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Even that achievement was not the height of the young orator’s attainment. Her next ovation was at Cooper Institute in New York City, where she spoke in May of the same year. Faded newspaper accounts of that meeting fill us with amazement that such a triumph could be, with only a girl’s indomitable will, an insufficient education and much reading of books back of it.

“Long before the appointed hour for the lecture the hall was crowded. The people outside were determined to get in at all hazards, ushers were beaten down, those with tickets rushed in, and those without tickets were pushed aside, while thousands went home unable to get standing room even in the lobbies and outer halls.

“On the platform sat some of the most distinguished men of the day: clergymen, lawyers, generals, admirals, leaders of the fashionable set–all eager to do homage to the simple girl of whom the press said:

“‘She is medium in height, slight in form, graceful in movement, her head, well poised, adorned with heavy dark hair, displaying to advantage a pleasant face which has all the signs of nervous force and of vigorous mental life. In manner she is unembarrassed, without a shade of boldness; her gestures are simple, her voice is of wonderful power, penetrating rather than loud, as clear as the tone of metal, and yet with a reed-like softness. Her vocabulary is simple, and in no instance has there been seen a straining after effective expressions; yet her skill in using ordinary language is so great that with a single phrase she presents a picture and delivers a poem in a sentence.'”

At the close of the meeting, which had been opened by Henry Ward Beecher, he rose and said, with real emotion, “Let no man open his lips here to-night; music is the only fitting accompaniment to the eloquent utterances we have heard.” Then the famous Hutchinson family sang and closed the meeting with the John Brown song, in which the vast audience joined with thrilling effect.

From that Cooper Institute meeting Anna received almost one thousand dollars, an incredible amount for a simple speech to her unmercenary spirit, but one which was to be duplicated many times before her career was over.

After that meeting in New York her reputation as a public speaker was established, despite the carping critics, and she continued to win fresh laurels, not only for herself, but for vital issues. When doing more campaigning in Pennsylvania she had to travel through the mining districts, where her frank words were often ridiculed and she was pelted with stones, rotten eggs, and other unpleasant missiles. But she bore it all like a warrior, and made a remarkable record for speeches in parts of the State where no man dared to go. Despite this and the fact that the victorious party owed its success largely to the young orator, the committee never paid her one cent for her services–to their great discredit, probably having spent all their campaign funds in some other less legitimate way and thinking they could more easily defraud a girl than a more shrewd man.

Nothing daunted, she continued to speak wherever she could get a hearing, and at last came an invitation to make an address in Washington, D. C. Here indeed was a triumph! She hesitated long before accepting the invitation, for it would be a trying ordeal, as among her audience would be the President and many diplomats and high government officials. But with sturdy courage she accepted, and as a result faced, as she later said, the most brilliant audience ever assembled to hear her speak. It was a unique sensation for the dignitaries and men of mark to sit as listeners at the feet of this slender girl, who was speaking on profound questions of the day; but she made a deep impression, even on those who did not agree with her opinions, and it was a proud moment of her life when at the close of the meeting she met the President and his Cabinet. The Chief Executive gladly granted her an interview for the following day, and like other men of lesser rank, was carried out of himself as he watched the play of expression, the light and shade on her mobile face, as they talked together of the vital topics of the day.

Anna Dickinson was now an orator beyond a doubt; in fact, the only girl orator the country had ever known. More than that, she made use of her eloquence, her magnetism, her flow of language, not for any minor use, but in presenting to the public the great problems of her day and in pleading for honor and justice, freedom and fullness of joy for the individual, with such intensity of purpose as few men have ever used in pleading a cause.

That she wrote and acted in a play dealing with one of the subjects nearest her heart, and that she published a novel of the same kind, added nothing to her fame. She was wholly an orator with an instinctive knowledge of the way to play on the emotions of her listeners. Her faults were the faults of an intense nature too early obliged to grapple with hard problems; her virtues were those of a strong, independent, unselfish nature. It has been said that she rose to fame on the crest of three waves: the negro wave, the war wave, and the woman wave. If that is so, then was her success as a public speaker something of which to be proud, for to have spoken on such subjects surely betokens a great nature. Anna Dickinson has been called the “Joan of Arc” of her day and country. If she had not the delicate spiritual vision of the Maid of France, she had her superb courage in reaching up toward an ideal. What she was and what she accomplished as an American girl, who was an orator at eighteen, gives an incentive and a new enthusiasm to young Americans of the twentieth century, for what girls have done girls can do, and we believe, with that greatest of poets, that “the best is yet to be.”