Although I have only read the two plot summaries posted on this board, as the author of a 2004 biography of Anna Ella Carroll, I would just like to verify that she was a political/legal adviser to Abraham Lincoln and did serve as a military secret agent, accompanying Judge Lemuel Evens to St. Louis in the fall of 1861. Evans, later was appointed Chief Judge of the Texas Supreme Court. He testified on Carroll's behalf before the Congress in 1872 and Asst. Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott and Sen. Benjamin F. Wade (R-OH), chairman of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War did also. Primary evidence of the existence of Carroll's Tennessee River plan also exists.
-- C. Kay Larson, independent scholar, author _Great Necessities: The Life, Times, and Writings of Anna Ella Carroll, 1815=1894)_ PS--I'm not sure I have noted critical plot elements, so am checking "spoiler" just in case.
-- C. Kay Larson, independent scholar, author _Great Necessities: The Life, Times, and Writings of Anna Ella Carroll, 1815=1894)_ PS--I'm not sure I have noted critical plot elements, so am checking "spoiler" just in case.