Dorothea Dix

      Dorothea Dix went to Abraham Lincoln in the hopes of convincing him to appoint female nurses in the army but Dix was aware of how she would have to approach the matter. She states, “Demureness was a helpful weapon, she had discovered and it was a practice she nearly perfected” (Oliveira 78). She tries to lead him to believe that she is shy and inferior to him because she finds that is the best way to get what she wants. As President Lincoln’s stature is so large in comparison to hers because she was barely as tall as his chest.
     As he tells her it is an honor to meet her because he has heard so many good things about her work, she only says thank you. She says she has learned to about “retracing old victories when her interest lay on accomplishing new ones”. Instead of being overly proud of of her past success she accepts the compliment as opposed to gloating about her past.
     Lincoln tells Miss Dix there are plenty of surgeons for the war effort and though she knows that is not the case, she does not argue and tell him that she knows this is false but allows him to talk. He continues to say, “...[my generals] are concerned that women in the hospitals will be - distracting” (79). This was yet another slap in the face to her, just for being a woman people doubted her ability or usefulness.
     People had called women “indelicate, hysterical, meddlesome, obstructive, uncooperative, immodest, indecent, and the worst, superfluous”. She was constantly being held back by her gender, something she could not be blamed for. She was never taken seriously because she was a woman. If a man had equal ability, he would have gotten more recognition and respect from superiors. Although Lincoln could tell her how many positive things he had heard about her as much as he wanted or how honored he was to meet her, it would never be equal to the honor he would have meeting a male with her capabilities.
     She remained respectful of him when he said her reputation would be ruined if she tried to pursue allowing women to help in the army’s hospitals and she counters that her reputation will only be compromised if she doesn't make the effort to change the stigma surrounding being a woman. People were unable to trust women and men in the same quarters as there was an opportunity for indecencies to take place. She had to agree that women who she would recruit would be plain looking, where darker colors and be over thirty years old. 
     Miss Dix became more resolute and shared that the generals were not correct that there were sufficient surgeons and with the promise that the nurses would not be “distracting”, Lincoln granted her permission to recruit female nurses for the army. If Mary had been in Dorothea Dix’s place, she would have resolutely proven her case, her strength and her skill without trying to feign demureness especially given her coarse physical appearance.