Note 7 — Chapter XVI

Hon. L. D. Evans said: "Nothing is more certain than that the rebel power was able to resist all the forces of the Union, and keep her armies from striking their resources and interior lines of communication, upon any of the plans or lines of operation on which the Union arms were operating. Geographically considered, there was but one line which the National armies could take and maintain, and that was unthought of and unknown, and could not have been found out, in all human probability, in time to have prevented a collapse, or warded off recognition and intervention, but for Miss Carroll. The failure to reduce Vicksburg from the water, after a tremendous sacrifice of life and treasure, and the time it took to take Richmond, furnish irrefragable proof of the inability of the Union to subdue the rebellion on the plan of our ablest generals.... England and France had resolved that duty to their suffering operatives required the raising of the blockade for the supply of cotton, and nothing prevented that intervention but the progress of the National arms up the Tennessee.... This campaign must, therefore, take rank with those few remarkable strategic movements in the world's history, which have decided the fate of empires and nations."