Schuyler Colfax,
Thaddeus Stephens,
William D. Kelley,
Robert C. Schenck,
James A. Garfield,
Henry C. Deming,
R. B. Van Valkenburg,
A. C. Wilder, and seventy other Representatives.

GENTLEMEN:--I thank you sincerely for the great and most
unexpected honor which you have conferred upon me by your kind
invitation to speak in Washington. Accepting it, I would suggest
the 16th of January as the time, desiring the proceeds to be
devoted to the help of the suffering freedmen.

Truly yours, ANNA E. DICKINSON.

1710 LOCUST ST., Phila., _June 7, 1864_.

[36] The _New York Evening Post_ in describing the occasion said:
"Miss Dickinson's lecture in the Hall of the House of Representatives
last night was a gratifying success, and a splendid personal triumph.
She can hardly fail to regard it the most flattering ovation--for such
it was--of her life. At precisely half-past seven Miss Dickinson came
in, escorted by Vice-President Hamlin and Speaker Colfax. A platform
had been built directly over the desk of the official reporters and in
front of the clerk's desk, from which she spoke. She was greeted with
loud cheers as she entered. Mr. Hamlin introduced her in a neat
speech, in which he happily compared her to the Maid of Orleans. The
scene was one to test severely the powers of a most accomplished
orator, for the audience was not composed of the enthusiastic masses
of the people, but rather of loungers, office-holders, orators,
critics, and men of the fashionable world. At eight o'clock Mr. and
Mrs. Lincoln entered, and not even the utterance of a fervid passage
in the lecture could repress the enthusiasm of the audience. Just as
the President entered the hall Miss Dickinson was criticising with
some sharpness his Amnesty Proclamation and the Supreme Court; and the
audience, as if feeling it to be their duty to applaud a just
sentiment, even at the expense of courtesy, sustained the criticism
with a round of deafening cheers. Mr. Lincoln sat meekly through it,
not in the least displeased. Perhaps he knew there were sweets to
come, and they did come, for Miss Dickinson soon alluded to him and
his course as President, and nominated him as his own successor in
1865. The popularity of the President in Washington was duly attested
by volleys of cheers. The proceeds of the lecture--over a tho