Anna Ella Carroll

Anna Ella Carroll. Unofficial Cabinet Member. , Anna Ella Carroll was born on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1815. Often called an unofficial member of President Abraham Lincoln's cabinet, she was a Unionist author and newspaper reporter who had traveled extensively throughout the South and Midwest before the Civil War. Among her most popular books were The War Powers of the General Government (1861) and The Great American Battle (1856). Just before the war, she journeyed through the Midwest and noted the importance of the rivers and the railroads as a strategic link to the resources of the region. In 1861, her contacts at the War Department encouraged her to tour the upper Mississippi River valley and report on conditions there. While in St. Louis, she met with Mississippi River pilots who described the river and its major tributaries. With this information, Carroll developed outlines for a Federal campaign into the South on the Tennessee River and sent a detailed plan to the War Department. In 1862-63, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant took his army up the Tennessee River and captured several key forts and transportation junctions; among them was the fortified town of Vicksburg. The seizure of the railroads and water-transportation facilities of the Tennessee Valley was one of the keys to the eventual success of the United States. Carroll was never officially recognized for her contributions to military strategy during the war, but she received a small pension many years later. She died on February 19, 1894.