Quaker Abolitionist and War Hawk
Anna E. Dickinson (October 28, 1842 – October 22, 1932) was an eloquent speaker of Quaker background who took to the lecture circuit to speak on abolisionist and women's rights issues. During the Civil War she advocated the need to fight to save the Union and free the slaves.
Mark Twain had this to say about her, published in the San Francisco newspaper, Alta California, on April 5, 1867.
I went to hear this famous lecturer the other night, and was mightily pleased. She spoke in the Cooper Institute, to an audience of 2,500 persons. Peter Cooper brought her on the stage, and Horace Greeley introduced her. She had on a heavy cherry colored silk dress, cut very plainly, and lace cravat and cuffs. Her thick, straight hair is short - only just touches her collar behind. Her dress was suited to a middle-aged person, her hair to a girl, and her face to one sometimes, and sometimes to the other. I cannot possibly guess her age - she looked old at first, and young upon a better acquaintance. However, she cannot be over twenty-two or three. There is nothing especially noticeable about her features, taken in detail, except that her eyes look rather unusually deep-set. She talks fast, uses no notes what ever, never hesitates for a word, always gets the right word in the right place, and has the most perfect confidence in herself. Indeed, her sentences are remarkably smoothly-woven and felicitous. Her vim, her energy, her determined look, her tremendous earnestness, would compel the respect and the attention of an audience, even if she spoke in Chinese - would convince a third of them, too, even though she used arguments that would not stand analysis. She keeps close to her subject, reasons well, and makes every point without fail. Her prose poetry charms, her eloquence thrills, her pathos often moves to tears, her satire cuts to the quick, and she hath a certain grim humor that affords an uneasy sort of enjoyment - uneasy, because one feels that when she lightens that way she is going to storm directly. She has got one defect, which you may notice in all women who make speeches: frequently, after she has got her audience wrought up ready to explode with enthusiasm, she does not spring her grand climax upon them at the precious instant, but drags toward it so slowly that by the time she reaches it they are nearly cooled down to a dignified self-possession again. But perhaps she does not want applause - she never stops for it, at any rate, but goes on talking in the midst of it.
The aim of her speech was to call the attention of the people to the meagre number of avenues to an honest livelihood that are permitted to women, and the drudging, unintellectual character of those employments, and to demand, as simple justice to her sex, that those avenues be multiplied till women may earn their bread elsewhere than in kitchens and factories without unsexing themselves. She did her work well. She made a speech worth listening to.
Her sarcasm bites. I do not know but that it is her best card. She will make a right venomous old maid some day, I am afraid. She said that she was arguing upon her favorite subject with a self-sufficient youth one day, and she silenced his guns one after another till at last he staked his all upon one powerful proposition: "Would you have all women strong-minded?" "No!" she thundered, "God forbid that the millions of men of your calibre that cumber the earth should be doomed to travel its weary ways unmated!"
Miss Dickinson is paid very high figures for lecturing, and does a good deal of it. She has drudged with her hands, though, in her day; she said the first money she ever earned was two shillings - for scrubbing two pavements. They say she was born in Philadelphia, but she says nyther and ither, like women from beyond the Atlantic, and wanders into a brogue frequently that sounds very like Irish.
Read more about her in Wikipedia.
Quaker Abolitionist and War Hawk
Anna E. Dickinson (October 28, 1842 – October 22, 1932) was an eloquent speaker of Quaker background who took to the lecture circuit to speak on abolisionist and women's rights issues. During the Civil War she advocated the need to fight to save the Union and free the slaves.
Mark Twain had this to say about her, published in the San Francisco newspaper, Alta California, on April 5, 1867.
I went to hear this famous lecturer the other night, and was mightily pleased. She spoke in the Cooper Institute, to an audience of 2,500 persons. Peter Cooper brought her on the stage, and Horace Greeley introduced her. She had on a heavy cherry colored silk dress, cut very plainly, and lace cravat and cuffs. Her thick, straight hair is short - only just touches her collar behind. Her dress was suited to a middle-aged person, her hair to a girl, and her face to one sometimes, and sometimes to the other. I cannot possibly guess her age - she looked old at first, and young upon a better acquaintance. However, she cannot be over twenty-two or three. There is nothing especially noticeable about her features, taken in detail, except that her eyes look rather unusually deep-set. She talks fast, uses no notes what ever, never hesitates for a word, always gets the right word in the right place, and has the most perfect confidence in herself. Indeed, her sentences are remarkably smoothly-woven and felicitous. Her vim, her energy, her determined look, her tremendous earnestness, would compel the respect and the attention of an audience, even if she spoke in Chinese - would convince a third of them, too, even though she used arguments that would not stand analysis. She keeps close to her subject, reasons well, and makes every point without fail. Her prose poetry charms, her eloquence thrills, her pathos often moves to tears, her satire cuts to the quick, and she hath a certain grim humor that affords an uneasy sort of enjoyment - uneasy, because one feels that when she lightens that way she is going to storm directly. She has got one defect, which you may notice in all women who make speeches: frequently, after she has got her audience wrought up ready to explode with enthusiasm, she does not spring her grand climax upon them at the precious instant, but drags toward it so slowly that by the time she reaches it they are nearly cooled down to a dignified self-possession again. But perhaps she does not want applause - she never stops for it, at any rate, but goes on talking in the midst of it.
The aim of her speech was to call the attention of the people to the meagre number of avenues to an honest livelihood that are permitted to women, and the drudging, unintellectual character of those employments, and to demand, as simple justice to her sex, that those avenues be multiplied till women may earn their bread elsewhere than in kitchens and factories without unsexing themselves. She did her work well. She made a speech worth listening to.
Her sarcasm bites. I do not know but that it is her best card. She will make a right venomous old maid some day, I am afraid. She said that she was arguing upon her favorite subject with a self-sufficient youth one day, and she silenced his guns one after another till at last he staked his all upon one powerful proposition: "Would you have all women strong-minded?" "No!" she thundered, "God forbid that the millions of men of your calibre that cumber the earth should be doomed to travel its weary ways unmated!"
Miss Dickinson is paid very high figures for lecturing, and does a good deal of it. She has drudged with her hands, though, in her day; she said the first money she ever earned was two shillings - for scrubbing two pavements. They say she was born in Philadelphia, but she says nyther and ither, like women from beyond the Atlantic, and wanders into a brogue frequently that sounds very like Irish.
Read more about her in Wikipedia.