Anna Ella Carroll
She was the daughter of Thomas King Carroll of Kingston Hall, who would later be elected governor of Maryland. She was educated at home, and received a better background in law and politics from her father than most men did in training for the bar.
The Carrolls, like many other plantation owners, were becoming increasingly land and slave poor. The price of tobacco on the Eastern Shore was no longer a reliable source of income. Anna contributed to her family’s upkeep by the establishing a girls’ school at Kingston Hall.
At an early age, Anna became involved with her father's political activities. Educated by him, essentially as his political aide, she gradually gained entry into the male world of politics. When her father was elected governor of Maryland, 15-year-old Anne entered the political circles.
Anna’s life was complicated. She was a member of a slave-holding family, but at the same time she was working with the American Colonization Society for the gradual freeing of the slaves.
Finally the economic pressure was too great, and the Carrolls turned over many of their slaves to their neighbors, whom they knew would give them a good home. The Carrolls then sold Kingston Hall moved to Warwick Fort Manor on the Choptank River.
Anna, in the meantime, started a career as a writer, and began to promote the idea of building railroads, especially a transcontinental line connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
By age 25, she was active in Whig party politics and campaigned alongside a young man who would become an important figure in her life—Abraham Lincoln. But when Lincoln was elected President in 1860, Anna didn’t have much faith in his leadership.
She vehemently opposed the secession of the Southern states, and turned her attention toward keeping Maryland in the Union. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Anna settled in Washington, DC, and began writing letters, articles, and pamphlets in support of the Union.
By November, 1861, the Union situation was desperate. The Confederates were strongly entrenched in a line that ran from the Potomac River along the western border of Maryland to the eastern border of Kansas, and all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.
President Lincoln apparently had faith in Anna. He sent her, accompanied by an army officer, to observe and report on the war on the western front. She set about gathering information.
At St. Louis she met Charles Scott, a riverboat pilot who told her about his idea for a Union invasion of the South along the Tennessee River. She submitted a report to the War Department, crediting Scott with the plan.
That plan resulted in Union victories at Forts Henry and Donelson on the Tennessee River in February 1862. The President and his cabinet kept Anna’s involvement a secret, not wanting the public to know that the plan was the work of not only a civilian, but by a woman.
Anna continued to write Union propaganda throughout the Civil War. After President Lincoln's assassination, she devoted her efforts to reconstruction, but she was largely ignored. She appealed to Congress for recognition and compensation for her contributions during the war.
Indirect recognition came in Francis Carpenter's 1864 painting of Lincoln and his cabinet at the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. The picture shows an empty chair with a folder of maps and notes similar to those Anna always carried. It is believed that this was their way of acknowledging the “unrecognized member of the Cabinet.”
In 1881, Congress voted to add Anna’s name to the pension rolls and to pay her $50.00 a month for life for her “important military service rendered by her during the late Civil War.”
Anna Ella Carroll died in Washington DC on February 19, 1893. Her epitaph reads, “A woman rarely gifted; an able and accomplished writer.”
A slab that was later added to honor her states: “Maryland’s Most Distinguished Lady. A Great humanitarian and close friend of Abraham Lincoln. She conceived the successful Tennessee Campaign and guided the President on his constitutional war powers.”
Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, said, “Her course was the most remarkable in the war. She got no pay and did the great work that made others famous.”
Copyright © 2007 Maggie MacLean
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