ANNA DICKINSON'S WAR:
GENDERED SPHERES AND POLITICAL DISCOURSE
IN CIVIL WAR AMERICA
II. ABSTRACT
I am applying for a Summer Research Grant to begin a new project on
the responses to Anna Dickinson, a famed mid-nineteenth century
American orator.
Dickinson was an extraordinarily popular, but
historically neglected, lecturer who rose to fame as a teenager in
the late 1850s.
During the Civil War she violated contemporary
gender norms by travelling across the North supporting radical
Republican causes and candidates.
My goal will be to examine what
popular responses to her lectures reveal about the true character
of those cultural prescriptions.
III.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Introduction:
On
Anna Dickinson, "the second Joan of Arc"
January
16,
1864
Anna
Dickinson
--
a
22
year
old
Philadelphia Quaker from a working class family -- delivered an
address to the House of Representatives, with Abraham Lincoln in
attendance.
This alone was a noteworthy incident.
In mid-
2
nineteenth century America women only rarely spoke before mixed
audiences, and those few were not delivering such high-profile
political addresses.
To make matters more interesting, Dickinson
took the occasion to deliver an angry, sarcastic attack on the
Lincoln administration, before grudgingly endorsing the President
in his reelection campaign.
By 1864 Dickinson had already earned tremendous fame for her
strong convictions and her gift for oratory.
In 1860 Dickinson --
still a teenager -- had begun earning modest fees for delivering
public lectures on abolitionism and women's rights.
While other
leading American women remained with those causes through the war
years, Dickinson became a radical Republican partisan, campaigning
for successful candidates throughout the east and New England and
earning the nickname "the second Joan of Arc."
In November 1864
she gave several highly-publicized lectures in Chicago in support
of the Sanitary Commission.
Dickinson
swallowed
her
After her speech in Washington
differences
with
the
President
and
continued to tour the country supporting his candidacy.
The war years were actually only the first chapter in Anna
Dickinson's tale.
After the war she was a popular lyceum speaker
before beginning a successful acting career.
In 1891 she was
committed to the Pennsylvania State Hospital for the Insane, but
four years later she was released and immediately launched a
celebrated libel suit against the authorities who had committed
3
her.
1. Objective:
Popular Responses to Anna Dickinson
As a young, unmarried, Quaker woman, Anna Dickinson's wartime
activities challenged a wide assortment of received notions about
appropriate public gender behavior.
She was certainly not alone in
offering such challenges: the war years saw the establishment of a
professional
nursing
corps,
the
entry
of
women
into
federal
employment as clerks, and as many as 150 women dressed as men and
took up arms.
But most of the inroads by women into the accepted
male "sphere" can be placed into three categories (all of which
providing
some
separation):
(i)
comfort
women
to
a
society
bringing
committed
distinctive
female
to
gender
traits
--
compassion, morality etc -- into the public arena for the good of
society; (ii) women making short-term sacrifices to support family
and nation "for the duration;" and (iii) women behaving like
"honorary men." (often in disguise).
As a partisan political
speaker, Anna Dickinson was really moving on different terrain and
providing challenges to traditional norms which could not so easily
be accommodated to existing paradigms.
My
goal
in
this
project
is
to
responded to Dickinson's public speaking.
local
newspapers
printed
extended
examine
how
Northerners
Wherever she travelled,
discussions
of
Dickinson's
4
physical appearance, oratorical style and political arguments.
Meanwhile, diarists and letter writers often recorded their own
private reactions.
I hope to find and examine that commentary with
a series of questions in mind:
(1) Were Dickinson's listeners more interested in the novelty of
her age and gender or the power of her positions?
Her
speeches were often quite inflammatory (she once accused
General
George
evidence).
McClellan
Did
her
of
treason,
audience
return
apparently
with
from
lectures
such
no
thinking about her gender or her ideas?
(2) Insofar as they noted her gender, how did Dickinson's audiences
react to her violation of cultural norms?
Was she
celebrated as an example of woman's true capacity?
Was she
perceived as overcoming her gender limitations?
Was she
attacked or belittled for her effrontery?
Was she viewed as
an important symbol or an interesting aberration?
(3)
What
can
characterize
we
learn
about
Dickinson's
the
speeches?
gendered
language
Dickinson
was
a
used
to
radical
Republican with extremely partisan beliefs and a notoriously sharp
wit.
Did
her
political
opponents
fight
back
with
gendered
rhetoric, and -- if so -- what sorts of language did they select?
Were their patterns of word choice used to signal that she was
"merely a woman"?
Conversely, did her supporters adopt a parallel
set of gendered terms attaching particular virtue to her stances?
5
This analysis should take me beyond a discussion of Anna
Dickinson.
Instead, I hope to contribute to an ongoing discussion
of the evolving position of women in nineteenth century public
life.
2. Significance:
The Evolving Understanding of Separate Spheres
The historic literature on separate gender spheres in the midnineteenth century is vast and complex.
In 1966 Barbara Welter
sketched out a set of culturally determined expectations which she
called "the cult of true womanhood."
Over the next three decades
scholars have examined "separate spheres" as both an ideological
construct and as a description of actual behavior.
One of the
central conclusions has been that there were strict cultural
limitations on the ways in which women -- particularly white,
middle class women -- could enter the public arena.
In the last few years some women's historians have turned
their attention to the Civil War.
Much of this first round of new
scholarship has considered women's contribution to the war efforts;
the impact of the war on the women's movement; and the ideological
legacy of wartime voluntarism.
Other research has examined how the
war expanded up "public" roles for women.
Thus
far
this
scholarly
discussion
has
not
found
Dickinson or considered the importance of her public behavior.
Anna
The
6
rather old dissertation and biography in the attached bibliography
are
useful
narratives,
questions.
mentions
by
larger
theoretical
The more recent literature in women's history rarely
her.
convenient).
sphere
unencumbered
into
I
find
this
neglect
pretty
astonishing
(and
After all, rather than merely expanding women's
the
public
realm,
Dickinson's
wartime
political
behavior struck at the core of the traditional male sphere.
I feel
confident that this project will make an important contribution to
both the larger discussion of women's public roles and the more
specific literature on women during the Civil War.
This project fits well with both my scholarship and teaching
interests.
I have published two books and numerous articles on the
Civil War home front, often with special attention to gender
issues.
My regular teaching rotation includes courses on the Civil
War and Women's History as well as a Gender Studies Seminar which
addresses the problem of separate spheres from a theoretical and
historical perspective.
3. Research Design and Long Term Plans
This is an entirely new research project, but I have had Anna
Dickinson in the back of my mind for years.
When I was beginning
research on Civil War Philadelphia, I discovered that for about
three days the newspapers, diaries and letters were all talking
about an appearance by the fiery young female lecturer.
Dickinson
7
disappeared from local notice rather quickly, moving on to other
venues,
and
I
concluded
that
one
could
learn
much
about
contemporary attitudes by following her across the country.
My
goal for this summer is to do just that.
The Anna Dickinson Papers (10,000) items at the Library of
Congress include her extensive wartime correspondence and large
scrapbooks
of
newspaper
clippings.
The
papers
have
been
microfilmed and have been purchased by the Loyola/Notre Dame
Library.
My
first
step
will
be
to
finish
reading
the
correspondence and take what can be gleaned from the scrapbooks.
Together these sources, and the two biographies, should provide me
with preliminary material as well as a complete itinerary of
wartime lectures.
The next step will be to plan a series of short trips to
archives in the cities where Dickinson gave her lectures.
Much of
the newspaper research will be possible through interlibrary loan,
leaving only very selected manuscript reading at the archives.
I
imagine one extended swing through New England, a trip to Chicago
with a stop in Cleveland, several short visits to Pennsylvania and
a series of day trips to Washington.
I have been to many of these
archives before, and I have designed the project in such a way that
the research should be extremely efficient.
By the end of the summer I hope to have assembled the
materials for an article which could be submitted to a major
8
journal.
If the material is sufficiently rich, I will consider
expanding the project into a short monograph.
In either case, I
expect that the writing could easily take me into the following
academic year and perhaps into the next summer.
4. Other Research Support and Future Plans
This is my first grant proposal for this project and I have no
other proposals outstanding.
I received Faculty Development Grants
for different projects for the summers of 1993 and 1995.
ANNA DICKINSON'S WAR:
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Primary and Secondary Materials on Anna Dickinson
Anderson,
Judith,
"Anna
Dickinson:
Antislavery
Radical,"
Pennsylvania Historical Society (1936): 147-163.
Chester, Giraud, Embattled Maiden: The Life of Anna Dickinson (New
York, 1951).
Young, James Harvey, "Anna Elizabeth Dickinson and the Civil War"
(PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 1941).
Young, James Harvey, "Anna Elizabeth Dickinson and the Civil War:
For and Against Lincoln," Mississippi Valley Historical
Review
31 (June 1944): 59-80.
Anna Dickinson Papers, Manuscript D ivision, Library of Congress,
Washington, DC
Selected Scholarly Studies
Abelson,
Elaine
S.,
When
Ladies
Go
A-Thieving:
Middle-Class
Shoplifters in the Victorian Department Store (New York,
1989).
Clinton, Catherine, The Other Civil War: American Women in the
Nineteenth Century (NY: Hill and Wang, 1984).
Clinton, Catherine and Nina Silber, editor, Divided Houses: Gender
10
and the Civil War (New York, 1992).
Cott, Nancy, Bonds of Womanhood: "Woman's Sphere" in New England,
1780-1835 (New Haven, 1977).
DuBois, Ellen Carol, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an
Independence
Women's
Movement
in
America,
1848-1869
(Ithaca, 1978).
Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social
Thought and Political Thought (Princeton, 1981).
Ginsberg, Lori, Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality,
Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United
States (New Haven, 1990).
Halttunen, Karen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of
Middle-Class Culture in AMerica, 1830-1870 (New Haven,
1982).
Hewitt, Nancy, Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New
York, 1822-1872 (Ithaca, 1984).
Kelley, Mary, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York, 1984).
Kerber, Linda, "Separate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The
Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History
(June, 1988): 9-39.
Massey, Mary Elizabeth, Bonnet Brigades (New York, 1966).
Matthews, Glenna, The Rise of Public Woman: Women's Power and
Woman's Place in the United States, 1630-1970 (New York,
11
1992).
(Includes about a page on Dickinson.)
Rosenberg, Rosalind, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of
Modern Feminism (New Haven, 1982).
Rothman, Sheila, Woman's Proper Place: A History of Changing Ideals
and Practices, 1870 to the Present (New York, 1978).
Ryan, Mary, Women in Public: Between Banners and Ballots, 1825-1880
(Baltimore, 1990).
Stansell, Christine, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York,
1789-1860 (Urbana, 1987).
Vanet,
Wendy
Aboltionists
Hamand,
and
the
Neither
Civil
War
Ballots
nor
Bullets:
(Charlottesville,
VA,
Women
1991).
(Includes a 16 page chapter on Dickinson, apparently based entirely
on the Library of Congress collection and the biographies cited
above.)
Welter, Barbara, "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860," American
Quarterly (Summer 1966): 151-74.
Yellin, Jean Fagan, Women and Sisters: The Antislavery Feminists in
American Culture (New Haven, 1989).