An advocate for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights, Dickinson was the first woman to give a political address before the United States Congress.

A gifted speaker at a very young age, she aided the Republican Party in the hard-fought 1863 elections and significantly influenced the distribution of political power in the Union just prior to the Civil War.

Her Edmundson and Dickinson ancestors immigrated to the United States from England[3] and with other Quakers settled at Tred Avon, or Third Haven, near Easton, Maryland, in about the 1660s.

[3] A hardworking student, she spent any money she earned on books,[2] having acquired an interest in literary classics from her mother.

Dickinson was removed in December of that year for saying that General George McClellan's poor performance at Battle of Ball's Bluff amounted to treason at a public meeting.

[1] Encouraged to speak by Lucretia Mott and Dr. Hannah Longshore,[3] she gave impassioned speeches on abolition, reconstruction, women's rights, and temperance.

[2] In 1860, she spoke in Philadelphia at the Friends of Progress meeting at Clarkson Hall about The Rights and Wrongs of Women and then she addressed the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society in the fall of that year.

Lucretia Mott, who delivered abolitionist speeches for decades in Quaker meetinghouses, provided leadership to sell 800 tickets for the Concert Hall event.

[6][7] Mott arranged for a lecture tour, sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, for the 19-year-old, who quickly became a popular speaker.

She spoke to coal miners in Pennsylvania[6] soon after draft riots in the area and converted men who had not previously supported abolition.

"[6] She earned a standing ovation in 1864 for an impassioned speech[10] on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.

[10] She made as much as $20,000 (equivalent to $494,919 in 2023) a year, making a speech every other day on average,[3][6] and gave most of her earnings away to charity,[2] friends, and relatives.

[3] Some of her well-received post-war lectures include For Yourself and Platform and Stage[2] and she frequently spoke about Joan of Arc.

Her vim, her energy, her determined look, her tremendous earnestness, would compel the respect and the attention of an audience, even if she spoke in Chinese—would convince a third of them, too, even though she used arguments that would not stand analysis.As audiences preferred to be entertained rather than lectured on serious subjects, and after she campaigned for Horace Greeley, a Democratic presidential candidate in 1872, her career as a lecturer declined.

[10] She gave a speech for Republicans for the 1888 presidential election in many states, during which she called Grover Cleveland the "hangman of Buffalo" and vigorously waved a bloody shirt.

Boulder County News reported the at the time scandalous detail that Dickinson had worn trousers for the ascent.

[6] She was a friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton[3] and Quaker lecturers Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony.

[3] Unpublished correspondence from a woman named Ida appears to show at least one intimate episode with another woman during her life, referencing Dickinson "tempting [Ida] to kiss her sweet mouth," which historian Lillian Faderman included in her history of lesbian life in America.

[21] Dickinson, who was taken to Danville in February 1891, stayed at the Interpines sanitarium and was giving lectures by late August that year.

[6][15] Sometime after she was released from Danville, she lived in Goshen, New York, with George and Sallie Ackley, and continued to do so for more than forty years.