Charles Monroe Dickinson

Charles Monroe Dickinson (November 15, 1842 – July 3, 1924) was an American lawyer, newspaper editor, and diplomat from New York.

After graduating, Dickinson taught school for about two years. During that time, he wrote The Children, which Hezekiah Butterworth called the second most popular American poem and Rossiter Johnson ranked as one of the world's most famous poems. Dickinson received letters from all over the world about the poem to his dying day, 53 years after he first wrote it.

In 1864, he moved to Binghamton and began to study law under Daniel S. Dickinson. Before he was admitted to the bar, he would be sent out to try cases before justices of the peace in neighboring towns. He was admitted to the bar in 1865 and initially practiced law in Cameron County, Pennsylvania. In 1867, he returned to Binghamton and practiced law in association with his father-in-law Giles W. Hotchkiss. This practice brought him in contact with leading New York merchants. As his practice grew, he established an office and home in New York City, where he was given the law business of Louis F. Payn, the United States Marshal for the Southern District of New York. In 1897, McKinley appointed him consul-general of Istanbul, in the Ottoman Empire. During his time as consul-general, he helped grow trade between the United States and the Ottoman Empire and helped establish a direct steamship line between the two countries. However, Ferdinand I of Bulgaria refused to receive him, as he and his ministers were troubled by how he remained consul to Constantinople, their old enemy.

As diplomatic agent, Dickinson was quickly put to work in freeing American missionary Ellen Maria Stone and Bulgarian missionary Katerina Cilka, who were both kidnapped by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. As he uncovered more facts about the kidnapping, his enemies began a campaign against him, his life was threatened, and guards were placed around his home. Over the course of several months, he negotiated with the kidnappers and, after paying 14,500 Ottoman lira raised by American Sunday schools, was able to get Stone and Cilka released.

Dickinson was a member of the Authors Club of New York and the Poetry Society of America, and served as trustee of the Barlow Industrial School. In 1867, he married Bessie Virginia Hotchkiss, daughter of congressman Giles W. Hotchkiss. She died in 1908. Dickinson then married Alice Bond Minard of Poughkeepsie in 1910.