"On a Saturday evening in January 1864, abolitionist Anna Dickinson stood inside the Hall of Representatives looking out into the U.S. House’s packed floors and overflowing galleries. Two thousand members of the public, senators, representatives, cabinet members, First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln—and even President Abraham Lincoln himself—were crammed into the hall to witness her speech, which would later be dubbed the “sensation of the season.” For over an hour, she held her audience spellbound, assailing the institution of slavery and rarely looking down at her notes."

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