During Miss Carroll's long and apparently hopeless illness Mr. Clay's letters were sent for and returned to him.
Another ray of light, too, had come to cheer the invalid. A new power was rising upon the horizon in the growing thoughtfulness and development of women, now banding together in clubs, societies, and confederations, with their own journals, newspapers, and publications, and with the avowed determination of never resting until women, as an integral half of the people, had obtained all the rights and privileges proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, the granting of which alone could make of our country a sound and true Republic and secure the ultimate triumph of the moral and humane considerations and measures upon which its welfare must depend.
Naturally, when this growing party came to know of Miss Carroll's remarkable work they were not disposed to let it fall into oblivion. It seemed as if the Lord himself had declared for their cause in giving to a woman, at the crisis of the national peril, the remarkable illumination that, so far as human knowledge can judge, had turned the scale of war in favor of our National Union, and had thus pledged the country for all future time to the just recognition of the equal rights of women as an integral half of the people, and of equal importance with their brethren to the welfare of the State. Every effort may be made to ignore and hide the remarkable fact, but the work of the Lord remains steadfast, immovable, and incapable of lasting defeat.
"The moving finger writes,
And, having writ,
Moves on."
A notice of Miss Carroll and her brilliant achievements had been written by Mrs. Matilda Joselyn Gage and incorporated in the history of Woman Suffrage, a considerable work, giving a sketch of the career of many eminent women. Mrs. Gage also wrote and circulated a pamphlet calling attention to the case, and Miss Phœbe Couzzins made great exertions in her behalf. One and another began to inquire what had become of the woman who had done such wondrous work for the national cause and had been treated with such deep ingratitude. Mrs. Cornelia C. Hussey, daughter of a high-principled New York family of friends, sought her out, visited her at Baltimore, cheered her with her sympathy, and, interesting others in her behalf, she was enabled to strengthen the hands of the devoted sister. She induced the North American Review, of April, 1886, to publish an account furnished by Miss Carroll, and she procured the publication of a series of letters in the Woman's Journal, of Boston, that increased the knowledge and interest beginning to be felt for Miss Carroll's work.
Petitions began to pour in asking Congress to take action in the case. In 1885 it was taken up by the Court of Claims, and in case 93 may be seen the result. The evidence presented, though remarkable, was by no means as complete as it should have been, owing to Miss Carroll's illness and to the difficulty of now procuring copies of her pamphlets. Consequently, though the judgment rendered makes notable admissions and the moral assent runs all through, the court was enabled, through some legal defects, to retransmit the case to Congress for its consideration; and having once made its decision, the case cannot again come before that court without a direct order from Congress to take it up and try it again.
Looking over the brief at the Court of Claims, made by the late Colonel Warden, I noted this significant passage:
[37]"It may not be amiss here to submit that the two and only drawbacks or obstacles that we have met to the immediate, prompt, and unanimous passage of an act of Congress in recognition of and adequate compensation for the patriotic services and successful military strategy of Miss Carroll in the late civil war are found first in an obstruction which President Lincoln encountered and which he referred to when he explained to Senator Wade that the Tennessee plan was devised by Miss Carroll, and military men were exceedingly jealous of all outside interference." (House Miss. Doc. 58). "The second obstacle which has stayed us is founded in a (to some men) seemingly insuperable objection, often demonstrated in words and acts by our legislators—a misfortune or disability (if it be one) over which Miss Carroll had no control whatever, namely, in the fact that she is a woman."
It would appear that the decision of the Court of Claims retransmitting the claim to Congress was considered by Miss Carroll's friends to be in her favor.
Erastus Brooks writes her at this time: