A Military Genius Part 15

"It has pleased Almighty G.o.d to vouchsafe signal victories to the land and naval forces engaged in suppressing an internal rebellion, and at the same time to avert from our country the danger of foreign intervention and invasion."

SEWARD TO DAYTON.

_May 7, 1862._

"The proclamation of commerce which is made may be regarded by the maritime powers as an announcement that the Republic has pa.s.sed the danger of disunion."

Great enthusiasm is felt at Was.h.i.+ngton and throughout the country, as it becomes evident that a brilliant and successful plan has been adopted, and great anxiety is evinced to find out and reward the author.

For this purpose a lively debate takes place in the House of Representatives for the avowed purpose of finding out whether "these victories were arranged or won by men sitting at a distance, engaged in organizing victory," or whether "they have been achieved by bold and resolute men left free to act and to conquer." No one knows.

Mr. Conkling proposes to "thank Halleck and Grant."

Mr. Washburne thinks "General McClernand and General Logan should be included."

Mr. c.o.x thinks "General Smith is ent.i.tled to an equal degree of the glory."

Mr. Holman thinks "General Wallace should have a fair share."

Mr. Mallory thinks "General Buell should not be forgotten."

Mr. Kellogg thinks all these suggestions derogatory to President Lincoln, as Commander-in-Chief. He desires "it to be remembered that subordinate officers by law are under the control and command of the Commander-in-Chief of the American Army." He believes "there is, emanating from the Commander-in-Chief of the American forces, through his first subordinates, and by them to the next, and so continuously down to the soldiers who fight upon the battlefield, a well digested, clear, and definite policy of campaign, that is in motion to put down this rebellion;" and he "here declares that he believes that the system of movements that has culminated in glorious victories, and which will soon put down this rebellion, finds root, brain, and execution in the Commanding General of the American Army and the Chief Executive of the American people."

Mr. Olin says: "If it be the object of the House, before pa.s.sing a vote of thanks, to ascertain who was the person who planned and organized these victories, then it would be eminently proper to request the Secretary of War to give us that information. That would satisfy the gentleman and the House directly as to who was the party that planned these military movements. It is sufficient for the present that somebody has planned and executed these military movements. Still, if the gentleman has any desire to know who originated these movements, he can ascertain that fact by inquiring at the proper office, for certainly some one at the War Department must be informed on the subject. The Secretary of War knows whether he had anything to do with them or not; the Commanding General knows whether he had anything to do with them or not. If neither of them had anything to do with them, they will cheerfully say so."

But at the War Department it has been determined that the secret must be kept so long as the war continues, and this n.o.ble, silent woman sits in the gallery listening to all this discussion and makes no claim, knowing well the injury that it would be to the national cause if it should be known that the plan was the work of a civilian, and, above all, a _woman_--a creature despised and ignored, not even counted as one of "the people" in the sounding profession made of human rights a hundred years ago.

The House of Representatives having failed to discover the author of the campaign, on March 13th, 1862, the Senate makes a similar attempt.

Mr. Washburne and Mr. Grimes think "it is Commodore Foote who should be thanked." But no one knows.

Again that wonderful, quiet woman in the gallery sits silently listening to all their talking and discussing.

She speaks of it afterwards to Colonel Scott; refers to the discussions which had taken place in Congress to find out who had devised the movement, and to the fact that she had preserved entire silence while the debate went on, claiming it for one and another of the generals of the war.

Colonel Scott says she has "acted very properly in the matter; that there is no question of her being ent.i.tled to the vote of thanks by Congress; that she has saved incalculable millions to the country, etc., but that it would not do while the struggle lasted to make a public claim;" and also states that the War Power pamphlet has done much good, and he has heard it frequently referred to while in the West.

Judge Wade discusses the matter and says it greatly adds to the merit of the author that it was not made known. "Where is there another man or woman," says Judge Wade, turning to Judge Evans, "who would have kept silence when so much could have come personally from an open avowal." Judge Evans says he has reproached himself more than once that he had not in some way made known what he knew, but was constrained to silence by considerations of patriotism that were above all else at that time.

Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, afterward writes to Miss Carroll:

"I have sometimes reproached myself that I had not made known the author when they were discussing the resolution in Congress to find out; but Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were opposed to its being known that the armies were moving under the plan of a civilian. Mr. Lincoln wanted the armies to believe that they were doing the whole business of saving the country."

Mr. Wade also writes to Miss Carroll:

"The country, almost in her last extremity, was saved by your sagacity and unremitting labor; indeed, 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. You cannot be deprived of the honor of having done greater and more efficient services for the country in time of her greatest peril than any other person in the Republic, and a knowledge of this cannot be long repressed."

Col. Thomas A. Scott, a.s.sistant Secretary of War, to whom her plans were submitted, informs her in 1862 that "the adoption of her plan has saved the country millions of money."

Hon. L. D. Evans, justice of the supreme court of Texas, in a pamphlet ent.i.tled "The Material Bearing of the Tennessee Campaign in 1862 upon the Destinies of our Civil War," shows that no military plan could have saved the country except this, and that this was unthought of and unknown until suggested by Miss Carroll, who alone had the genius to grasp the situation.

How clearly the Confederate leaders recognized the fatal effects of this Tennessee campaign is indicated by a letter found among the papers captured by General Mitch.e.l.l at Huntsville, written by General Beauregard to General Samuel Cooper, Richmond, Va.:

"CORINTH, _April 9, 1862_.

"Can we not be reinforced by Pemberton's army?" "If defeated here, we lose the Mississippi Valley and probably our cause, whereas we could even afford to lose Charleston and Savannah for the purpose of defeating Buell's army, which would not only insure us the valley of the Mississippi, but our independence."

The feeling of the Confederate army is curiously indicated by the following letter received by Miss Carroll as the struggle drew towards its close and filed by Mr. Stanton among his papers:

FORT DELAWARE, _March 1, 1865_.

Miss Carroll, _Baltimore, Md.:_

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

"CONFEDERATES."

Miss Carroll's patriotic labors continued to the end. She contributed papers on emanc.i.p.ation and on reconstruction, and wrote articles for the leading journals in support of the Government.

"While her pen was tireless in the cause of loyalty, her sympathy and interest extended themselves toward the prisons, the battlefields, and the hospitals, and many were the individual cases of suffering and want that she relieved. She was especially successful with procuring discharges for Union prisoners, and where such were in need her own means were most generously used to give adequate help."

Although the agreement with the Government was that she should be remunerated for her services and the employment of her private resources, it was not until some time after the close of the war that she endeavored, by the advice of her friends and prominent members of the War Committee, to make a public claim and establish so important a fact in the history of the war.

"Miss Carroll's own feeling was a desire to make her services a free gift to her country, and her aged father, who felt the proudest satisfaction in his daughter's patriotic career, was of the same disinterested opinion."[30]

[Footnote 30: Abbie M. Gannet, in the Boston _Sunday Herald_, February, 1890.]

The same high and chivalrous feeling that led him to sacrifice his ancestral home to liquidate the debts incurred by others made him unwilling that his daughter should press even for the payment of the debt due for the publication of her pamphlets and campaign doc.u.ments, though published at the request of the War Department on the understanding that she was to be repaid. His loftiness of feeling and unbounded generosity continued even under adverse fortunes.

"But as time went on, her father no longer living, Miss Carroll noted how honors and emoluments were allotted to her fellow-laborers, and that her own work, owing to the peculiar circ.u.mstances that at first surrounded it and the untimely deaths of Mr. Lincoln and others who would gladly have proclaimed it, was wholly sinking into obscurity. A sense of the injustice of the case took possession of her and the conviction that history itself would be falsified if her silence continued."[31]

[Footnote 31: Abbie M. Gannet, in the Boston _Sunday Herald_.]

Thomas A. Scott and Mr. Wade, chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and others well acquainted with her work were still living, able and desirous to establish her claim. By their advice and with their enthusiastic endors.e.m.e.nt she made a statement of her case in 1870 and presented it before Congress, asking for recognition and a due award.

"Every lover of history, every true patriot, and, above all, every patriotic woman will be glad that she so decided."--_Mrs. Abbie M.

Gannet._

It was not fitting that such achievements should be allowed to sink into oblivion.

Accordingly she made her claim, supported by the strongest and clearest testimony from the very men who were most competent to speak with absolute authority, Mr. Wade, Mr. Scott, and others of the War Department testifying again and again to the facts of the case.