 
 telegrapher. Translating the Morse code of the wires with a 
 hasty scribble, he came to them with hands that shook. 
 General Simon Bolivar Buckner, the Confederate general 
 in command of the defense of Donelson, was asking Ulysses 
 S. Grant for terms of surrender! 
 
 The North had its first real, resounding victory, and it 
 had come so swiftly that the listening three in Washington 
 were all but overwhelmed. And it had come, amazingly, 
 along Anna Ella Carroll's proposed lines of attack. Less 
 than two weeks after the day the troops had embarked 
 upon the campaign, two forts had fallen to the Union forces, 
 with a minimum loss of life and 13,000 prisoners! Sixty-five 
 guns, some of big caliber, had been captured, along with 
 a vast store of sorely needed small arms. 
 
 A blast upon the trumpets of Jubilee. . . . 
 
 Good news, at long last! Men rushed from stores, from 
 countinghouses, to join the marching bands in Northern 
 cities. Schools recessed. And women knelt in cathedrals 
 and little churches in thanksgiving. Bells rang. Cannon 
 thundered. The spirit of civilians and soldiers alike zoomed 
 like the rockets that burst above the flames of buoyant bon- 
 fires. Maybe soon it could be all over! 
 
 The Union was now sure of Kentucky and was thrusting 
 
 158 
 
a strong arm into Tennessee; it had advanced 200 miles 
 into the huge domain of the Rebels, and was now beginning 
 to slash at Confederate vitals. And behind it all was an 
 auburn-haired (the gold had tarnished but slightly with 
 the years) woman who had worked it out on paper, who 
 had planned every move of it, because she believed, as had 
 Webster and Clay, in the essential rightness of the Union. 
 A patriot, she. 
 
 Few knew how this had actually come about, but the 
 dramatics were there. The North exulted, and the South 
 panicked. What master-mind had detected the weakness of 
 the Confederate flank and, refusing to attack the armored 
 main body, had directed the sword to the point where the 
 South was least protected? Who had perceived that the 
 Tennessee and the Cumberland were as vulnerable as the 
 underside of a terrapin? 
 
 Writing to Lee upon the heels of this disaster, the Con- 
 federate Secretary of War, Judah Benjamin, cried: "The 
 heavy blow which has been inflicted upon us by the recent 
 change of operations in Kentucky and Tennessee renders 
 necessary a change in our whole plan of operation." Soon 
 Benjamin was to declare that "our entire force must be 
 thrown [away from the seaboard] toward the Mississippi 
 for the defense of that river and the Memphis and Charles- 
 ton Railroad." 
 
 The eminent Confederate historian Pollard was to report 
 later, from the perspective of the years: "The fall of Donel- 
 son broke our center in the West." 
 
 Whose was the master-mind? In South and North the 
 question was on everyone's lips. Who was to be feared or 
 to be crowned with laurels? 
 
 Was it perhaps Henry W. Halleck who, as Commander 
 in the West, had scarcely emerged from his office in 
 St. Louis to take any action at all? Newspaper reporters, 
 
 159 
 
flocking to interview him, found him as confused as they 
 were by the sudden turn in events. 
 
 Was it Grant? He was still a subordinate, following or- 
 ders, although he had certainly executed them with sur- 
 prising precision and force. 
 
 Certainly it was not the hesitant George B. McClellan 
 who, with his enormous and inactive Army of the Potomac, 
 was still safe and snug in winter quarters just outside of 
 Washington, talking big, doing nothing. 
 
 Everyone was playing a guessing game, and none could 
 come up with an answer that really fitted. Why hide the 
 name of one who was obviously entitled to the highest 
 honor and acclaim? Who had planned the first real Northern 
 victory? Congress would insist that it be revealed. 
 
 160 
 
Silent Woman 
 in the Gallery 
 
 For days and even weeks, the halls of Congress 
 
 had been invigorated by an excitement they 
 
 had not known since the beginning of the war. 
 
 Knots of busy people clustered about men who 
 
 were supposed to have inside information, which 
 
 usually led nowhere. Rumors fluttered like sea gulls; rumors 
 
 which mostly had no confirmation. Even through the clouds 
 
 of cigar smoke, it was clear that some strange new power, 
 
 some remarkable brain, was at work. The victory had 
 
 obviously not been pure happenstance. It had been part 
 
 of an all-over plan that showed the stroke of genius. 
 
 Washington was a disturbed anthill. The empty-headed 
 were quick to leap into the vacuum and to try to win favor 
 with their constituents by offering gratitude and formal 
 thanks to names picked almost at random, to various fuddy- 
 duddy generals, to favorite sons, and even, in an excess of 
 overt enthusiasm, to such figures as the fanatical Clement L. 
 Vallandigham, the leader of the traitorous Northern Cop- 
 perheads. Someone must be named, if only for the record. 
 The real someone never was. 
 
 The more responsible people in authority visited Mr. 
 Lincoln in the form of a delegation, and they were met 
 
 161 
 
with a blank "No." "Public service requires secrecy," was 
 all that the President's spokesmen could or would tell them. 
 Everything was under control, and the facts would come 
 out later. 
 
 From time to time, a certain woman rustled into the 
 visitors' gallery of the House, and, perhaps playing a bit 
 nervously with her bracelets, reviewed a scene which had 
 in it some of the elements of farce. Should she step out and 
 reveal herself; should she make a point of taking the lead 
 in what might turn out to be one of the great dramas of 
 the age? What thoughts, what wonders, must have been 
 racing through the mind of Anna Ella Carroll in those 
 days! As the author and creator of The Plan, she was now 
 the newest and most brilliant major general in the army, 
 and an obvious sensation for the sensational press. 
 
 Dear Lemuel Evans and dear Thomas Scott were urging 
 Anne to insist upon recognition of her achievements now, 
 while the burning light of victory and glory might even 
 erase "the shame of sex." Edwin Stanton himself wanted to 
 speak up for her, in Congress or anywhere, and Ben Wade 
 had agreed so heartily that he wrote her a note, which is 
 part of the record: "Your services were so great that it is 
 hard to make the world believe it! That all this great work 
 should be brought about by a woman is inconceivable to 
 vulgar minds. . . ." 
 
 Yet even now Mr. Lincoln still refused to give the official 
 permission that would raise the curtain of silence. Just as 
 her inborn code of honor kept Anne from breaking her 
 word to the President, so innate decency and compassion 
 made the whole inner circle, the People Who Knew, with- 
 draw from further pressure upon a suddenly stricken man, 
 pushed beyond his strength. 
 
 Twelve-year-old Willie Lincoln was dead. 
 
 162 
 
The bright little boy, most lovable and promising of any 
 of the Lincoln lads, had succumbed to "a series of compli- 
 cations," accompanying what doctors of today would have 
 readily diagnosed as typhoid fever. The medical science of 
 the time was, to say the least, primitive. There was no peni- 
 cillin; there were no antibiotics. And the anxious care of 
 both parents was not enough. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln reeled under this crudest of blows, 
 and Mary Todd was so unbalanced by her grief that the 
 President had to lead her to a window in the White House 
 and point out to her, a shape gray but still distinct, the 
 outlines of an asylum for the hopelessly insane. 
 
 So the flags of triumph, the first real triumph, were whip- 
 ping in the wind all over the North as the flag over the 
 White House slipped to half-mast. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln. Husband and father. President — of 
 what? Lincoln knelt before the casket. The blue-eyed, high- 
 spirited boy was gone forever. And Anna Ella Carroll 
 watched, through her flowing tears. There was a cere- 
 monial funeral, and the circle of foreign ambassadors were 
 politely concerned; the members of the Cabinet were sym- 
 pathetic — all the great and powerful were making an ap- 
 pearance that could not compare in effect, in real sympathy, 
 with that of Lincoln's neighbors and friends back in Spring- 
 field, Illinois. How meaningless all pomp and circumstance! 
 A little boy was dead. 
 
 "Might God give this man the strength not to stagger 
 and fall under the burdens that have been placed upon him! 
 God save the nation. . . . God save us all!" Anne prayed. 
 
 And she, for one, would not add in the least to the load 
 that the tall, gaunt man was carrying. Not in this precarious 
 time. Her old friend, Roscoe Conkling of New York, was 
 fighting to keep the pages of history open for the insertion 
 
 163 
 
of her name. He was now introducing a resolution in the 
 halls of Congress to the effect that his fellows be not too 
 quick to erect lofty statues to gilded gods until the true 
 facts, and the names of the true heroes, of the War were 
 known. 
 
 Whatever Lincoln's faults and omissions, he would be 
 honest and just to her in the end. Anne must try her utmost 
 to believe this. 
 
 The clouds of glory, however misty and obscure, were 
 beginning to come to rest on Lincoln's head. He had never 
 desired this, but people generally throughout the North, 
 for lack of any other alternative, were already placing 
 laurel wreaths there. The astounding victory, and the plan 
 that lay behind it, must have originated in his brain! There 
 were other, shrewder minds who saw that the whole con- 
 ception of the Tennessee Plan more probably came from 
 someone close to him; Lincoln had given no previous signs 
 of being a military genius. 
 
 Despite his stature and his many virtues, Lincoln was 
 also an astute politician and as such quick to seize the 
 advantage. He would not use this psychological moment 
 to exalt a woman, but to demote the popular general who 
 had long been a thorn in his flesh. McClellan must go! He 
 had been entrusted with the fate of all the Northern armies 
 and he had failed in that trust. The soldiers adored "Little 
 Mac"; and housewives had his handsome countenance in 
 colored chromos upon their kitchen walls as a sort of re- 
 assurance, a father-image. Yet McClellan was not a pan- 
 acea, not a remedy for what ailed the nation. He was, to 
 put it bluntly, a general who was too timid to fight. 
 
 The main trouble was that George B. McClellan had "the 
 slows," as Mr. Lincoln expressed it. He had given the North 
 excuses instead of victories. Always exaggerating the num- 
 ber of Confederates that faced his troops, he had con- 
 
 164 
 
stantly demanded more — more men, more horses, more 
 guns, more of everything. 
 
 Lincoln was almost always disgusted and confused by 
 the military mind; now, for the time being at least, he would 
 dispense with the military geniuses, and he himself would 
 pass upon major military plans and formulate strategy. 
 According to the Constitution, the President is Commander 
 in Chief of the armed forces. And he had at his elbow the 
 woman who had outsmarted all the generals, North and 
 South, an ample reason for his confidence. 
 
 The morale of the Northern armies was suddenly at an 
 all-time high. And Mr. Lincoln, rallying from his deep 
 personal sorrow at the loss of his beloved son, was moving 
 into that month of March, 1862, as a leader who would 
 brook no opposition. 
 
 Not even from Anne! With the entire Tennessee cam- 
 paign so clearly outlined in her mind, she had scant con- 
 cern for the other important theaters of war. Her rooms at 
 home were lined with maps; they fell in skeltering up- 
 heaval from behind the gilded mirrors of her private life 
 and for a time thoroughly obscured it. 
 
 On to Vicksburg! Its fall, she believed, would mean 
 more than the taking of a hundred Richmonds. With the 
 South unnerved by the first blow to the solar plexus at 
 Donelson, it could be staggered by rear assaults upon its 
 major Mississippi fort. The Union forces must move 
 quickly and take Vicksburg by surprise! Perhaps the war 
 could be over in the early summer! Was war, like the sea, 
 to be made of women's tears? Already the slaughter, the 
 list of dead and wounded, was incredible, fantastic. No 
 other war in recorded history had higher casualties. 
 
 In October of that year of 1862, Anna Ella Carroll was 
 still reminding Secretary Stanton of the basic concept in- 
 herent in her original plan. She had outlined it and turned 
 
 165 
 
it in almost a year before, but the follow-through on it had 
 faltered, following the desperate and bloody battle at Shiloh, 
 in April. 
 Anne wrote: 
 
 As I understand, an expedition is about to go down the river 
 for the purpose of reducing Vicksburgh. I have prepared the 
 enclosed map to show more clearly the obstacles to be encoun- 
 tered in the contemplated assault. It is impossible to take Vicks- 
 burgh from the front without too great a loss of life and material, 
 because the river is only about a half mile wide, and our forces 
 will be in point-blank range of their guns, not only from water 
 batteries lining the shore, but from those that crown the hills, 
 while the enemy will be protected by the elevation from the 
 range of our fire. 
 
 By exarnining the map I enclose, you will see why a place 
 of so apparent little strength has been able to resist the com- 
 bined fleets of the Upper and Lower Mississippi [New Orleans 
 had fallen]. The most economical plan for its reduction now is 
 to push a column from Memphis or Corinth, down the Missis- 
 sippi Central railroad to Jackson [capital of the State of Missis- 
 sippi]. 
 
 The occupation of Jackson and the command of the railroad 
 to New Orleans would compel complete immediate evacuation 
 of Vicksburgh, as well as the retreat of the entire Rebel army 
 east of that line. . . . With regard to the canal, Vicksburgh can 
 be rendered useless to the Confederate army upon the very 
 first rise of the river; but I do not advise this as Vicksburgh 
 belongs to the United States, and we desire to hold and fortify 
 it. The Mississippi River at Vicksburgh and the Vicksburgh- 
 Jackson Railroad will be necessary to us as a base for future 
 operations. Vicksburgh might have been reduced eight months 
 ago, as I then advised, after the fall of Fort Henry, and with 
 much more ease than it can be done today. 
 
 The war, to Anne, was a sort of gigantic chessboard, but 
 she had little or no patience with the slow moving of the 
 
 166 
 
pawns. It was time to risk the queen and move the chief 
 weight of the Northern army to the west, to achieve the fall 
 of Vicksburg and make directly for the Gulf. It would take 
 years and torrents of spilled blood to prove that, even be- 
 fore the war was eight months old, she had put her dainty, 
 feminine finger on the checkmate move. The North could 
 win only by cutting the South in two, and she — a woman, 
 a socialite, a publicity writer — had clearly pointed out the 
 simplest way to accomplish this. 
 
 While Anne's was the master-plan and basic concept 
 that, in all essence, would be followed by the Union gen- 
 erals who finally crushed the gallant South, she, being only 
 a woman, was forced to sit back and watch and listen while 
 others eagerly claimed credit for her work and her plans. 
 Like many another complex problem suddenly dissolved 
 by some ingenious invention, the simpleness and essential 
 value of her Tennessee Plan were so evident (after she had 
 formulated it, and it had begun to work) that military 
 geniuses who had earlier glimpsed only fragments of the 
 concept, limited to driving the Rebels from Kentucky and 
 Tennessee, demanded title to the whole. They contradicted 
 each other to the point of the ridiculous. Everybody had 
 dreamed up Anne's plan except Anne herself! 
 
 The generals were flying kites, and Lincoln could at any 
 moment cut their strings. Yet somehow he wanted these 
 military men to feel that they were doing the whole business 
 of saving the nation. Let them squabble; the truth would 
 come out later. 
 
 Meanwhile, Anne's continuing work for the President 
 continued to be a well-kept secret. There was only an occa- 
 sional slip. One evening, when a group of congressmen 
 were conferring with Mr. Lincoln in the White House, 
 they were interrupted by a messenger sent by Anne. Finger- 
 ing the note the boy had brought, the President turned and 
 
 167 
 
looked out of the window. Through the murk and beyond 
 the lanterns in the far distance that marked the tents of the 
 Union forces was the looming shadow of the Confederacy. 
 Speaking almost to himself, Lincoln said: "This Anna Ella 
 Carroll is the top of the Carroll race. When the history of 
 this war is written, she will stand a good bit taller than ever 
 old Charles Carroll did!" 
 
 What did he mean? She was just a busybody Washington 
 society woman, wasn't she? Only one of those present was 
 in the know, and he reported the incident to Anne, think- 
 ing that it would please her. It certainly did. But she had 
 reason to wish that Mr. Lincoln would also soon see his 
 way clear to flatter her in a financial way! 
 
 168 
 
n 
 
 Tapestry of War 
 
 In her mind, Anne could hear always the dis- 
 tant, menacing rumble of cannon. Some day 
 they would be silent, and what would happen 
 then? Was it possible that any ultimate good 
 could have been achieved by this unutterably 
 horrible war that, like an insatiable demon, was devouring 
 the lives of the finest young men on both sides — and the 
 spirits and the hearts of those they had left behind them? 
 Even if the Union could be saved, the peace could still be 
 lost. 
 
 As Anne pushed aside the pile of unpaid bills that had 
 been rising steadily upon her desk, the future had become 
 almost as great a concern as the immediate present. Liter- 
 ary endeavors for the government were now pouring stead- 
 ily from her facile pen; articles of war information for the 
 general public, letters to the newspapers, memoranda to 
 the War Department, and now a pamphlet entitled The 
 Relations of the National Government to Revolted Citizens, 
 published late in the spring of '62. 
 
 With Mr. Lincoln, she was exploring the problems of 
 reconstruction, already being faced in some of the border 
 states; her pamphlet was a reply to Senator Charles Sumner, 
 
 169 
 
who led the antislavery radicals. His was a vindictive group, 
 insistent that the Rebels be made to eat the bitter bread 
 of defeat, that Lee and Davis should be hanged "on a sour- 
 apple tree," that all property of Rebels should be confiscated 
 as punishment for their treason! But this was expressly 
 forbidden by the Constitution, as Anne herself succinctly 
 pointed out, setting forth Lincoln's views as well as her 
 own: 
 
 "Peace can only be restored to the country by extending 
 to the people the shield of the Constitution. The Union of 
 these states cannot be restored under a mutilated Constitu- 
 tion, or a different one." 
 
 The radicals were also being insistent that Negro slaves 
 throughout the South be freed by immediate proclamation, 
 t>ut Lincoln refused to be pressured. It would be a grand, 
 theatric gesture, but also a hollow one, if the slaves were 
 given nothing save their technical freedom. Few of them 
 liad any place to go, any work to do, anything at all but 
 the existing pattern. 
 
 Listening to Anne's tales of Patty Cannon and her calcu- 
 lated horrors, and of the desperate plight of human beings 
 freed only to become the prey of the unscrupulous, Lincoln 
 was now working with Anne on a plan for a Negro colony, 
 probably in Central America. Here the Negroes could 
 achieve true independence. Like Liberia in Africa, this was 
 a long-cherished dream of humanitarian Southerners like 
 Anne's father; and now they thought that the day was 
 coming when it might be realized. 
 
 It was, as we can see from the perspective of later years, 
 completely unrealistic. The American Negro, by this time 
 many of whom were part white or even mostly white, was 
 not equipped for his ancestral jungles or any other jungles. 
 He was somewhere halfway in between savagery and civili- 
 zation. He was not ready to go out on his own. 
 
 170 
 
But it seemed on high levels that a proclamation was the 
 first step in the right direction, and that others must follow. 
 Writing and rewriting his Emancipation Proclamation, Lin- 
 coln was not ready to deliver it to the nation until January 
 of 1863. 
 
 As the nation alternated between hope and despair 
 through the weary years of the internecine war, so Anna 
 Ella Carroll herself flickered. She had been borne into the 
 shining clouds by the Emancipation Proclamation which 
 clearly defined this holocaust as a real war for freedom, 
 but she was also having to face continually the grueling 
 realities of service without pay. Mr. Lincoln had promised 
 that "she will be taken care of," but — preoccupied in many 
 other directions — had as yet done nothing about it. 
 
 Her bill had now mounted to $6250, much of it for 
 printing and traveling expenses Anne had paid from her 
 own pocket; but all the War Department felt they could 
 pay her now, without an embarrassing special warrant from 
 Congress, was $750! 
 
 It is possible that Lincoln assumed all Carrolls were rich. 
 Often entertained at the Washington mansion of Anne's 
 somewhat remote Carroll relatives, he observed the 
 smoothly oiled machinery of the aristocratic household. 
 He did not pause to consider that there Anne, like himself, 
 was only a guest. To the homespun lawyer from Illinois, 
 Anne was a great lady. Certainly she carried herself like 
 one and dressed to suit the part. 
 
 Lincoln's experience of women was limited, to say the 
 least. He had had a very vague and tenuous love affair 
 with Miss Rutledge and had managed to reach her bedside 
 as she was dying. He had married the pushing, ambitious 
 Mary Todd. To judge by his own wife, the only woman he 
 really knew, women were all frivolous and extravagant. 
 They ran up bills behind their husbands' backs. Perhaps 
 
 171 
 
because Mary Todd Lincoln spent hundreds of dollars 
 adorning her charms with such gowns as her rose moire 
 antique with pearls at the throat, it is possible that subcon- 
 sciously he could only put all women, even Anne, into the 
 same category. He could not see, and only another woman 
 and a catty one at that, would note that Anne's ball gowns 
 had been twice remade (by clever Leah) and that she was 
 now replacing her jewels with roses. 
 
 Manlike, Lincoln, for all his inner sweetness and under- 
 standing, could also be harsh and quick in his judgments. 
 He seemed neither to know nor care that Anne had never 
 been an heiress, that the family fortunes had failed, and 
 that she had really been making her way for herself and 
 for her family since she was less than twenty years of age! 
 She had protected her slaves and personally had managed 
 to free twenty of them at staggering expense. She had de- 
 pleted her resources in trying to hold the family plantation 
 together, and now she had no income. 
 
 Lemuel Evans was still urging her to marry him now. 
 After the war, they could go on down into Texas and seek 
 a fresh fortune. Anne loved him, but if she could only make 
 him understand why she must still refuse him! Love of 
 one person for another was one thing, but she was involved 
 with giving the whole measure of her devotion to her 
 country. 
 
 Women everywhere had been drawn out of the orbit of 
 their personal lives to meet this terrible emergency. And 
 while some of them might be on the government payroll, 
 as Anne was not, the desire for selfish gain was farthest 
 from their minds. Women, of both the North and South, 
 were giving the last full measure of devotion. 
 
 Mary Livermore, bright, sensitive, and — with her hus- 
 band — editor of a Chicago journal, was tending the 
 
 172 
 
wounded and writing of a suffering that found its duplica- 
 tion in almost every battlefield. She wrote: 
 
 Hundreds who fell at the beginning [of the attack on Donel- 
 son] when the ground was soft and muddy were frozen to the 
 earth and had to be cut out of the ground. Their removal was 
 torture, as few ambulances and wagons had springs, and jolted 
 and pitched them down from the precipitous heights where they 
 had lain two or three days in their bloody and frozen uniforms. 
 Hundreds died miserably before relief came to them. Surgeons 
 . . . were few in number and medical supplies were utterly 
 inadequate to the occasions. 
 
 Gentle Dorothea Dix, famous for the pioneering work 
 she had already done to give the mentally disturbed humane 
 treatment and understanding, to end the "snake-pit" ap- 
 proach, had been called to duty at the age of almost sixty 
 in order to try to bring arrangement into the hit-and-miss 
 corps of hospital nurses. Dauntless Clara Barton was on 
 the battle front, close behind the firing line, doing all that 
 was within her power to pick up the wounded and care 
 for them tenderly, regardless of whether they wore the 
 Union blue or the Confederate gray. And it is part of the 
 record that quaint "Mother" Bickerdyke cruised the battle- 
 fields at night, refusing all rest until she had assured her- 
 self that no man remained alive and unaided among the 
 fallen. 
 
 No, Anna Ella Carroll was not the only woman who 
 stood up to be counted. Along the home front, women were 
 the driving force of the newly formed Sanitary Commission, 
 and in the great cities of the North they were arranging 
 fairs that raised millions of dollars for sorely needed medi- 
 cines, supplies, and convalescent homes. Also, women were 
 more and more taking the places of the absent men in fac- 
 tories and on farms. 
 
 173 
 
Inspired by two great leaders in the cause of women's 
 equality — Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony 
 — women everywhere were undertaking the monumental 
 task of securing hundreds of thousands of signatures to 
 petitions urging that the Emancipation Proclamation be 
 made the law of the land. The Constitution must itself pro- 
 hibit slavery, now and forever! In the ringing words of 
 these leaders: "When a mother lays her son upon the altar 
 of her country, she asks an object worthy of her sacrifice. 
 In nursing the sick and wounded, knitting socks, scraping 
 lint, and making jellies, the best and bravest may weary if 
 the thoughts mount not in faith beyond and above it all. 
 Work is worship only when a noble purpose fills the 
 soul. . . ." 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll was not alone among her sex in de- 
 votion to the cause; women, on both sides of Mason and 
 Dixon's line, were giving their all. Slipping back and forth 
 between the lines in various disguises, women were among 
 the cleverest and most daring of the spies, the espionage 
 agents. Even if caught, chivalry would be apt to prevail 
 on either side; a lady was a lady, and thus not likely to be 
 hanged. 
 
 Nowhere was courage more heroic and more marked 
 than among the women, the ladies, of the South. With the 
 grimmest determination, they were fighting every inch of 
 the way with their men, their sons and husbands and 
 brothers and cousins. Turning bright faces to loved ones 
 on leave, dancing and flirting in their old party frocks, 
 they still tried to present the outward appearance of the 
 belles men liked to see. Drawing upon their scanty sup- 
 plies, they were sending the very best that they had to the 
 front — cabbages now, instead of fancy dressing cases, no 
 cakes, but bread baked from grain that someone had walked 
 miles to carry and have ground into flour. The women were 
 
 174 
 
making shoes and uniforms, making medicines from herbs, 
 and they were now improvising hospitals in churches and 
 schoolhouses. They were infusing the men they loved with 
 their own indomitable spirit. 
 
 It was so both in the South and in the North. In the 
 bloody tapestry of a war riddled with intrigue, corruption, 
 and needless suffering, the names of thousands of women, 
 known and unknown, still stand out like shining threads 
 of gold. Each was in her way trying to stanch the wounds 
 of a land that was bleeding to death. And things would 
 never again be the same. 
 
 175 
 
April Can Be Cruelest 
 
 As Anne sat night after night in the telegraph 
 office of the War Department, usually with 
 Lincoln and Stanton and Wade, to catch the 
 latest dispatches from the various fronts, she 
 could see the outlines of her original strategy for 
 the Western armies now vivid, now obscured, taking form 
 and fading, all too often thwarted by jealousies among 
 generals vying for place and prominence, by retreats and 
 withdrawals to "previously prepared positions." The for- 
 tunes of this terrible, internecine war were parlous and 
 uncertain still. 
 
 With maps and charts and logistic plans spread out be- 
 fore her, she was now working most closely with Ulysses S. 
 Grant, the nobody-general who had come up from nowhere 
 to make some sense in the almost senseless situation and 
 who was now undertaking the siege of Vicksburg. And 
 Vicksburg, it was increasingly apparent to Anne, could 
 only be taken from the rear. She had tried to point this out 
 more than a year before, when the North could have taken 
 the fortress with the shock value of surprise. 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll was, as history proves, a military 
 strategist of the first rank, even though she was not a grad- 
 
 176 
 
uate of the military academy at West Point. And President 
 Lincoln knew it. 
 
 But Anne had to cope with General in Chief Charles 
 Halleck, known as "Old Brains," though he seldom joined 
 her and Lincoln and Stanton in their nightly vigils. A schol- 
 arly and self-satisfied man, General Halleck was generally 
 presumed to have great strategic ability; and he took pleas- 
 ure in basking in the reflected glories of the actual victories 
 of Grant and of the effective Tennessee Plan originating 
 from a noncombatant, a civilian, a woman! Surly and gruff, 
 tactless and overbearing, he had soon become one of the 
 most unpopular and disliked officials in wartime Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Lincoln had been plagued with pompous military men; 
 the South was rich in leaders like Lee and Jackson and 
 dozens of others. But while ineffectual Northern generals 
 peppered headquarters with telegrams, this "brain trust" 
 did not hear from Grant for anxious days. Perhaps, being 
 realistic, he expected his actions to speak louder than his 
 words. But there were gossips and irresponsible newsmen 
 who presumed to say that his silence was due to his in- 
 temperance. Mr. Lincoln took a dry view of that; every- 
 one knows his remark: "If I knew what brand of liquor 
 Grant drinks, I would send a barrel of it to every other 
 general in the field!" 
 
 As a matter of fact, there is nothing in the records to 
 show that Grant was an alcoholic, or that he drank more 
 than anyone else might have done under the circumstances. 
 That whole story is legendary, and the indications would 
 seem to prove otherwise. Newspapermen of the time were 
 at a loss for personality stories; they made them up with 
 slight regard for ethics. 
 
 The ancient horsehair sofa in the telegraph office was 
 perhaps a sort of haven for Abe Lincoln, a man pushed 
 
 177 
 
almost beyond his strength but somehow rising to every 
 occasion. There he was away from the cold grandeur of 
 the White House, from his nagging and neurotic, perhaps 
 psychotic, wife and from memories of his son Willie. 
 Stretched out on the sofa, in the cozy warmth of the tele- 
 graph room, his roughhewn face would sometimes lose its 
 mask of weariness. Anne, or one of the other devotees, 
 would wake him from his nap to bring the important news. 
 Important news from Grant, if at all. None of the other 
 generals had much of good news to report. 
 
 At that time, the War Department was but a short-cut, 
 a block or so away from the White House. Yet the way 
 there was lined with trees and thick shrubbery, a source of 
 concern to the Secret Service, who were charged with the 
 President's safety. Mr. Lincoln's casual habit of walking 
 that way alone, at any hour of the day or night, was well 
 known to the public. An assassin could easily lie in con- 
 cealment in the bushes. But Lincoln shrugged away all 
 warnings. The Rebels would gain little or nothing by get- 
 ting him out of the way, he reassured his would-be pro- 
 tectors. And if they were actually determined on killing 
 him, they would manage it anyway. 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll and others close to the President did 
 not agree. He should, they insisted, take more reasonable 
 precautions and not continue to tempt fate. He was insist- 
 ing, too, on taking long, unguarded walks and drives all 
 over the capital city whenever the mood moved him. It was 
 his whim, his preference, in those trying days. 
 
 But the tides of war had brought a rabble to the gates; 
 Washington was now overcrowded with all sorts of stran- 
 gers. Few were as innocent and pathetic as the displaced 
 "freed" Negroes who had come expecting somehow to find 
 Sweet Beulah Land, the wonderful land of promise. In 
 their childish but understandable confusion many of them 
 counted on Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln to be the benevolent 
 
 178 
 
"Massa and Mistuss," heads of the plantation. They were 
 bewildered and lost when it turned out otherwise. One old 
 colored mammy complained that though she had been here 
 in Washington for eight months, "the Mistuss," meaning 
 Mrs. Lincoln, hadn't even given her so much as a shift, 
 or change of underclothing! Yet the basic trust of the 
 majority was touching, and those who had talked with or 
 even glimpsed Lincoln said that "he walk de earth like de 
 Lawd." 
 
 Lincoln was deeply concerned by all this. Whatever 
 would become of these poor trusting souls, victims of a 
 "war to make men free"? What of the displaced persons, 
 the ragged deserters, the soldiers hobbling along on stumps 
 for legs? Sometimes Anne hid her eyes as she was driven 
 through the streets. 
 
 As that bitter year of 1863 moved into summer, terrific 
 battles were raging in the East as well as the West. And 
 then two victories on one momentous day, the fourth of 
 July. After a six-month siege, Vicksburg had surrendered 
 to Grant, and the great "Marse Robert," General Lee, was 
 finally retreating before the overpowering forces of General 
 George G. Meade at Gettysburg. Should Meade pursue the 
 shattered Confederate forces, the rebellion might soon be 
 ended and the desperately awaited peace be at hand. It 
 was a consummation devoutly to be wished, but it was 
 not to be. 
 
 As church bells rang and rockets of victory burst into 
 the Northern air, a jubilant crowd in Washington pressed 
 Lincoln for a speech. He had just been driven in by car- 
 riage from his summer retreat in the country; but on this 
 occasion he was, for him, curiously offhand and noncom- 
 mittal: 
 
 "I am not prepared to make a speech worthy of the 
 occasion." 
 
 Lincoln went on to praise, in general terms, the men 
 
 179 
 
who had fought so valiantly and who had seemingly turned 
 the tide. He went on to say: "I dislike to mention the name 
 of one single officer, lest I do wrong to those I might forget. 
 Recent events bring up glorious names, and particularly 
 prominent ones, but these I will not mention." 
 
 Anne felt the color rising in her cheeks as Mr. Lincoln 
 hesitated in his impromptu speech. Was he at last about 
 to give her publicly the recognition so well earned and so 
 long overdue? But he stumbled on to an ending that puzzled 
 the press and everyone else except Anne and her intimates. 
 "Having said this much — I — I will now take up the music." 
 
 The military band, taking this as a cue, struck up with 
 full fanfare; if the President had intended to say more, it 
 was drowned out by the blaring of trumpets. 
 
 General Meade did not seize advantage of the oppor- 
 tunity and take off after Lee. Meade, as Lincoln said in 
 disgust, was acting "like a duck hit on the head." Grant, 
 on the other hand, was losing no time in reorganizing his 
 army for the drive on to Mobile, the final point in Anne's 
 far-reaching and farseeing plan of 1861. He was thwarted 
 in this by Halleck, who outranked him, and was forced 
 instead to march his troops off to the relief of Chattanooga. 
 "It would have been an easy thing to capture Mobile at 
 the time I proposed to go there," Grant was to write later 
 in his memoirs. He could then have attacked the enemy from 
 the rear and inflicted, in his own words, "inestimable dam- 
 age upon the country from which his [Bragg's] army and 
 also Lee's were yet receiving their supplies." The words 
 were almost a paraphrase of what Anna Ella Carroll had 
 said earlier. 
 
 "I was so much impressed with this idea [the Tennessee 
 Plan in Anne's presentation] that I made several requests 
 to be allowed to follow through on it." The entire approach 
 had opened his mind to strategy on a grand scale, instead 
 
 180 
 
of limiting battles to a confined and limited scale, as here- 
 tofore. 
 
 Anne watched and waited, during those dark days, as 
 the stars of other Northern generals faded and Grant's 
 steadily rose. Despite malicious comment in the press, de- 
 spite overt requests for his removal, Lincoln stood firm; 
 he could not spare this man. "He fights!" the President said. 
 Ulysses S. Grant had come to stand for "Unconditional 
 Surrender." 
 
 Grant was Anne's idea of a fighting general, as he was 
 Mr. Lincoln's. No matter how he looked, and usually he 
 looked like an unmade bed. Brady's pictures of the time 
 show the general as short and unprepossessing, whiskery, 
 disheveled. He was scarcely the public concept of the spit- 
 and-polish military leader. But he got the job done. It was 
 not until March of 1864 that Lincoln called him to Wash- 
 ington and gave him supreme command of the armies of 
 the North. 
 
 Anna Ella Carroll was as usual at the weekly White 
 House reception when a sudden hush fell over the clickety- 
 clack of tongues. At the entrance to the East Room she saw 
 a stubby man in a seedy, unpressed uniform, lacking some 
 of its insignia, who was chewing nervously on an unlighted 
 stogie and obviously very much embarrassed at the atten- 
 tion he was receiving. This was General Grant, who had 
 arrived unannounced and unheralded. He had the look of 
 a man who would rather take Vicksburg again than face the 
 men and women from Washington high-level society and 
 pohtics who swarmed at him from every side. According 
 to all reports, it was a hullabaloo. Hoopskirts were crushed 
 and feet were trampled and even tables and chairs were 
 overturned. Grant hastily retreated, as he had never re- 
 treated before the Confederates. Finally he stood on a sofa, 
 where with his slight stature all could see him even if they 
 
 181 
 
could not grasp his hand. He was the "belle of the ball," 
 and hated every minute of it. 
 
 Anne was formally introduced later to this upcoming 
 military genius with whom she had communicated so often 
 by telegraph. With her master-minding in Washington, and 
 him in the field, they had between them generated and put 
 into action the electric force field known as The Tennessee 
 Plan. Grant's eyes, like hers, were blue and resolute. It was 
 a time for resolution. 
 
 As the war approached its later phases, the slaughter 
 grew ever more tragic and tremendous, wasting the best of 
 the young men on both sides — if not on the battlefield, in 
 the prison camps. The wharves along the Potomac were 
 glowing with the ghastly lights of the hospital ships bringing 
 back the casualties, the broken and maimed bodies left 
 from the battles of the Wilderness. It seemed to Anne that 
 the grim procession of ambulances would never stop, and 
 that peace would never come while an able-bodied young 
 man remained alive in either North or South. And if nerves 
 were now at the breaking point in Washington, what must 
 it have been like in Richmond? 
 
 How could the Confederacy hold out so long? What spirit 
 her beloved people had and how sad the consequence! 
 Anne thought much of this, being a Baltimore belle and 
 seeing both sides of the conflict. The forces of the South 
 were dwindling; old men and beardless boys were feeble 
 reinforcements. The railroads of Dixie were so worn that 
 they were all but useless. The supplies of the South were so 
 cut off by blockade of the ports and strangulation from the 
 West that they were close to exhaustion. And yet the gallant 
 South fought on. 
 
 Anne could not keep from shuddering as General Wil- 
 liam T. Sherman marched to the sea all the way from 
 Atlanta, ravaging the heartland of the South, spreading 
 
 132 
 
terror and flame. The South might come to concede de- 
 feat, but its people would never forgive this shock to the 
 noncombatants, to the women and children, this burning of 
 the ancient homes, this pillage and rape. The North was 
 leaving scars that would never heal. Anne knew her South; 
 she knew the poison of hatred that would seep from gen- 
 eration to generation. 
 
 She was continuing her day by day work with the Presi- 
 dent on the many-headed hydra of reconstruction if and 
 when; it had to be planned on a tremendous scale. She had 
 further explored the unprecedented constitutional and legal 
 angles in her pamphlet, Rights of the Seceded States; and, 
 while her earlier contributions of thousands of dollars in 
 time, money, and skill had not been repaid (and never 
 were), at least at long last a way had been found to put her 
 on salary. She had a special niche in the Department of the 
 Interior, albeit three years late. 
 
 Somehow, 1865 held hope of a gentler spring. Lincoln 
 had given his second inaugural address, this time with no 
 fumbling. He closed the message with the unforgettable 
 words: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; . . . 
 let us . . . bind up the nation's wounds; . . . care for 
 him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, 
 and orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a 
 just and lasting peace . . ." 
 
 Anne was also deeply disturbed about the growingly 
 ominous threats against Lincoln's life and against those of 
 his inner circle. Anne herself had received numerous anony- 
 mous notes warning her that she would pay for her role as 
 "traitor to the South"; since she was a semiofficial member 
 of the Cabinet, she had to share the very real danger. Yet 
 she held to the thoughts Lincoln had expressed in the inau- 
 gural speech; it was what she felt in her inmost heart. Anne 
 had with the years come to have a new concept, a new 
 
 183 
 
understanding, of this uncouth rail splitter from Illinois. The 
 man had grown right before her eyes, slowly, gradually, 
 naturally. 
 
 The redbud and the dogwood were blooming now; the 
 air was soft with April; and gallant General Lee was sur- 
 rendering his sword to Grant at Appomattox (who handed 
 it back, in tribute to an adversary worthy of that steel) . The 
 cruel war was all but over. The terms of surrender, at 
 Lincoln's insistence, were not harsh; and the tired, worn, 
 valiant soldiers of the South were permitted to take home 
 their horses or mules for the spring plowing. "Officers will 
 retain their side arms." Strong men wept like April rain, 
 and men in blue and men in gray embraced each other with 
 relief. 
 
 The guns were silent; was it safe now to relax and re- 
 joice? The more thoughtful, like Anne, wondered. The 
 ordeal had been so long and so full of terrible anguish, 
 "Ring out wild bells" in all the Northern cities, where peo- 
 ple hoped that this might once again become the United 
 States of America. 
 
 Important guests invited to see the minor English comedy 
 play, Our American Cousin, in the Presidential box at 
 Ford's Theater in Washington, on the night of April 14 
 had refused, each with his separate excuse. The excuse was 
 probably just Mary Todd Lincoln, who had been almost 
 insanely difficult of recent weeks, but they were too polite 
 to touch upon that. General and Mrs. Grant had declined 
 their invitation, and the Stantons couldn't make it. "Sorry, 
 Mr. President. Some other time." Instead, Mr. and Mrs. 
 Lincoln had for company only a romantic young couple, 
 recently engaged, and an impersonal, ineffectual guard sup- 
 posedly stationed at the doorway of the box, who decided 
 rather to watch the play. 
 
 The Presidential box was pleasant, comfortable. Lincoln 
 
 184 
 
enjoyed the theater and often attended, to rock to and fro 
 in his special armchair and, unless he fell asleep from utter 
 weariness, applaud the drama or the farce. 
 
 What happened that night is history. But at the moment 
 Washington was rife with rumors and hysteria. Anne knew 
 not what to think. It seemed that Lincoln had been shot by 
 an erratic young actor named John Wilkes Booth, and 
 there were rumors that the entire Lincoln Cabinet had been 
 assassinated. All Washington was in a dither before the 
 coming of the next dawn, while the President's life was 
 slowly ebbing. 
 
 Slowly the facts emerged. Secretary Seward had been 
 severely attacked as part of what was later shown to be a 
 mass-murder plan. Anne and others had been spared this 
 terroristic assault. But Abe Lincoln would not be at the 
 helm of state any more; his gentle hand would not be there 
 to guide the reconstruction and to weld the broken nation 
 together. He was not to breathe the sweet air of peace, nor 
 would he be there to stand firm and take care of unfinished 
 business! 
 
 185 
 
File for the Future 
 
 As Anne saw the cruelty and hatred suddenly 
 released in Washington following Lincoln's 
 death, there were times when she must have 
 been faint at heart, wondering whether any of 
 her work, her dedication to principles, had 
 really been worth the effort. It was a period of severe dis- 
 illusionment for her as for many others. They had fought 
 to keep the United States of America whole and in one 
 piece; but now, even with peace and victory, there seemed 
 only chaos. Andrew Johnson, stepping into the Presidency, 
 could not cope with the situation; perhaps even Lincoln 
 could not have done so. Reconstruction had become retribu- 
 tion instead; the proud South must be made to pay and pay 
 until its head was bowed. 
 
 Gone were her and Mr. Lincoln's high hopes for mercy, 
 their plans for resettlement of the Negroes somewhere. The 
 assassination had done the Republican radicals in Congress 
 a double service; it had eliminated a strong, just, humanist 
 President, and it had inflamed sentiment against the fallen 
 Confederacy. It was not hard to make many thousands of 
 people believe that Jefferson Davis and other Southern 
 leaders had used John Wilkes Booth as their tool. The 
 
 186 
 
traitors must be punished Meanwhile carpetbaggers in- 
 vaded the stricken South, and above Mason and Dixon's 
 line people sang, "So we'll hang Jeff Davis to a sour-apple 
 tree. . . ." 
 
 Ulysses S. Grant might change all this, and Anne set out 
 to back him. He was decent; he was honest; and he was being 
 boomed for the Presidency. Anne had no reason to presume 
 that he would not support her demand now for recognition 
 and payment for her services to the nation. General Grant 
 had never personally laid claim to the honor of creating the 
 Tennessee strategy. 
 
 She was an idealist, but the times were materialistic. She 
 had been patient far too long, and certainly she need be 
 silent no longer for security reasons. She was sure that 
 Lincoln would have spoken up stoutly for her had he lived, 
 but she still had a strong coterie of prominent figures who 
 were anxious to rally to her support. Stanton, before his own 
 death, had said, "Her course was the most remarkable in 
 the war. She got no pay, and did the great work that made 
 others famous." As a mere woman, in a time when women 
 had no vote and were considered second-class citizens, she 
 had had to stand aside while others reaped the glory; but 
 now she would step forward. It was a matter of principle to 
 the fiery, brilliant redhead — and to those who wished to 
 see justice done her and the truth come out. 
 
 Yet Anna Ella Carroll had not reckoned with the fact 
 that she knew too much and had done too much where 
 others had stumbled and failed. Grant was now being por- 
 trayed as an all-conquering Caesar; his war record would 
 almost automatically elect him President, with offices to 
 bestow upon the greedy thousands of his followers, who 
 hastily climbed upon the bandwagon. Grant was suddenly 
 almost godlike; biographers were already magnifying his 
 image. As also with Lincoln then and ever since, biographers 
 
 187 
 
and historians had discovered that they had a very good 
 thing on which to build important reputations for them- 
 selves. Why disturb the growing myth? They preferred to 
 ignore the simple truth soon to be recorded in a stack of 
 documents in the Library of Congress, in leading maga- 
 zines, such as the Century, Godey's, and North American 
 Review, and in a two-volume biography of Anne herself, 
 written and largely published during her lifetime. As a mat- 
 ter of historical justice, one has only to suggest that these be 
 examined; they are impressive and they speak for them- 
 selves — and for Anne. They speak as clearly and forcibly 
 today, when resurrected from the files, as they did in the 
 time of Anna Ella Carroll. The published statements of 
 such men as Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, one of the most 
 powerful men in the Senate all through the war: 
 
 I cannot take leave of public life [he wrote Anne] without 
 expressing my deep sense of your services to the country during 
 the whole period of our national troubles. Although a citizen of 
 a State almost unanimously disloyal and deeply sympathizing 
 with secession, especially the wealthy and aristocratical class of 
 her people, to which you belonged, yet, in the midst of such 
 surroundings, you emancipated your own slaves at a great sacri- 
 fice of personal interest, and with your powerful pen defended 
 the cause of Union and loyalty as ably and effectively as it has 
 ever been defended. . . . From my position on the Committee 
 on the Conduct of the War, I know that some of the most suc- 
 cessful expeditions of the war were suggested by you, among 
 which I might instance the expedition up the Tennessee River. 
 
 Wade was incensed on Anne's behalf, and after return- 
 ing to Washington from Ohio, foregathered with Lemuel 
 Evans and Thomas Scott to press her case before the Senate 
 Committee on Military Affairs. They were going to insist 
 that she be declared a major general, with full pay for that 
 rank since November of 1861. 
 
 188 
 
The fat was in the fire, to the embarrassment of the 
 fervent partisans of Grant, who tried their best to make 
 her claims sound absurd. The great hero of the war must 
 remain high on his pedestal, and the public must continue 
 to think that Grant had climbed there all by himself. Im- 
 portant public papers corroborating Anne's statements 
 mysteriously disappeared from government files. Political 
 Mumbo Jumbo and red tape must somehow keep this 
 woman quiet! 
 
 It had been a man's war, and most officialdom would 
 prefer to have forgotten the valiant assistance of the women. 
 The ladies could not have the right to vote; but newly 
 freed, illiterate Negro field hands had the right of suffrage. 
 What utter nonsense that a woman should expect any 
 recognition or reward, and how preposterous that any 
 woman should be made a major general! Women were 
 getting too big for their pantalettes! 
 
 Stanton and Attorney General Edward Bates were dead, 
 but as Anne's other self-appointed knights fought her cause 
 from various angles, she was herself preparing a voluminous 
 statement of the whole story for presentation before the 
 42nd Congress. Called a Memorial, and amply documented, 
 it was published on June 8, 1872. 
 
 It would seem impossible for legislators to pass lightly 
 over the statements of men of such unquestioned integrity 
 as those Anne quoted here: Edward Bates, Thomas Scott, 
 the famous orator Edward Everett, the noted lawyer, Re- 
 verdy Johnson, Benjamin Wade, Lemuel Evans, now Chief 
 Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, and many other 
 prominent figures. So Anne thought. To the unequivocal 
 testimony of these eminent men, she added her own tactful 
 note: "In preferring my claim to this, I cannot, by any pos- 
 sibility, detract from our brave and heroic commanders to 
 whom the country owes so much; and, so far from opposing 
 
 189 
 
me, I believe that, as a class, they would be gratified to see 
 me or anyone properly rewarded, according to the part 
 performed in this mighty drama." 
 
 This Memorial was not the first of her requests but the 
 most complete and incisive one; and the reaction to it was 
 so favorable that final resolution of the problem seemed 
 immediate. Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan, offi- 
 cially appointed to look into the whole affair, reported: "She 
 did more for her country than all the military generals. She 
 showed where to fight and how to strike the rebellion in 
 the head, and also possessed judicial learning so compre- 
 hensive and concise in its style of argument that the gov- 
 ernment gladly sat at her feet to learn the wisdom of its 
 powers." 
 
 Once her claims were settled, Anne would marry Lemuel 
 Evans and go on a belated honeymoon. But it was not des- 
 tined to be. Despite the weight of the evidence, the forces 
 against Anne were cunning and shrewd. They were deter- 
 mined that Grant be reelected, even though the past 
 four years of scandalous corruption in his administration 
 had cast deep shadows upon him. He was not a fraud. Anne 
 would have been one of the first to insist that he was not, but 
 he was an innocent in politics and the dupe of scheming 
 friends. The sensational press would seize upon any public 
 recognition of Anna Ella Carroll's services to scream to the 
 high heavens, "Grant is a fake; a woman planned all his 
 strategy!" 
 
 In consequence of this situation, red herrings were drawn 
 again and again across Anne's clear, true trail. The river 
 pilot Scott was dug up to make an appearance and insist 
 that all the glory of the Tennessee Plan should be his. The 
 earlier enthusiasm for Anne's cause in Congress was re- 
 placed by portentous clearings of the throat, cold polite- 
 ness, and again and again interminable delay. 
 
 190 
 
No one had ever seriously refuted a single one of her 
 claims. Not daring to face her openly, the scheming poli- 
 ticians of the Grant factions passed the cards from hand to 
 hand beneath the table. With "the insolence of office" they 
 conspired to let the passing of the months and years take 
 care of her deeds and let them fade into oblivion. 
 
 They had not been forgotten by James A. Garfield. The 
 Ohioans had always been intensely loyal to Anne since the 
 days of Tom Corwin. And Garfield, once elected President, 
 would make all right for her. But, as with Lincoln, Garfield 
 was shot before he could take any real action. The impos- 
 ing bill presented in Anne's behalf strangely disappeared 
 before Congress could act upon it, and another took its 
 place. It accorded her no honors, made no specific mention 
 of her services, and curtly dismissed her with a paltry pen- 
 sion of $50 a month! 
 
 Anne's first impulse was to refuse it, to throw it back in 
 their faces. And then she reconsidered. Her head was still 
 high, but she had long been ill and now was living with her 
 younger sister Mary, a government clerk. 
 
 They could never repay her for the services she had 
 given so generously. And dollars could not buy her mem- 
 ories. Anne had a sense of history. She remembered the time 
 long long ago when she had stood, as the Governor's daugh- 
 ter, in the old State House in Annapolis and wished that 
 somehow she could play a vital role in the history of her 
 country. It had seemed out of the question then, especially 
 for a mere girl. Far-off dreams of George Washington and 
 Thomas Jefferson and Carroll of Carrollton. And yet the 
 dream had come true! 
 
 She had been able to bolster Governor Hicks and save 
 Maryland for the Union, and with it undoubtedly the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia and the nation's Capital. She had, with 
 her beloved nation drowning, been able to revive it with 
 
 191 
 
her Tennessee Plan and outline the ultimate source of 
 victory. 
 
 In these later days of her life she had few regrets and 
 many thoughts of gratitude. She had, indeed, lived tre- 
 mendously. Many men had loved her; her deeply feminine 
 heart had been gratified. She had stood by her family and 
 her slaves; she had let no one down. None could despise 
 her, and many could adore. 
 
 Above all, she had not lost her head amidst the tumult 
 and the shouting. As Count Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian 
 novelist and philosopher, wrote: "Life is a place of service, 
 and in that service one has to suffer a great deal that is hard 
 to bear, but more often experience a great deal of joy. But 
 that joy can be real only if people look upon their lives as 
 a service, and have a definite object in life outside them- 
 selves and their personal happiness." There was a good deal 
 of all this in Anna Ella Carroll. 
 
 Her roots had been too deep in the East ever to leave it — 
 even for Lemuel Evans. She had given her deepest devotion 
 to her country in its direst hour of need. 
 
 Like the rivers she knew so well, she had carved her own 
 channel. With a simple bouquet of violets in her still- 
 beautiful hands and a smile fingering on her face, she lay 
 forever quiet on February 19 of 1893. 
 
 192 
 
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 195 
 
WINIFRED E. WISE is best known as the author of the 
 ever-popular Jane Addams of Hull-House, which has be- 
 come a classic in its field, and Rebel in Petticoats, the story 
 of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Swimming in the Pacific surf and 
 viewing the ocean floor through a face mask are favorite 
 pursuits of the author. A graduate cum laude of the Uni- 
 versity of Wisconsin, she became a staff editor of Compton's 
 Pictured Encyclopedia and has had a distinguished career 
 in advertising as executive at Marshall Field & Company in 
 Chicago, and J. W. Robinson, Los Angeles. She now lives 
 in Laguna Beach, California, and is the wife of Stuart 
 Palmer, well-known mystery writer. They have one daughter 
 majoring in bacteriology at UCLA, another making record- 
 ings for RCA, and a son with the Air Force in France.