316 A. Street. North East

Washington D C. June 9^th 1874

Dear Anna DickinsonDickinson, Anna Elizabeth

Philadelphia-born and Quaker-educated Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (1842-1932) began her career as a working woman, employed first as a copyist, then as a schoolteacher, and finally in the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. At the age of eighteen she first appeared on lecture platforms as a feminist and anti-slavery crusader. After she lost her job at the mint in December 1861 for accusing General George B. McClellan of treason, she became a full-time lecturer. Throughout the Civil War, Dickinson delivered Republican campaign speeches in New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and on 16 January 1864 she spoke before a distinguished audience of statesmen and military officials, including President Lincoln, in the hall of the House of Representatives. At the end of the war she joined the lyceum lecture circuit, speaking on behalf of Radical Republican Reconstruction measures and women's rights, and against Mormonism, large corporations, and craft unions. In the early 1870s Dickinson's popularity as an orator waned, and her attempts at comebacks, first as a playwright and actress in the late 1870s and early 1880s and then as a political orator during the 1888 election, proved unsuccessful. She spent the last forty years of her life in obscurity. Giraud Chester, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New York, 1951); NCAB, 3:109; DAB, 21:244-45; NAW, 1:475-76. :

You could not easily ask any favor of me which if in my power I would not gladly grant. The beautiful round table which formerly adorned the elegant Drawing room of our much lamented friend Charles Sumner, and which after spirited competition by rival bidders, was much to my satisfaction struck of to me for sixty two dollars, I now hold subject to your order.

Please remember me kindly to Miss "Sue,"Dickinson, Susan Evelyn

Susan Evelyn Dickinson (1832-1915) was an American journalist and the older sister of abolitionist Anna Elizabeth Dickinson. and your most esteemable motherDickinson, Mary Edmundson

Mary Edmundson Dickinson (1799-1889), a Quaker abolitionist, was married to John Dickinson, a cousin of Founder of John Dickinson. They married in 1832 and had three children, including Anna Elizabeth Dickinson (Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Papers of Anna E. Dickinson; Delaware Gazette and State Journal, 16 May 1889) .

Always yours very truly

Fredk. Douglass