Anna Ella Carroll - Later Evaluation

Later Evaluation

Well into the 20th century, Carroll was hailed as a feminist heroine whose contributions were denied because of her sex. Some scholarship, however, has attempted to discredit her tale, arguing that she was more a "relentless self-promoter" than the "woman who saved the Union," as novelists, playwrights, and suffragists called her. Carroll had condemned the Emancipation Proclamation and recommended colonization of blacks. Yet research published in 2004 unveiled new sources, primarily Maryland political histories and Lincoln administration records, that analyze the Maryland Know Nothing party in a new progressive light and generally supports (but slightly diminishes) Carroll's role in the Tennessee River campaign, especially since a plan nearly identical to Carroll's was printed in the New York Times two weeks prior to the date Carroll said she sent her plan to the War Department in Washington. Original sources found in Carroll's papers, housed in the Maryland State Archives, remain problematic as source material since many of them, purportedly from leading politicians of the time, are in her handwriting, a distinctive scrawl. The controversy over the legitimacy of Carroll's claims to fame serve as a reminder of the symbolic weight carried by women who live their lives differently from the norm.