ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.
N 1861, a young girl of nineteen years, sprang like a Minerva fully armed into the moral and political arena, and for a time stirred the hearts of those who fell under her influence, as few other speakers have done. From the day she first appeared before the public, she feared not to utter the boldest truths and most scathing rebukes of sin in high places. Whether the principle for which she strove is right or wrong the world of course will judge for itself, but that this woman was honest, logical, sincere, and eloquent in advocacy, no one who ever listened to her earnest appeals or read what she wrote could for one moment doubt.
Anna E. Dickinson was born October 28, 1842, in the city of Philadelphia. When she was two years old her father died, leaving the family in straightened circumstances. Her parents belonged to the Society of Friends, and Anna was sent in her early years to the Friends’ Free School. At the same time she had little ways of her own in earning money, which she carefully husbanded and spent for books. When fourteen years old she made her appearance before the public by writing an article on slavery, which was published in “The Liberator,” and in 1857 made her debut as a public speaker by replying to a man who had delivered a tirade against women. From that time she spoke frequently on the subjects of slavery and temperance. In 1859 and 1860 she taught a country school, and in 1861 became an employee in the Philadelphia Mint, from which position she was soon dismissed, because in a speech in West Chester she declared the battle of Ball’s Bluff had been lost through the treason of General McClellan. Thus cast upon the world she entered immediately the lecture platform. William Lloyd Garrison heard one of her addresses and named her “The Girl Orator.” He invited her to speak in Boston, Massachusetts, where she delivered a famous address on the “National Crisis” in Music Hall. From there she entered upon a lecture tour, speaking in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and until the close of the war devoted her time to lecturing. In Washington, D. C., in 1864, the proceeds of one of her lectures, amounting to a thousand dollars, she devoted to the Freedmen’s Relief Society. She was frequently called to the hospitals and the camps, where she addressed the soldiers. After the war she took up the cudgel in favor of woman’s suffrage. She visited Utah to inquire into the condition of women there, and returning delivered her famous lecture on the “Whited Sepulchres.” Other prominent lectures were entitled “Demagogues and Workingmen,” “Joan of Arc,” “Between Us Be Truth,” “Platform and Stage.”
Miss Dickinson made the mistake of her life when she deserted the platform for the stage in 1877. She wrote a play entitled “A Crown of Thorns,” in which she attempted to “star.” She next assayed Shakespearian tragic roles, including “Hamlet” and others, and afterwards gave dramatic readings. In all of these attempts she was out of her element, therefore, unsuccessful, and returned to the lecture platform, but continued to write plays. The only one of these, however, which was even moderately popular with the masses was entitled “The American Girl,” played by Fanny Davenport. The noted actor, John McCullough, was preparing to produce her “Aurelian,” when the failure of his powers came and it was never put upon the stage. Miss Dickinson also wrote a number of books. Among them we mention the novel “What Answer;” “A Paying Investment,” and “A Ragged Register of People, Places and Opinions,” the latter being a sort of diary, and perhaps the most valuable of the lot.
The last ten years added other mistakes and misfortunes which have tended to detract from the well-earned fame of her earlier life. These difficulties began with a suit brought against the Republican managers in 1888 for services rendered in the Harrison presidential campaign. Following this came family difficulties. Her health failed and she was placed by her relatives for a time in an insane asylum, from which she was eventually released, but was involved in further law-suits. Let it be said to her credit, however, that while she acquired an ample fortune from her lectures, she has given away the bulk of it to all kinds of charities, and it is from the money that she has made and her liberal disposition to dispose of it for the benefit of humanity, rather than to her relatives, which has involved her in much of the family trouble.
As an orator Miss Dickinson was a woman of singular powers. Together with a most excellent judgment, and a keen, analytic mind, enabling her to dissect theories and motives, she was a mistress of sarcasm, pathos and wit, and possessed that rare eloquence and dramatic fervor which go to make the great orator, and which can be understood only by those who have heard her on the platform. In her work she was always unique, and while as a whole her books and plays were not popular successes they contain passages of undisputed marks of genius.
WHY COLORED MEN SHOULD ENLIST IN THE ARMY.
Extract from speech delivered at a mass meeting held in Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the promotion of enlistment of colored men in the Union Army. The efficiency of colored troops having been demonstrated by recent battles in the Southwest, several hundred gentlemen of Philadelphia addressed a memorial to the Secretary of War, asking authority to raise three regiments for three years of the war, from among the colored population of Pennsylvania. Permission to this effect was promptly given. Accordingly a mass meeting was called to arouse the colored people to prompt action. Judge Kelly and Frederick Douglass spoke at the same meeting, but Miss Dickinson’s appeal was the oratorical feature of the occasion. We quote the extract below as a specimen of her eloquence.
RUE, through the past we have advocated the use of the black man. For what end? To save ourselves. We wanted them as shields, as barriers, as walls of defence. We would not even say to them, fight beside us. We would put them in the front; their brains contracted, their souls dwarfed, their manhood stunted; mass them together; let them die! That will cover and protect us. Now we hear the voice of the people, solemn and sorrowful, saying, “We have wronged you enough; you have suffered enough; we ask no more at your hands; we stand aside, and let you fight for your own manhood, your future, your race.” (Applause.) Anglo-Africans, we need you; yet it is not because of this need that I ask you to go into the ranks of the regiments forming to fight in this war. My cheeks would crimson with shame, while my lips put the request that could be answered, “Your soldiers? why don’t you give us the same bounty, and the same pay as the rest?” I have no reply to that. (Sensation.)
But for yourselves; because, after ages of watching and agony, your day is breaking; because your hour is come; because you hold the hammer which, upheld or falling, decides your destiny for woe or weal; because you have reached the point from which you must sink, generation after generation, century after century, into deeper depths, into more absolute degradation; or mount to the heights of glory and fame.
The cause needs you. This is not our war, not a war for territory; not a war for martial power, for mere victory; it is a war of the races, of the ages; the stars and stripes is the people’s flag of the world; the world must be gathered under its folds, the black man beside the white. (Cheers and applause.)
Thirteen dollars a month and bounty are good; liberty is better. Ten dollars a month and no bounty are bad; slavery is worse. The two alternatives are put before you; you make your own future. The to be will, in a little while, do you justice. Soldiers will be proud to welcome as comrades, as brothers, the black men of Port Hudson and Milliken’s Bend. Congress, next winter, will look out through the fog and mist of Washington, and will see how, when Pennsylvania was invaded and Philadelphia threatened, while white men haggled over bounty and double pay to defend their own city, their own homes, with the tread of armed rebels almost heard in their streets; black men, without bounty, without pay, without rights or the promise of any, rushed to the [♦]beleaguered capital, and were first in their offers of life or of death. (Cheers and applause.) Congress will say, “These men are soldiers; we will pay them as such; these men are marvels of loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage; we will give them a chance of promotion.” History will write, “Behold the unselfish heroes; the eager martyrs of this war.” (Applause.) You hesitate because you have not all. Your brothers and sisters of the South cry out, “Come to help us, we have nothing.” Father! you hesitate to send your boy to death; the slave father turns his face of dumb entreaty to you, to save his boy from the death in life; the bondage that crushes soul and body together. Shall your son go to his aid? Mother! you look with pride at the young manly face and figure, growing and strengthening beside you! he is yours; your own. God gave him to you. From the lacerated hearts, the wrung souls of other mothers, comes the wail, “My child, my child; give me back my child!” The slave-master heeds not; the government is tardy; mother! the prayer comes to you; will you falter?
[♦] “beleagured” replaced with “beleaguered”
Young man, rejoicing in the hope, the courage, the will, the thews and muscles of young manhood—the red glare of this war falls on the faces and figures of other young men, distorted with suffering, writhing in agony, wrenching their manacles and chains—shouting with despairing voices to you for help—shall it be withheld? (Cries of No! No!)
The slave will be freed—with or without you. The conscience and heart of the people have decreed that. (Applause.) Xerxes scourging the Hellespont, Canute commanding the waves to roll back, are but types of that folly which stands up and says to this majestic wave of public opinion, “Thus far.” The black man will be a citizen, only by stamping his right to it in his blood. Now or never! You have not homes!—gain them. You have not liberty!—gain it. You have not a flag!—gain it. You have not a country!—be written down in history as the race who made one for themselves, and saved one for another. (Immense cheering.)