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When she had filled her last engagement of the series, for which she was to receive the large sum of ten dollars, at Concord, New Hampshire, she realized with a sinking heart that unless she could turn the tide of her affairs quickly she must again seek another occupation. The resolute girl was almost disheartened, and she confessed to a friend later:

“No one knows how I felt and suffered that winter, penniless and alone, with a scanty wardrobe, suffering with cold, weariness, and disappointment. I wandered about on the trains day after day among strangers, seeking employment for an honest living and failing to find it. I would have gone home, but had not the means. I had borrowed money to commence my journey, promising to remit soon; failing to do so, I could not ask again. Beyond my Concord meeting, all was darkness. I had no further plans.”

With positive want staring her in the face, in debt for the trip which she had taken on a venture, and shrinkingly sensitive in regard to her inability to aid her mother more lavishly, there was need of quick action. Alone in a boarding-house room, Anna reviewed her resources and the material she had on hand for a new and more taking lecture.

“I have it!” she exclaimed, jumping to her feet, and taking up a pad and pencil she hastily began to write a lecture in which she used the material gained in her hospital experience. She called it “Hospital Life.” When she gave it on that night at Concord with a heavy heart it proved to be the pivot on which her success as a lecturer swung to its greatest height. As she drew her vivid pictures of the hospital experience and horrors of war and slavery she melted her audience to tears by her impassioned delivery. The secretary of the New Hampshire Central Committee was in the audience and was enchanted as he heard the young speaker for the first time. At the close of the lecture he said to a friend:

“If we can get this girl to make that speech all through New Hampshire, we can carry the Republican ticket in this State in the coming election.”

So impressed was he with Anna’s powers of persuasion that he decided to invite her to become a campaign speaker on his own responsibility, if the State Committee did not think well of the idea. But that committee was only too glad to adopt any plan to aid their cause. Anna Dickinson, then only eighteen years old, was invited to become part of the State machinery, to work on the side which appealed to her sense of justice. Elated, excited, and enthusiastic, she accepted the offer and began to speak early in March. What a work that was for the young and inexperienced girl! In the month before election, twenty times she stood before great throngs of eager persons and spoke, rousing great enthusiasm by her eloquent appeals in the name of reason and fair play.

Slight, pretty, and without any of the tricks of the professional political speaker, her march through the State was a succession of triumphs which ended in a Republican victory, and, though many of her enemies called her “ignorant and illogical” as well as “noisy” in mind and spirit, the adverse criticism was of no consequence in comparison to the praise and success which far outweighed it.

The member in the first district, having no faith that a woman could influence politics, sent word to the secretary, “Don’t send that woman down here to defeat my election.”

The secretary replied, “We have work enough for her to do in other districts without interfering with you!”

When the honorable member saw the furore Anna was creating he changed his mind and begged the secretary to let her speak in his district. The secretary replied: “It is too late; the program is arranged…. You would not have her when you could, now you cannot have her when you will!”