How we know and why it matters
Anna Dickinson was a lesbian, as Matt Gallman demonstrates in his 2006 biography. He quotes Dickinson’s steamy correspondence with a variety of women, including Susan B Anthony(!), and acknowledges her female partner of 30 years, but hesitates to “label” Dickinson.
How do I know Anna Dickinson was a lesbian? How did I know even before her biographer offered the receipts? I’m going to try and explain as best I can, from the vast record of lesbian accomplishment and my own experience as a queer woman. Family, please chime in.
For Anna Dickinson to develop a deep political analysis beginning as a teenager in the 1850s, and to demand to be heard and taken seriously on matters of state, required not caring what men thought of her.
A girl who is hardwired not to care if boys are intimidated by her is freer than other girls. As we grow, not caring much if men find us attractive or marriageable is a kind of superpower. Not caring leaves us free to take up the space necessary to accomplish something.
Lesbianism isn’t a surefire recipe for success, and plenty of straight women led the suffrage movement. But it is one source of Anna Dickinson’s unusual power and drive to achieve, to be recognized, to be heard.
Daily Suffragist
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06/12/2019
Meet Anna Dickinson
There were no microphones in the struggle for suffrage. Radio didn't yet exist. Public lectures were the only way to hear new ideas, and giving a public lecture in halls like NYC’s Cooper Union or the Academy of Music in Phila. meant projecting your voice to a crowd of <br /><br />Anna Dickinson gave her first public lecture in 1860, at age 18. A radical Republican who disdained Lincoln as too soft on slavery, she quickly became a political sensation. She was adopted by abolitionist luminaries like Lucretia Mott, Robert Purvis, and William Lloyd Garrison. <br /><br />Speaking without notes, Dickinson crafted complex legal arguments against slavery. Over the next two years she became increasingly famous, commanding substantial fees. She was merciless with hecklers, Confederates, and anti-war Democrats known as Copperheads. Tomorrow: Congress.
Daily Suffragist
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03/12/2019
A joint session of Congress, 1864
Initially popular as a curiosity, Anna Dickinson gradually established a reputation as a political thinker whose endorsement was in demand. She stumped for Republicans across four states during the Civil War, the first woman ever paid to campaign. Photo: Mathew Brady c.1863 <br /><br />In gratitude for her successful electioneering, the party invited her to speak to Congress, the first woman ever. <br /><br />On January 16, 1864, with Pres. Lincoln & Mary Todd present, as well as VP Hamlin, Senators, and Representatives, Anna Dickinson spoke for more than an hour. <br /><br />While Lincoln listened, Dickinson enumerated his shortcomings: namely, his generosity to Confederate states and his meager protection for those formerly enslaved. Grandly, she closed by endorsing Lincoln for a second term, as “the Hour” called for a steady hand. <br /><br />Can we take another minute for this? A 21-year-old woman dressed down Abraham Lincoln in front of a joint session of Congress, in the middle of the Civil War. She spoke for 70 minutes without notes while the President listened. And no one’s ever heard of her. #Suffrage100 <br /><br />@<a href="https://twitter.com/DaphneW84611349">DaphneW84611349</a> Yes, definitely. Plus she alienated a lot of people, and had a long, sad end. Stay tuned over the next few days! <br /><br />In Gallman's bio he says that she irritated Stanton & Anthony by siding against them in the 15th Amdt fight. She fought with Frances Willard and refused to support temperance. She was an alcoholic for many years, FWIW. So when things were hard, she had few friends.
Daily Suffragist
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4/12/2020
More money than Mark Twain
After the war, Dickinson toured nationally, delivering a repertoire of 22 different lectures on women’s suffrage & the rights of all African-Americans. At the height of her career, she made more money than Mark Twain: c. $400k/yr in today’s dollars, @KCLemay points out. Thread. <br /><br /> @<a href="https://twitter.com/digicomMA" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">digicomMA</a> Twain, a sharp critic, admired his competition: “She talks fast, uses no notes what ever, never hesitates for a word, always gets the right word in the right place, and has the most perfect confidence in herself...She reasons well and makes every point without fail." <br /><br />In 1868 Anna published a novel of interracial love & passing called "What Answer?" She was inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe and the massive popular impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1869/01/review-what-answer-by-anna-e-dickinson/557933/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Read a contemporaneous review</a> 👇 from The Atlantic Monthly. <br /><br />The cause was noble, but the dialogue was flat. Martha Coffin Wright (Lucretia Mott’s sister), wrote to a friend: “I am sorry she didn’t keep to her lecturing & leave the field to Mrs Stowe.†Quotes from Matt Gallman’s biography “America’s Joan of Arc.†Thanks @<a href="https://twitter.com/May201856" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">May201856</a> /finÂ
Daily Suffragist
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05/12/2019
Why you've never heard of Anna Dickinson
I spent the whole week on Anna Dickinson because she was very, very famous in her day and is almost lost to history. I know a lot about suffrage for a non-academic, and I had never heard her name before the @<a href="https://twitter.com/smithsoniannpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">smithsonianNPG</a> exhibit. In “America’s Joan of Arc,” her biographer Matt Gallman gave 3 reasons for her obscurity: <br /><br />*She alienated everybody. In the fight over the 15th Amdt she sided with those who accepted votes for Black men without women, angering ElizCadyStanton & Susan B. <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1185226957493067778?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">See mid-Oct threads for that conflict.</a><br />*She wasn’t a joiner. Her celebrity was so great that suffrage & temperance groups would have been happy to make her an officer. But she wasn’t interested - so she’s missing from the official record of the movement, written by those organizations. <br /><br />*Lastly, she died in obscurity. She was an alcoholic, and may have struggled with mental illness. Her sister Susan, who had managed her career for years, had her committed at age 49. Anna found the headlines humiliating: "Anna Dickinson Insane" blared the NY papers. <br /><br />Anna Dickinson died in 1932, a week shy of her 90th birthday, and was buried near her partner Sallie Ackley. Matt Gallman says she never voted. Of course, the primary reason we don’t know her name today is that she was a woman.
Daily Suffragist
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07/12/2019
The Mother of Us All, part I
Susan B Anthony was a lesbian. There’s solid evidence of her romantic relationships with women, and contrary evidence doesn’t exist. You didn’t know? Me neither. ðŸ™Patriarchy is very, very powerful. But in 1946 another dyke came along and brought Susan B. out of the closet.🧵<br /><br />Gertrude Stein - also a lesbian! (That you knew.) Right after WWII, composer Virgil Thomson and Gertrude got a commission for a new opera, their 2d collaboration. He suggested they write something about 19th century American politics. Gertrude immediately thought about Susan B. <br /><br />Stein & Thomson wrote The Mother of Us All. It's still widely performed. It opens with Susan B at home, discussing patriarchy with another woman, “Anne.†Most productions play it gay, referencing Susan’s relationships w. women including Anna Dickinson. <br /><br />Some play it straight and insist that Anne is Anna Howard Shaw, Susan B’s successor in the movement - and the life partner of her niece Lucy Anthony. I'll be at @<a href="https://twitter.com/metmuseum" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">MetMuseum</a> tonight to see @<a href="https://twitter.com/JuilliardSchool" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">JuilliardSchool</a> <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/met-live-arts/fy20-the-mother-of-us-all" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">production</a> - will report back.Â
Daily Suffragist
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02/11/2020
Lesbian Erasure from the Centennial
We gotta talk about lesbians. Specifically, about lesbian erasure. Queer is cool, right? It’s 2020! ðŸ³ï¸â€ðŸŒˆðŸ³ï¸â€âš§ï¸etc., etc. <br /><br />So why is the lesbian reality of the suffrage movement barely part of the #19thAmendment centennial conversation? A thread. <br /><br />The movement for women’s liberation was run largely by unmarried women - some never married, some widowed. Why? Because marriage was a prison for women, legally and socially. Unmarried women were exponentially freer to do the work of organizing and building a national movement. <br /><br />Long-married leaders who raised multiple children - ElizCadyStanton, IdaBWells - are outliers in the suffrage pantheon. Most of the women who led the movement didn’t marry, didn’t have children, or were widowed early. Does that mean they were lesbians? Well, yes - many of them. <br /><br />First, the context: enlightened men were vanishingly rare - remember, in the 19th & early 20th centuries women were widely believed to be inferior and incapable. So a woman who wanted independence would rather not marry if she could afford it. <br /><br />Also, sex. @lillianfaderman makes the point that for women, penalties for heterosexual sex outside of marriage were extreme. So an unmarried woman who wanted an erotic life with someone besides herself was much safer finding it with women. <br /><br />These women wouldn’t have used the word lesbian. Nor would they likely have identified as “invertsâ€--the clinical forerunner to “homosexual.†But many lived in romantic partnerships with other women--relationships far more intimate than what we’d call “friends.†Some receipts… <br /><br />Susan B Anthony’s correspondence w/Anna Dickinson is flirty & direct. “Well, Anna Darling--I do wish I could take you in these strong arms of mine this very minute†& “I cannot bear to go off without another precious look into your face--my Soul.†There's a lot more. <br /><br />It didn't last. Years later, Susan said how much she envied the committed, devoted relationship her niece Lucy had w/Anna Howard Shaw - a relationship Susan knew was an intimate one. <br /><br />Only in her 70s did Susan come close to finding it, w/a married Chicago woman named Emily Gross. Susan wrote to friends of her “new lover†in Chicago--not a word she used for colleagues or admirers. Anna Shaw wrote in her diary: “I am so thankful for the new friend for Aunt Susan. How nice it is!†They were together for Susan’s last decade; Gross grieved her death deeply. <br /><br />Frances Willard preferred “Frank†w/intimates; like the others in this thread she hated "female" chores & rejected rigid gender roles as ridiculous. Ironically, her great accomplishment for suffrage was convincing conservative women that the vote would aid, not “unsex†them. She was so bluntly revealing about her love for the women she lived with - first Kate Jackson, then Anna Gordon - that some scholars say the relationships must have been chaste: if they were erotic she wouldn’t have revealed so much. I’m not convinced. <br /><br />Anna Howard Shaw & Lucy Anthony had a pretty conventional butch/femme home: Lucy did the dishes, Anna mowed the lawn and fixed things. Anna had affairs with other women in her travels, but their partnership lasted 30 yrs. <a href="https://twitter.com/DailySuffragist/status/1252779160692498437" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lucy worked to memorialize her 👇</a><br /><br />Unlike the women above, Carrie Chapman Catt was married twice: her 1st husband died soon after they married, her second agreed to a prenup that promised her at least â…“ of the year away from him, working for suffrage. After he died, Catt & Mollie Hay lived together 23 years. Catt presented a very intentional public narrative about her double widowhood, but in the movement Mollie was recognized as her spouse. When Mollie died, Catt was widowed a 3rd time. She had a heart attack. She survived and lived years more. They are buried under a shared stone.<br /><br />There were Black lesbian suffragists always, like Alice Dunbar-Nelson & Angelina Weld Grimké. Notably, many leading Black women were married briefly or not at all, like Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Nannie Helen Burroughs & Mary McLeod Bethune. <br /><br />Why such a deep closet? The new PBS documentary didn’t give a whiff of queerness. There was one @NYTimes piece by @Maya_Salam + one @WomensVote100 post by @WendyLRouse - both good ones! - but in a year of commemoration I can’t name much else. <br /><br />We know A LOT about the private lives of Famous Suffragists. And given how much we know, the absence of centennial acknowledgment that these women lived queer lives is … gaping. <br /><br />Thx @lillianfaderman for finding the evidence. #suffrage100
Daily Suffragist
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Sept 10, 2020