Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (review)

Book Reviews65 once the four Friends refused to take the scheduled coach because the driver was "completely drunk." Prejudice against Negroes was "deep" and "general." John Candler recognized that some slaves were well-fed and clothed and not overworked. However, "cheerful and happy" bondsmen did not prevent his looking "beneath the surface," and seeing "how evil and bitter a thing it is to be in bondage." The letters also reveal something of John Candler's character. Although he lacked race prejudice, Candler displayed class pride when he lamented that he was "compelled sometimes to remain at spots where we are surrounded by low-lived, tobacco chewing, idle trash of white men." He found more "refinement" in the "cities and among merchants and professional men" than in the towns, where some inhabitants exhibited a "coarseness which is really repulsive." If John Candler felt the sting of Louisiana's Governor Paul O. Hebert who indignantly denounced "what he termed the greater slavery of the poor in England," he failed to confess it to his wife. Despite his shortcomings, there is something of the heroic in Candler's odyssey. He was sixty-six years old and the trials of travel and separation from his beloved wife bore heavy on him. In Friendsville , Tennessee, one of the delegation, seventy-year-old William Forster, died after a prolonged illness. Candler's description of the Friends' Meeting for worship following the burial is simple but moving. In a moment of loneliness shortly before Forster's death, John Candler wrote his "Beloved Maria": "The time of our separation seems to be very long . . . but afflictions are sent for a wise end, and I cultivate resignation ." The volume is a valuable source and the Indiana Historical Society is to be commended for publishing it. An admirably low price compensates for the relatively unattractive format. University of WisconsinLarry Gara Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson. By Giraud Chester. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1951. 307 pages. $4.00. ? NNA Elizabeth Dickinson, a Philadelphia Quaker, was one of the nineteenth century's notable women—with a difference. Beginning a public-speaking career in the causes of Antislavery and Woman's Rights, Anna Dickinson was almost immediately acclaimed as an eloquent orator: and although she retained her faith in abolition and in the effort to achieve a status of equality for women, she saw scant reason for renouncing the opportunity that soon came to her to make a financial success of public speaking. She was not the sole woman of her day to advocate social reform. On the antislavery platform, in the battle for justice for women, Anna 66Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Dickinson followed such pioneers as Angelina and Sarah Grimké, Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. But Miss Dickinson was unique in that she molded a virtue into a successful profession; then, as the years passed, the original impetus of her oratory seemed almost lost in the formal regulations of speakers' bureaus and in the demands and contracts of politicians. She remained on the side of the angels; but first and last she was the professional speaker. A beautiful woman of gentle mien and address, she commanded impassioned heights of colorful appeals; she could on occasion ridicule or silence hecklers; and she knew how to drive a financial bargain with speakers, agents, and politicians. At the height of her fame, she made over twenty thousand dollars a year. This money she used unselfishly for others; because her mother, her older sister, and one brother claimed, seemingly as a right, support from the prosperous though younger member of the family. Such renown as a public speaker did this young woman reach that before she was twenty years of age she was invited to address the House of Representatives on certain issues of the Civil War. At one time credit for the success of the Republican election in New Hampshire was attributed to the campaign speeches of Anna Dickinson, and under similar circumstances a victory for the Republicans was chalked up in Connecticut. In the zenith of her career she traveled from one section of the country to another, speaking to crowded houses...