Ten American Girls From History

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"Who is she?" was the question asked on every side as the eager crowd
pushed its way out of the building, all curious to get a nearer view
of the youthful speaker. Doctor Longshore, who had opened the meeting,
as on the previous Sunday, was now determined to become acquainted
with Anna and find out what had gone into the making of such a
remarkable personality, and at the close of the meeting he lost no
time in introducing himself to her and making an engagement to go to
the Dickinson home to meet her family.

Before the time of his promised call--in fact, before Anna had even
mentioned her success as a speaker to her mother--while she was out
one day two gentlemen called at the house and inquired if Miss Anna
Dickinson lived there. Her mother's cheeks paled with fright, for she
feared Anna had been doing some unconventional thing which the
strangers had come to report. When they said they had heard her speak
at a public meeting and were so much pleased with her speech that they
had come to find out something about her home surroundings, Mrs.
Dickinson's brow cleared, and, leading them into the house, she spent
a pleasant half-hour with them, and was secretly delighted with their
comments on her daughter's first appearance in public. When Anna came
home Mrs. Dickinson took her to task for not telling her about such a
great event, and was surprised to see the real diffidence which the
girl showed when she was questioned about the meetings and her
speeches. A few days later Doctor Longshore called with her brother,
Elwood, and with their flattering assurances that her daughter was a
born speaker, and that she had already made some valuable points on a
vital subject, Mrs. Dickinson began to feel that all her worry over
Anna's turbulent childhood and restless girlhood had not been in vain,
that she was born to do great things, and from that time she took a
genuine pride in all the achievements of the young girl who came so
rapidly into public notice.

The Longshores took Anna into their hearts and home at once, and many
of her happiest hours were spent with them. "We felt toward her,"
Doctor Longshore said, "as if she were our own child. We were the
first strangers to show an interest in her welfare and future plans,
and she returned our friendship with confidence and love." She was
always so buoyant, so full of vitality and gayety, that her visits
were eagerly anticipated, and for hours at a time she would entertain
her new friends with vivid and droll accounts of her experiences at
home and in school and of her attempts to make money. And as she had
won her way into the hearts of her audience, at those first meetings,
so now she kept the Longshores enthralled, making them laugh at one
moment and cry at another. One night she had a horrible dream to
relate.

"I had been reading an account of the horrors of the slave system at
its worst," she said. "After going to bed, I was long in falling
asleep. Finally I slept and dreamed that I was a slave girl, and, oh,
the agony of the knowledge! The hot sun scorched my burning skin as I
toiled in the fields, with almost no clothing to soften the sun's
heat. I was hungry, but there was insufficient food. At last I was
dressed in clean, showy clothes and led to the auction-block, where I
was auctioned off to the highest bidder. He led me away in triumph to
even worse experiences, and when I woke up I could not throw off the
horror of the awful nightmare."

Seeing her tremble under the misery of the recollection, Doctor
Longshore soothed her by saying that the dream was a natural result of
the highly colored account she had been reading before going to sleep,
that all slaves were not by any means treated in such a cruel manner,
and at last she grew calm. But whenever in future she spoke on the
subject of slavery this terrible memory would come back to her so
vividly that it would intensify her power to speak with conviction.

For several Sundays she went regularly to the "Progressive Friends'"
meeting and spoke with unvarying success. Then she was invited to go
to Mullica Hill, New Jersey, to speak on the subject, "Woman's Work."
After discussing the matter with her mother and the Longshores, she
accepted the invitation and set herself to prepare the lecture which
she was to give. Then, on the first Sunday in April, the
seventeen-year-old orator went to her trial experience as an invited
speaker. By that time her praises had been widely sung, and when she
rose and saw her audience there was a sea of upturned, eager faces
looking into hers. Speaking from the depths of her own experience, she
held the audience in breathless silence for over an hour. There was,
it was said, an indescribable pathos in her full, rich voice that,
aside from what she said, touched the hearts of her hearers and moved
many to tears, while all were spellbound, and at the close of her
address no one moved. Finally a man rose and voiced the feeling of the
people.

"We will not disperse until the speaker promises to address us again
this evening," he said, and a burst of applause greeted his statement.
A starry-eyed girl stood and bowed her acknowledgment and agreed to
speak again. As the audience dispersed Anna heard some one say, "If
Lucretia Mott had made that speech it would be thought a great one."

As she promised, in the evening she spoke again on slavery, with equal
success. A collection which was taken up for her amounted to several
dollars, the first financial result of what was to be her golden
resource.

But Anna had no thought of doing public speaking as her only means of
earning her living. She continued to look for positions, but without
success. Finally she took a district school in Bucks County, at a
monthly salary of twenty-five dollars. So interested was she in the
"Progressive Friends'" Sunday meetings that she went home every second
week to attend them, and her speeches always won applause from an
audience that had learned to anticipate the impassioned statements of
the bright-eyed girl who was so much younger and so much more intense
than any other speaker.

And now she began to receive invitations to speak in other places. On
her eighteenth birthday she spoke in a small village about thirty
miles out of Philadelphia, when she fairly electrified her hearers by
the force of her arguments and the form in which she presented them.
She continued to teach, although during her summer vacation she made
many speeches in New Jersey. On one occasion she spoke in the open
air, in a beautiful grove where hundreds had come to hear "the girl
orator" give her views on temperance and slavery. Her earnestness and
conviction of the truth of what she said made a profound impression,
and even those who later criticized her speech as being the product of
an immature and superficial mind were held as by a spell while she
spoke, and secretly admired her while they openly ridiculed her
arguments. At another time she was asked to speak at the laying of the
corner-stone of a new Methodist church. The clergymen who gathered
together were inclined to be severe in their judgment of the remarks
of a "slip of a girl." Anna knew that and resolved to speak with more
than usual pathos and power. When she began her address amusement was
evident on the faces of the dignified men looking at her. Gradually
they grew more interested, the silence became intense, and when the
men rose to leave they were subdued, and some of them even were not
ashamed to be seen wiping away tears. One of them introduced himself
to her and with a cordial hand-shake said: "Miss Dickinson, I have
always ridiculed Woman's Rights, but, so help me God, I never shall
again."

But this time the young orator could not help feeling the power she
had to sway great masses of people, and with a thrill of joy she began
to believe that perhaps in this work which she loved above anything
else in the world she would some day find her vocation, for she was
already receiving commendation from men and women of a high order of
intelligence and being given larger contributions as a result of her
speeches.

The country was at that time in the beginning of its Civil War period,
and much was written and said on the issue of the hour. At a Kennett
Square meeting, where hot debates were held on the burning question of
the day, Anna was one of the speakers, and one of the press notices on
the following day said:

"... The next speaker was Miss Anna Dickinson, of Philadelphia,
handsome, of an expressive countenance, plainly dressed, and eloquent
beyond her years. After the listless, monotonous harangues of the
previous part of the day, the distinct, earnest tones of this juvenile
Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her discourse, which
was frequently interrupted, Miss Dickinson maintained her presence of
mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with resolution and
plainness. Those who did not sympathize with her remarks were softened
by her simplicity and solemnity. Her speech was decidedly the speech
of the evening.... Miss Dickinson, we understand, is a member of the
Society of Friends, and her speech came in the shape of a retort to
remarks which were contrary to her own beliefs. With her usual
clear-cut conviction and glowing oratory, Miss Dickinson said that:

"'We are told to maintain constitutions because they are
constitutions, and compromises because they are compromises. But what
are compromises?' asked the young speaker, 'and what was laid down in
these constitutions? Eminent lawgivers have said that certain great
fundamental ideas of right are common to the world, and that all laws
of man's making which trample on those ideas are null and void--wrong
to obey, but right to disobey. The Constitution of the United States
sat upon the neck of those rights, recognizes human slavery, and makes
the souls of men articles of purchase and sale.'"

So clear of mind and expression was the young orator that her
statements sank as deeply into the minds of her hearers as if spoken
by a far more learned person, and from that time her intense nature
had found its true outlet, and her longing to provide her mother with
some of the comforts which had so long been denied her was soon to be
realized.

In that same year of her speech at Kennett Square, on an evening in
late February, she spoke in Concert Hall, Philadelphia, before an
audience of about eight hundred persons. For two hours she spoke,
without notes and with easy fluency. There were many well-known men
and women there, who were delighted with what they were pleased to
call a young girl's notable performance. But Anna herself was far from
pleased with her speech. Afterward, on reaching the Longshores', she
threw herself into a chair with an air of utter despondency, and, in
response to their praise, only shook her head.

"I am mortified," she declared. "I spoke too long, and what I said
lacked arrangement, order, and point. And before such an audience!"

This incident shows clearly that, despite all the flattery which was
showered on her at that time, she did not lose her sense of balance,
but knew with a keen instinct whether she had achieved her end or not.

And now winter was over and spring had come with its spirit of new
birth and fulfilment. And, as the buds began to swell and open, the
strong will and fresh young spirit of Anna Dickinson asserted itself
in a desire for more profitable daily work, for as yet she was not
able to give up other employment for the public speaking which brought
her in uneven returns. She disliked the confinement and routine of
teaching so much that she decided to try a new kind of work, and
secured a place in the Mint, where she described her duties vividly to
her interested friends.

"I sat on a stool," she said, "from seven o'clock in the morning to
six at night for twenty-eight dollars a month. The atmosphere of the
room was close and impure, as it was necessary to keep all windows and
doors closed in the adjusting-room, for the least draught of air would
vary the scales." Not a very congenial occupation for the independent
nature of the young orator, but, although she disliked the work, she
was very skilful at it, and soon became the fastest adjuster in the
Mint. But she could not bear the confinement of the adjusting-room
and changed to the coining-room, yet even that was impossible to a
spirit which had seen a vision of creative work and of ability to do
it. Then, too, she thoroughly disliked the men with whom she was
thrown and their beliefs, knowing them to be opposed to principles
which she held sacred; so when, in November, she made a speech on the
events of the war, in which she stated her views so frankly that when
they came to the ears of Government officials who did not agree with
her she was dismissed from the Mint, she was rather pleased than
troubled.

Through the remainder of the winter she continued to speak in various
suburbs of the city, not always to sympathetic audiences, for so
radical were some of her assertions, especially coming from the lips
of a mere girl, that she was hissed time and again for her assertions.
Despite this, she was becoming well known as a speaker of great
ability, and as the war went on, with its varying successes for the
North and South, she thought with less intensity on the subjects of
the future of the negro and the wrongs of women, and became more
deeply absorbed in questions of national importance, which was a
fortunate thing for her. She was enthusiastic, eloquent, young and
pretty, all of which characteristics made her a valuable ally for any
cause. Mr. Garrison, the noted Abolitionist, heard her speak twice,
and was so delighted with her manner and ability that he asked for an
introduction to her, and invited her to visit Boston and make his
house her home while there. She thanked him with pretty enthusiasm and
accepted, but before going to Boston was persuaded to give the lecture
in Philadelphia, for which she had been dismissed from the Mint. A
ten-cent admission was charged, and Judge Pierce, one of the early
advocates of Woman's Rights, presided and introduced the young
speaker. The house was crowded, and this time she was satisfied with
her lecture, while the eager Longshores and her mother were filled
with a just pride. After all expenses were paid she was handed a check
for a bigger sum of money than she had ever owned before. The largest
share of it was given at once to her mother, then, after a serious
discussion with Doctor Longshore, Anna decided to spend the remainder
on her first silk dress. Despite oratory and advanced views, the girl
of eighteen was still human and feminine, and it is to be doubted
whether any results of her labors ever gave her more satisfaction than
that bit of finery for her public appearances.

And now the young orator went to Boston, where through Mr. Garrison's
influence she was invited to speak in Theodore Parker's pulpit, as
leading reformers were then doing. She also spoke in the Music Hall on
"The National Crisis," and that lecture was the hardest trial she ever
experienced. For two days before it she could not sleep or eat, and
answered questions like one in a dream, and Mr. Garrison and those
friends who had been confident of her ability to hold any audience
began to feel extremely nervous. If she should make a failure now at
the beginning of her career, it would be critical for her future.

The night came, and with ill-concealed nervousness Anna put on the new
silk dress, shook her heavy curls into place, and with resolute
courage went to the hall, where, on mounting the platform, she noted
the most tremendous audience she had ever before faced. Mr. Garrison
opened the meeting by reading a chapter of the Bible, then he used up
as much time as possible in remarks, in order to make the best of a
bad situation, for he felt that she was not in a state of mind or body
to hold the coldly critical audience before her. While he read and
spoke poor Anna behind him waited to be presented, in an agony of
nervousness which she struggled not to show. Then came the singing of
the "Negro Boatman's Song of Whittier" by a quartet, accompanied by
the organ. At last, with an easy smile, which concealed his real
feelings, Mr. Garrison turned to introduce Anna, and she rose and
walked forward to the front of the platform, looking more immature and
girlish than ever before. Her first sentences were halting,
disconnected, her fingers twined and twisted nervously around the
handkerchief she held; then she saw a sympathetic upturned face in the
front row of the audience staring up at her. Something in the face
roused Anna to a determined effort. Throwing herself into her subject,
she soon was pouring out a passionate appeal for a broader national
life and action. Gone were fear and self-consciousness, gone all but
determination to make her audience feel as she felt, believe as she
believed, in the interest of humanity and the highest ideals. For over
an hour she held that coldly critical mass of New England hearers as
if by a magic spell, then the vast audience rose and gave vent to
their emotion by the singing of "America," and then persons of
distinction and wealth crowded around the speaker of the evening with
thanks and praise. To one and all the young orator, whose eyes were
still shining with enthusiasm, replied, simply: "I thank you. The
subject is very near my heart," and as those who met her turned away
they could not hide their amazement at the ability of a young person
who looked so immature in her girlish beauty and freshness.

This was the beginning of a period of success. She delivered the
Boston lecture in several other New England cities, and had many fine
press notices on it, one of which closed with the following sentences:

"Her whole appearance and manner were decidedly attractive, earnest,
and expressive. Her lecture was well arranged, logical, and
occasionally eloquent, persuasive, and pathetic."

That was the time when every woman with a tender heart and a chance to
show it for the benefit of the wounded soldiers served her
apprenticeship in some hospital, and Anna was one of them. With keen
sympathy she nursed and comforted the sick men, who told her freely
about their hardships and sufferings, as well as the motives which led
them to go into the army, and she learned their opinion of war and of
life on the battle-fields. From this experience she gained much
priceless material which she later used most successfully.

She was now beginning to be known as much for her youth and personal
charm as for the subject-matter of her lectures, and to her unbounded
joy in October, 1862, she received one hundred dollars and many
flattering press notices for a speech given before the Boston
Fraternity Lyceum. This success encouraged her to plan a series of
lectures to be given in various parts of the East, especially in New
England, from which she hoped to gain substantial results. But in
making her plans she had failed to reckon with the humor of the people
who under the stress of war had little interest even in the most
thrilling lectures, and she traveled from place to place with such
meager returns that she became perfectly disheartened, and, worse than
that, she was almost penniless.

When she had filled her last engagement of the series, for which she
was to receive the large sum of ten dollars, at Concord, New
Hampshire, she realized with a sinking heart that unless she could
turn the tide of her affairs quickly she must again seek another
occupation. The resolute girl was almost disheartened, and she
confessed to a friend later:

"No one knows how I felt and suffered that winter, penniless and
alone, with a scanty wardrobe, suffering with cold, weariness, and
disappointment. I wandered about on the trains day after day among
strangers, seeking employment for an honest living and failing to find
it. I would have gone home, but had not the means. I had borrowed
money to commence my journey, promising to remit soon; failing to do
so, I could not ask again. Beyond my Concord meeting, all was
darkness. I had no further plans."

With positive want staring her in the face, in debt for the trip which
she had taken on a venture, and shrinkingly sensitive in regard to her
inability to aid her mother more lavishly, there was need of quick
action. Alone in a boarding-house room, Anna reviewed her resources
and the material she had on hand for a new and more taking lecture.

"I have it!" she exclaimed, jumping to her feet, and taking up a pad
and pencil she hastily began to write a lecture in which she used the
material gained in her hospital experience. She called it "Hospital
Life." When she gave it on that night at Concord with a heavy heart it
proved to be the pivot on which her success as a lecturer swung to its
greatest height. As she drew her vivid pictures of the hospital
experience and horrors of war and slavery she melted her audience to
tears by her impassioned delivery. The secretary of the New Hampshire
Central Committee was in the audience and was enchanted as he heard
the young speaker for the first time. At the close of the lecture he
said to a friend:

"If we can get this girl to make that speech all through New
Hampshire, we can carry the Republican ticket in this State in the
coming election."

So impressed was he with Anna's powers of persuasion that he decided
to invite her to become a campaign speaker on his own responsibility,
if the State Committee did not think well of the idea. But that
committee was only too glad to adopt any plan to aid their cause. Anna
Dickinson, then only eighteen years old, was invited to become part of
the State machinery, to work on the side which appealed to her sense
of justice. Elated, excited, and enthusiastic, she accepted the offer
and began to speak early in March. What a work that was for the young
and inexperienced girl! In the month before election, twenty times she
stood before great throngs of eager persons and spoke, rousing great
enthusiasm by her eloquent appeals in the name of reason and fair
play.

Slight, pretty, and without any of the tricks of the professional
political speaker, her march through the State was a succession of
triumphs which ended in a Republican victory, and, though many of her
enemies called her "ignorant and illogical" as well as "noisy" in mind
and spirit, the adverse criticism was of no consequence in comparison
to the praise and success which far outweighed it.

The member in the first district, having no faith that a woman could
influence politics, sent word to the secretary, "Don't send that woman
down here to defeat my election."

The secretary replied, "We have work enough for her to do in other
districts without interfering with you!"

When the honorable member saw the furore Anna was creating he changed
his mind and begged the secretary to let her speak in his district.
The secretary replied: "It is too late; the program is arranged....
You would not have her when you could, now you cannot have her when
you will!"

That district was lost by a large majority, while the others went
strongly Republican, and it is interesting to note that when the good
news reached headquarters the Governor-elect himself personally sent
Anna thanks for her eloquent speeches, and to her amazement she was
serenaded, feasted, and praised in a way that would have turned the
head of a young woman who had been more interested in her own success
than in victory for a cause for which she stood. But that and the
money she could make and pass on to her mother were Anna's supreme
objects in whatever she undertook, and although she would have been
less than human if the praise and recognition had not pleased her,
yet her real joy lay in the good-sized checks which she could now add
to the family treasury.

"Having done such good work in the New Hampshire election, her next
field of endeavor was Connecticut, where the Republicans were
completely disheartened, for nothing, they said, could prevent the
Democrats from carrying the State. The issue was a vital one, and yet
so discouraged were the Connecticut politicians that they were about
to give up the fight without further effort, when it was decided to
try having the successful young girl speaker see what she could do for
them. Anna was only too delighted to accept the challenge, and at once
started on a round of stump-speaking and speechmaking, with all the
enthusiasm of her intense nature added to the inspiration of her
recent success in a neighboring State. The results were almost
miraculous. Two weeks of steady work not only turned the tide of
popular feeling, but created a perfect frenzy of interest in the young
orator. Even the Democrats, in spite of scurrilous attacks made on her
by some of their leaders, received her everywhere with the warmest
welcome, tore off their party badges, and replaced them by her
picture, while giving wild applause to all she said. The halls where
she spoke were so densely packed that the Republicans stayed away to
make room for the Democrats, and the women were shut out to leave room
for those who could vote."

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