Book description
Anna Dickinson's career as an orator began in her teenage years, when
she gave her first impassioned speech on women's rights. By the age of
twenty-one, she was spending at least six months per year on the road,
delivering lectures on abolitionism, politics, and public affairs, and
establishing herself as one of the nation's first celebrities. In
March 1875, Dickinson departed from Washington, D. C., for an extended
tour of the South, curious to see how far the region had progressed in
the decade after Appomattox.
In A Tour of Reconstruction, editor J. Matthew Gallman compiles
Dickinson's commentary and observations to provide an honest depiction
of the postwar South from the perspective of an outspoken radical
abolitionist. She documents the continuing effects of the Civil War on
the places she visited, and true to her inquisitive spirit, questions
the societal developments she witnessed, seeking out black and white
southerners to discuss issues of the day. Like many northern
observers, she focuses on documenting race relations and the state of
the southern economy, but she also details the public's reactions to
her appearances, providing some of her most telling commentary. A Tour
of Reconstruction, punctuated with a wealth of historical observations
and entertaining anecdotes, is the story of one woman's experiences in
the postbellum South.
""Powerful and provocative, Dickinson's letters recreate
the diversity and complexity of the postwar South as seen through the
eyes of one of the nation's most celebrated public women."--
Caroline E. Janney, author of Burying the Dead but Not the Past:
Ladies' Memorial Associations and the Lost Cause" --
J. Matthew Gallman, professor of history at the University of
Florida, is the author of America's Joan of Arc: The Life of Anna
Elizabeth Dickinson. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.
