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American orator and lecturer (1842-1932) who was an advocate for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights, and who was the first woman to give a political address before the United States Congress. A gifted speaker at a very young age, she aided the Republican Party in the hard-fought 1863 elections and significantly influenced the distribution of political power in the Union just before the Civil War. Dickinson was the first white woman on record to summit Colorado's Longs Peak, Lincoln Peak, and Elbert Peak (on a mule), and she was the second to summit Pike's Peak. Rare ALS signed “Anna E. Dickinson,” three pages on two adjoining sheets, 4 x 5.5, May 8, 1865. Addressed from Philadelphia, a handwritten letter to Mrs. Barnes, in part: “I thank you heartily for your little note, – which, however, did not reach me till the speech had been prepared & delivered…I only wish it had been more worthy the occasion. The proceeds, somewhere near $1000, I have given to the monument fund…The speech deals more with Mr. Lincoln as a type than as an individual, but I certainly try to do him all justice as a man.” In fine condition.
Lincoln was assassinated at Ford’s Theatre on April 14, 1865, roughly three weeks before this letter was written. As the letter suggests, Dickinson delivered a speech on Lincoln shortly after his death, one that was evidently measured in its extollations. A year earlier on January 16, 1864, a 21-year-old Dickinson became the first woman to offer a political speech in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives. The speech, ‘The Perils of the Hour,’ was delivered not only before members of both the House and Senate but also with President Lincoln and many of his cabinet in attendance. One of its more famous passages reads: ‘Let no man prate of compromise. Defeated by ballots, the South had appealed to bullets. Let it stand by the appeal. There was no arm of compromise to stretch over the sea of blood, and the mound of fallen heroes, to shake hands with their murderers.’ Although Dickinson, a radical, had been a prominent critic of Lincoln’s cautious policies regarding slavery, she also used the occasion to provide a modest endorsement for Lincoln and his potential second term. Despite her open criticism of the president, she was later invited to the White House for a meeting.
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