AN EXTRAORDINARY CLAIM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume II, Issue 66, 1 August 1874, Page 14

AN EXTRAORDINARY CLAIM.

The •N. T. Tribune,' April 13, had the following article :— This year as f or several years past, Miss Anna Ella Carroll comes before Congress with her claim for compensation for services rendered during the civil war. For a while this claim was laughed at on general principles, because Miss Carroll was a woman. Afterwards it was frowned upon, as disrespectful in its essence to some of our great captains. Btrt it gathered strength and consistency all the while, and it at last obtained the suffrages of many Congressmen and the favorable report of a committee. It is now by no means impossible that it may yet be recognised by considerable parties in both Houses, and even that Miss Carroll may some day obtain the compensation she asks. Her claim is certainly an extraordinary one. She asserts and assumes to prove that she originated and suggested to the Government the plan for opening the Mississippi and breaking the rebel power in the southwest, which was finally adopted -.nd carried out. She claims to have made out a detailed plan of the campaign in which our armies ascended the lennessee river to the decisive position which- they occupied on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad. She claims further to have written an important series of papers on the Rebellion, for which the War Department promieed her a compensation which she has not received. The latter claim is not so serious, and will scarcely hold - but the proofs she brings to sustain her assertions in relation to the Tennessee campaign are of a character which it is almost equally difficult to admit or to deny. The Hon. Thomas A. Scott, Assistant. Secretary of War, certifies to the justice of the claim in the most positive and unqualified terms. His statement is worth giving in his own words 2— •

PHiLADEiiPHii, June 24, 1870. On or about the 30th of November, 1861, Miss Carroll, as stated m her memorial, called on me, aa Assistant Secretary of War, and suggestod the propriety of abandoning the expedition which was then preparing to descend the Mississippi River, and to adopt instead the lennessee Kiver, and handed to me the plan of campaign, as appended to her memorial, which plan I submitted to the Secretary of War, and S«| eD f" i TV- ad °P ted ' On m 7m 7 re *urn from the Southwest, in 1802, 1 informed Miss Carroll, as she states in her memorial, that tnrough the adoption of this plan the country had been saved millions, and that it entitled her to the kind consideration of Congress -IHOMAS A. SCOIT.

„- Colon . el Scott repeats this unreserved declaration ia two or three different forms. The Hon. B. F. Wade is equally emphatic. He says that President Lincoln and Mr Stanton both informed him that the credit ot the Tennessee campaign was' due to Miss Carroll The Hon. O. H. Browning, Senator from Illinois, gives the same evidence with equal distinctness. Chief Justice Evans, of the Supreme Court •f lexas goes further into details, giving the case of the memorialist far ™ r f fu S » nd strongly than she presents it herself. The venerable JWisna Whittlesey joins in the same representations. Such legal authorities as Reveredy Johnson and Trueman Smith say that the evidence is complete in her favor. Finally, the Military Committee of the Senate in the XLlst Congress, after maturely weighing the case, reported through their Chairman, Senator Howard of Miohigan, that Miss Carroll had established her claim. «u»g»n, mat The case thu» supported is one of the most remarkable ones which has ever come before the National Legislature. The decision is of importance to more than the memorialist. If it is in her favor, the country will, of course, give her ungrudgingly the compensation she deserves, although others have already been munificently paid in money and glory for the work she claims to have done.