A Librarian's Downfall

Interesting story Wednesday in Disunion, the New York Times Opinionator blog about the Civil War, Anna and the Librarian, by UT history professor Adam Arenson.  "Did Anna Ella Carroll save the Union, or just destroy an aging librarian’s career?"

Johnston was born in Virginia in 1799, and as the war began he was a bespectacled gentleman much esteemed in St. Louis; his 1859 catalogue for the St. Louis Mercantile Library collection was the first anywhere to use subject classifications, and it became a regular reference in the Library of Congress before they developed their own system. Yet Johnston was also unabashedly pro-Confederate...