Miss Carroll was in her 66th year at the time of General Bragg's recommendation. Her father was no longer living, her family was scattered, her health was failing, and her time, strength, and fortune had been wholly expended in the service of her country with noble generosity and the most brilliant results. Surely she deserved to spend the remaining years of her life in honorable independence, distinguished and beloved by the nation to whom she had rendered incalculable service.
Now it seemed as if, after such an unqualified indorsement of her work by three successive military committees appointed for the purpose, and a suitable bill prepared, that surely her cause was won. Miss Carroll had been informed of the report and of the bill that had been prepared. But the Military Committee, having made this excellent summary of evidence, indorsed Miss Carroll's claim in the strongest manner, and prepared a noble and fitting bill, became greatly alarmed at what they had done. Leaving their report unchanged, at the last moment they hastily withdrew the dignified and fitting bill and substituted in its place the following surprising performance:
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to place upon the pension-rolls of the United States the name of Anna Ella Carroll, and to pay to her a pension of fifty dollars per month from and after the passage of this act, during her life, for the important military service rendered the country by her during the late civil war."
Such a report and such a bill side by side stand an anomaly unparalleled.
Truly the life of the nation was rated as a cheap thing.
Of course the bill died immediately of its own glaring and ineffable meanness.
One can hardly say whether it would have been the more unworthy thing to pass such a bill or to pass none at all; but the last, being the most timorous course, had been adopted for ten successive years, as it has also been resorted to in the ten succeeding ones.
The Military Committee of 1881, having accomplished this astonishing feat, threw away their arms and ignominiously fled—and Congress followed in the rear, indefinitely postponing action on an unwelcome claim, that always would turn up "incontestably proven."
CHAPTER IX.
a wounded veteran retires from the field — interview with grant — the women of america make the cause their own — a national lesson.