Miss Carroll gave extracts from every known historical work showing the surmises made, endeavoring to attribute the plan to one and another, and no evidence found to establish such surmises.
Miss Carroll wrote to Hon. J. T. Headley, the distinguished historian of the Civil War, and received the following letter:
I am much obliged for the pamphlet you sent me. I never knew before with whom the plan of the campaign up the Tennessee river originated. There seemed to be a mystery attached to it that I could not solve. Though General Buell sent me an immense amount of documents relating to this campaign I could find no reference to the origin of the change of plan. Afterwards I saw it attributed to Halleck, which I knew to be false, and I noticed that he never corroborated it. It is strange that after all my research it has rested with you to enlighten me.
Money cannot pay for the plan of that campaign. I doubt not Congress will show not liberality but some justice in the matter.
So matters went on. New memorials presented for the most part met with "leave to withdraw." Then Miss Carroll gathered herself up for a supreme effort, presented fresh testimony, and in 1878 sent in a memorial that is a mine of wealth and the most interesting memorial she has ever presented. It is labeled--
45th Congress, \ House of Representatives / Miss. Doc. 2d Session / \ No. 58
Being a document of the first importance and containing some singular evidence, it has been systematically excluded from every Congressional index, though published by order of Congress and included in the bound volumes.
Miss Carroll having made in 1878 this very notable memorial, on February 18, 1879--
45th Congress,\ Senate /Report 3d Session. / \ No. 775.
Mr. Cockrell made a report entered on the Congressional lists as _adverse_, but really an additional evidence of the incontrovertible nature of the facts and the testimony of the case, the report being only adverse as to compensation. The report admits the services, both literary and military, and even concedes the proposition that "_the transfer of the national armies from the banks of the Ohio up the Tennessee river to the decisive position in Mississippi was the greatest military event in the interest of the human race known to modern ages, and will ever rank among the very few strategic movements in the world's history that have decided the fate of empires and peoples_," and that "_no true history can be written that does not assign to the memorialist the credit of the conception_."