Mr. Thaddeus Stevens: * * * Remember that every day's delay costs the nation $1,500,000 and hundreds of lives. * * * What an awful responsibility rests upon those in authority; their mistakes may bring mourning to the land and sorrow to many a fireside. * * * If we cannot save our honor, save at least the lives and the treasure of the nation.
About this time Miss Carroll was spoken of by those conversant with her plans as "the great unrecognized member of Lincoln's Cabinet." But, glorious as was the success, Miss Carroll's plans were not fully carried out, to the great after regret of the War Department, who recognized that the war, which might then have been brought to a speedy termination, had been greatly prolonged through the omission.
Miss Carroll continued her communications to the War Department, endeavoring to rectify mistakes.
Extract from Miss Carroll's letter to the Department on the reduction of Island No. 10, and pointing out the advantages of the immediate seizure of the Memphis and Charleston railroad, March 26, 1862.
"The failure to take Island No. 10, which thus far occasions much disappointment to the country, excites no surprise in me. When I looked at the gunboats at St. Louis and was informed as to their power, and considered that the current of the Mississippi at full tide runs at the rate of five miles per hour, which is very near the speed of our gunboats, I could not resist the conclusion that they were not well fitted to the taking of batteries on the Mississippi river if assisted by gunboats perhaps equal to our own. Hence it was that I wrote Colonel Scott from there that the Tennessee was our strategic point, and the successes at Fort Henry and Donelson established the justice of these observations. Had our victorious army, after the fall of Fort Henry, immediately pushed up the Tennessee river and taken a position on the Memphis and Charleston railroad, between Corinth, Mississippi, and Decatur, Alabama, which might easily have been done at that time with a small force, every rebel soldier in Western Kentucky and Tennessee would have fled from every position to the south of that railroad; and had Buell pursued the enemy in his retreat from Nashville, without delay, into a commanding position in North Alabama, on the railroad between Chattanooga and Decatur, the rebel government at Richmond would have necessarily been obliged to retreat to the cotton States. I am fully satisfied that the true policy of General H——is to strengthen Grant's column by such force as will enable him at once to seize the Memphis and Charleston railroad, as it is the readiest means of reducing Island 10 and all the strongholds of the enemy to Memphis."
Letter written from St. Louis, military headquarters for the Southwest:
[27]St. Louis, May 2, 1862.
"I think the war on the approaches to the Tennessee river has ended. I think the enemy will retreat to the Grand Junction, some sixty miles nearer Memphis; and when our forces approach him there, he will go down the Central Mississippi railroad to Jackson, and if there is another great battle in the West it will be there. I think they will try to postpone anything serious until after the pending battles in Virginia. If they make the attempt now every leader would be taken in the event of defeat, without fail, whilst if it is postponed until after the fate of Virginia is decided the leaders can bring what troops they have left and, joining them to what they have here, make one last struggle for life, and if defeated they can escape across the Mississippi into Arkansas, and through that into Texas and Mexico. You may rest assured the leaders will not be caught if they can get away with life; and as to property, they have that secured already. The only way this plan can be frustrated is to occupy Memphis and Vicksburg strongly, particularly the latter, and send one or more of our gunboats up the Yazoo river to watch every creek and inlet, so that they may be unable to get across the swamps by canoes and skiffs.