Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/904

866 have you come before Congress, as I told you soon after, and said if he lived he would see that justice was awarded you. This I have told you often since, and I believe the truth in this matter will finally prevail.

This will accompany copies of two letters written by Miss Anna Ella Carroll to the War Department.

Having informed me of the contents of the letters, I requested her to permit me to copy her duplicates. When she brought them to me she enjoined prudence in their use. They are very extraordinary papers as verified by the result. So far as I know or believe, our unparalleled victories on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers may be traced to her sagacious observations and intelligence. Her views were as broad and sagacious as the field to be occupied. In selecting the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers instead of the Mississippi, she set at naught the opinions of civilians, of military and naval men.

Justice should be done her patriotic discernment. She labors for her country and her whole country.

Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, who during the war was Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, and during the last period of his services, after the assassination of President Lincoln had elevated Andrew Johnson to the Presidency, was acting Vice-President and President of the Senate, was a friend of Miss Carroll. He addressed the following letter to her in 1869, just before the close of his last Congressional session:

Washington, March 1, 1869.

—I can not take leave of my public life without expressing my deep sense of your services to the country during the whole period of our National troubles. Although a citizen of a State almost unanimously disloyal and deeply sympathizing with secession, especially the wealthy and aristocratic class of her people, to which you belonged, yet, in the midst of such surroundings, you emancipated your own slaves at a great sacrifice of personal interest, and with your powerful pen defended the cause of the Union and loyalty as ably and effectively as it has ever yet been defended.

From my position on the Committee on the Conduct of the War, I know that some of the most successful expeditions of the war were suggested by you, among which I might instance the expedition up the Tennessee River.

The powerful support you gave Governor Hicks during the darkest hour of your State's history, prompted him to take and maintain the stand he did, and thereby saved your State from secession and consequent ruin.

All those things, as well as your unremitted labors in the cause of reconstruction, I doubt not, are well known and remembered by the members of Congress at that period.

I also well know in what high estimation your services were held by President Lincoln; and I can not leave the subject without sincerely hoping that the Government may yet confer on you some token of acknowledgment for all these services and sacrifices.

Very sincerely, your friend,

On the 28th of February, 1872, three years after his leaving public life, Judge Wade addressed the following letter:

To the Chairman of the Military Committee of the United States Senate:

Dear Sir:—I have been requested to make a brief statement of what I can recollect concerning the claim of Miss Carroll, now before Congress. From my position as Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, it came to my knowledge that the expedition that was preparing, under the special direction of President Lincoln, to descend the Mississippi River, was abandoned, and the Tennessee expedition was adopted by the Government in pursuance of information and a plan presented to the Secretary of War, I think the latter part of November, 1861, by Miss Carroll. A copy of this plan was put