Union forces, in which she
said:

The failure to take Island 10, which thus far occasions much
disappointment to the country, excites no surprise to me. When I
looked at the gun-boats at St. Louis, and was informed as to
their powers, and that the current of the Mississippi at full
tide runs at the rate of five miles per hour, which is very near
the speed of our gun-boats, I could not resist the conclusion
that they were not well fitted to the taking of batteries on the
Mississippi River, if assisted by gun-boats perhaps equal to our
own. Hence it was that I wrote Col. Scott from there, that the
Tennessee River was our strategic point, and the successes at
Forts Henry and Donelson establish the justice of these
observations. Had our victorious army, after the fall of Fort
Henry, immediately pushed up the Tennessee River and taken
position on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, between Corinth,
Miss., and Decatur, Ala., which might easily have been done at
that time with a small force, every rebel soldier in Western
Kentucky and Tennessee would have fled from every position south
of that railroad. And had Buell pursued the enemy in his retreat
from Nashville, without delay, into a commanding position in
North Alabama, on the railroad between Chattanooga and Decatur,
the rebel government at Richmond would necessarily have been
obliged to retreat to the cotton States. I am fully satisfied
that the true policy of General Halleck is to strengthen Grant's
column by such a force as will enable him at once to seize the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, as it is the readiest means of
reducing Island 10, and all the strongholds to Memphis.

In October, 1862, observing the preparations for a naval attack upon
Vicksburg, Miss Carroll again addressed the Secretary of War in the
following memorial:

As I understand an expedition is about to go down the river, for
the purpose of reducing Vicksburg, I have prepared the enclosed
map in order to demonstrate more clearly the obstacles to be
encountered in the contemplated assault. In the first place, it
is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a
loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only
about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank
range of their guns, not