Anna Carroll
Anna Ella Carroll (born August 29, 1815 in Pocomoke City , Maryland , USA , † February 19, 1894 in Washington, DC ) was an American politician, publicist and lobbyist . She played an important role as an advisor to Lincoln during the American Civil War .
Life
youth
Anna Carroll was born into a well-known upper-class political family; she was a distant descendant of Charles Carroll , a signatory to the United States' Declaration of Independence . Her father, Thomas King Carroll, was Maryland Governor in 1830 and owned an extensive tobacco plantation. As the eldest child, she helped her father with his business, which made her deal with questions of law, economics and politics at an early age. She set up a girls' school on her father's property and thus earned her own income. Little is known about her life before 1850.
Start of political activity
She entered the political scene in the 1850s when her father was named a naval officer by President Zachary Taylor . After the fall of the Whigs , Carroll joined the Know-Nothing Party , which established itself as a unionist, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant labor movement in the face of German-Irish immigration, urbanization and other demographic upheavals in Maryland.
Carroll denounced corruption and crime, and fought against the influence of the Catholic Church, which is seen as a threat. After the party split in 1856, Carroll supported Fillmore's candidacy for re-election as president, which was unsuccessful. Carroll wrote books and election brochures for the election campaign. In 1857 she was equally committed to the gubernatorial election of Thomas H. Hicks , who attributed his success to her journalistic work. In 1858 she took over the case of the presidential candidate John M. Botts , who left early and supported an ultimately unsuccessful candidate. Until 1860 Carroll wrote articles under a pseudonym for various newspapers.
American Civil War
After Lincoln was elected in 1860, Carroll freed her slaves and turned her journalistic attention against the southern secessionist movement , trying to keep Maryland in the Union . As a confidante of Governor Hicks in Maryland, she advised him not to opt for secession despite his stance on the slave issue. In this way it also prevented the overthrow of the US government, since Washington would have been enclosed by confederation territory after the fall of Virginia and Maryland. In 1861 Carroll wrote pamphlets in which she defended Lincoln against criticism from John C. Breckinridge , who accused the president of perversion of the law and the constitution. The script circulated widely in the Lincoln administration and later served Attorney General Edward Bates in his decision that Lincoln's controversial militia call-up and martial law were constitutional and within his authority. After an oral consultation with the government, Carroll produced three more pamphlets by 1862 in which she justified the decisions of the federal government with constitutional principles. Their activity also resulted in the deselection of Hicks as governor and the election of a successor who was firmly loyal to the Union.
In 1861 she accompanied agent Lemuel D. Evans to St. Louis to investigate the possibility of an invasion of Texas . Through conversations with high-ranking or local people, she gained the information that an invasion of the Union over the rivers Tennessee and Cumberland was more promising than over the Mississippi . It also collected information on Confederate troop movements . She processed all of this in a memorandum and sent it to the War Department . There they decided on the alternative, albeit already known, route and instructed Ulysses S. Grant and Andrew Hull Foote to move the troops accordingly. The successful Tennessee plan meant the much-needed turnaround in the Union's fortunes of war, which Carroll would later claim as their achievement.
For the remainder of the war, Carroll Lincoln advised on the colonization of British Honduras and on the drafting of the Emancipation Proclamation , in which, due to the legal basis, she advised him to free only southern slaves. Although she did not appreciate slavery, she was not an abolitionist and saw it as legally problematic to take property from slave owners.
Post-war activity
After the war, Carroll worked again with Lemuel Evans to draft the new Texas Constitution. She also continued her political writing in Maryland. After 1870 she tried to get federal payments to cover her journalistic expenses during the war, but was ultimately turned down. This made her a symbolic figure for the incipient women's rights movement , to which she was hardly politically close.
She died of kidney infection in 1894 and was buried with her family in Church Creek, Maryland. In 1959, a monument in Maryland was dedicated in her honor.
Meaning and criticism
The alleged achievements she herself published in her last years, especially about her ingenious, sole development of the Tennessee Plan , were long upheld by the women's rights movement, especially with the note that her prominent role was being suppressed and concealed. Historians denied this influence at the same time, since almost identical plans were not only circulating in the War Department at the same time, but had also been published in the New York press shortly before. Archive research from 2004 confirmed Carroll's influence on decision-makers in principle, but it was also less than what she had portrayed, especially with regard to the Tennessee Plan .
Fonts
- James B. Whisker (Ed.): Anna Ella Carroll (1815-1893), American Political Writer of Maryland . Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston 1992, ISBN 0-7734-9244-5 .
literature
- Janet L Coryell: Neither Heroine nor Fool: Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland . Kents State University Press, Kent OH 1990, ISBN 0-87338-405-9 .
- Kenneth Williams: The Tennessee River Campaign and Anna Ella Carroll . In: Indiana Magazine of History 46, 1950, pp. 221-248.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 98.
- ↑ a b c biography of Anna Ella Carroll (engl.)
- ↑ a b William H. Wroten, Salisbury Times: Shore Woman Advised Lincoln In War Strife
- ↑ Janet L. Coryell, Neither Heroine Nor Fool: Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press), 55-64.
- ^ Anna Ella Carroll, "Captain Charles M. Scott: Plan of the Tennessee Campaign," National Intelligencer, Apr. 12, 1865.
- ↑ Anna Ella Carroll v. United States, 20 Court of Claims 426 (Court of Claims 1885), 429-431.
- ^ Sarah Ellen Blackwell: A military genius. Life of Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland, ("the great unrecognized member of Lincoln's cabinet.")
- ^ The Dinner Party: Heritage Floor: Anne Ella Carroll
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Carroll, Anna |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Carroll, Anna Ella (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American politician, publicist and lobbyist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 29, 1815 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | near Pocomoke City , Maryland , USA |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 19, 1894 |
| Place of death | Washington, DC |