A military genius

by Sarah Ellen Blackwell

Congress met; the Committee on the Conduct of the War was at once created. How great were the dangers which at that supreme moment made the continued existence of the Government a question of doubt, and the fact that the military successes in the West which followed were not achieved a day too soon is made evident by the speeches of many of the most distinguished statesmen of that period, in both houses of Congress, some of them occupying positions on the most important committees connected with the prosecution of the war and necessarily possessed of the most reliable information. The utterances in the halls of Congress sustain every fact as here described."

In this same Congressional document of 1878 Miss Carroll thus describes her inception of the plan of the Tennessee campaign:

"In the autumn of 1861 my attention was arrested by the confidence expressed by Southern sympathizers in the southwest, that the Mississippi could not be opened before the recognition of Southern independence. I determined to inform myself what the pilots thought of the gunboat expedition then preparing to descend the river. On inquiry I was directed to Mrs. Scott, then in the hotel, whose husband was a pilot, and learned from her that he was then with the expedition that had moved against Belmont; and the important facts she gave me increased my wish to see Mr. Scott. On his arrival in St. Louis I sent for him. He said that it was his opinion, and that of all the pilots on these waters, that the Mississippi could not be opened by the gunboats. I inquired as to the navigability of the Cumberland and the Tennessee. He said at favorable stages of water the gunboats could go up the former as high Nashville, and the latter, at all stages, as high as the Muscle Shoals in Alabama. The moment he said the Tennessee was navigable for gunboats the thought flashed upon me that the strongholds of the enemy might be turned at once by diverting the expedition in course of preparation to open the Mississippi up the Tennessee; and having had frequent conversations with Judge Evans on the military situation, I left the room to communicate this thought—as he had just then called at the hotel—and asked him if it would not have that effect. He concurred that it would, and that it was the move if it was a fact that the Tennessee afforded the navigation; and he accompanied me to interrogate Mr. Scott, to be satisfied as to the feasibility of the Tennessee. The interview was prolonged some time. At the close I told Mr. Scott it was my purpose to try and induce the Government to divert the Mississippi expedition up the Tennessee, and asked him to give me a memorandum of the most important facts elicited in the conversation, as I wished them for this object. I further stated my intention to pen the history of the war, and requested him to write from time to time all the valuable information he might be able, and I would remember him in my work. The same day I wrote again to Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott,[23] to whom I had promised to communicate the result of my observations while in the West, and also to Attorney General Bates; to both of whom I urged the importance of a change of campaign."

A letter from Judge Evans, who chanced to be in St. Louis on other business, at the time gives a precisely similar account of this interview with the pilot, and the ideas then suggested by Miss Carroll uttered, as he relates, "in a very earnest and animated manner!"

Even though it involves some repetition, we will here give also an account written by Miss Carroll in the winter of 1889. It will possess an especial interest, as it may be the last literary exertion that the invalid authoress will ever be asked to make.

It was called forth by a wish expressed by a leading magazine to have a fresh account written directly by Miss Carroll. With fingers lamed by paralysis the following account was written, showing the clearness of Miss Carroll's memory in her seventy-fifth year.

"In the beginning of the rebellion public opinion gave the victory to the Southern cause, and no one shared in this conviction to a greater extent than President Lincoln and the War Department. The first effort made by me was in an unpretentious pamphlet, which fell into the hands of Mr. Lincoln and so pleased him (it did not appear with my name) that he suggested its adoption as a war measure, and the satisfaction it gave was so general that Governor Bates, then Attorney General, urged that I should continue to write in the interest of the Government. Fired by enthusiasm in a noble cause, I accepted the suggestion, and followed soon with what some have considered my best work, "The War Powers of the Government," and other pamphlets. About this time I had thought of visiting St. Louis, and mentioned my intention to Col. Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of War. He urged me to go, asking me to write him fully of every point and fact investigated. These facts I communicated as requested, both to him and to Governor Bates.

The clouds were dark and lowering. Despair had well nigh possession of the bravest hearts. After my arrival I soon saw and felt that the sentiment of the West was decidedly against the Union, or rather in favor of the Southern cause.

I visited the various encampments en route and in St. Louis and found but little difference among leading minds as to the result anticipated. All in a measure believed the struggle useless.

Finding the sentiment prevalent that the Union must fall and feeling in my soul that it must not fall, I began revolving an escape from the threatened doom. Just then, while I was in St. Louis, the battle of Belmont was fought. When I saw the dead and dying as they lay upon that field and witnessed the sad sight of the ambulance wagons bearing the wounded to the hospitals, my heart sank within me. The future of the war with these awful scenes repeated was a picture not to be endured, and my anxiety as to the result grew still more intense.