Petitioning is a right granted by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution (“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging . . . the right of the people . . . to petition the Government for a redress of grievances”). In the case of House records, petitions are requests for relief or action from an individual, group, or organization, sent to the U.S. Congress. They are among the most voluminous, complex, and emotionally charged categories of House records. They are also part of the bedrock of American civic life. Americans in the early Republic dearly valued the right to petition; colonial frustrations about the lack of representation in Great Britain were still very fresh. The issue was so important that the Founders included petitioning in the Bill of Rights as a way for citizens to interact with their new government.
Between 1820 and 1860, the nation’s economic and political growth had far-reaching effects on women’s lives. They found increased opportunities for education, work, and public roles. Middle class women began to engage with politics in unprecedented ways.
In 1830, women in Steubenville, Ohio, signed a petition that read: “When, therefore, injury and oppression threaten to crush a hapless people within our borders, we, the feeblest of the feeble, appeal with confidence to those who should be the representatives of national virtues as they are the depositories of national powers, and implore them to succor the weak & unfortunate.” Members of Congress publicly ridiculed their efforts. Senator Thomas Hart Benton responded to the tide of petitions by saying, “I would recommend to these ladies, not to douse their bonnets, and tuck up their coats, for such a race, but to sit down on the way side, and wait for the coming of the conquerors.”
Although the Indian Removal Act became law in 1830, the experience women gained mobilizing for a cause set the stage for the antislavery movement and transformed the way women interacted with their government and the political process. It also equipped them with new and necessary skills, such as outreach, education, political acumen, and crafting of persuasive arguments that translated to effective petitions.
The antislavery debate completed the transformation of women's use of the petition first begun during the antiremoval protests. Although barred from making their voice heard at the polls, women forced some recognition of their opinions through petitions. Women started to ask: What did it mean to be a female citizen? What were women’s rights?
As the women’s suffrage movement made its final push in the 1910s, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association Carrie Chapman Catt demonstrated the fruit of previous petition drives. Using the political savvy developed and honed by her predecessors, she expertly petitioned Speaker of the House Champ Clark in 1917 for a Committee on Woman Suffrage. She deftly appealed to his vanity as a powerful man, by turning the stereotypical female petition on its head. Her tone is ostensibly one of supplication, but it’s accompanied by a sly wink. Catt knew she was on the right side of the argument—and history—and used flattery and guile to her advantage. “You have had a long and successful political career and that means you know men and women . . . . Mr. Speaker, the women of our country appreciate the fact that you are yourself an advocate of our cause, but we do not presume upon your interest when we ask for a House Suffrage Committee. We ask it because the world is calling to the Congress of the United States to make better time if it would hold its place as Leader in the march of world democracy.” Catt understood that the creation of a House committee to consider a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage would finalize the movement started with hundreds of petitions. The House Committee on Woman Suffrage was created in 1917, and the 19th Amendment granting women national suffrage was ratified in 1920.
Recycling many of the tactics and connections and some of the rhetoric used during previous campaigns, at the end of the 19th century and turn of the 20th, the women’s suffrage movement used the petition to make women’s voices heard in Congress and spread their message nationally.
Relief from individual hardship characterized many petitions sent to Congress. Without full citizenship, women could not seek remedies available to men in times of personal struggle, leaving them vulnerable to economic hardship. Instead, tragedy or personal crisis often forced women to seek public relief.
Unfortunately, Alricks’s situation was not unique in early America—dependent on her husband for her social standing and financial well-being and unable to improve her station/situation without the permission of other men. Until 1801, no divorces were granted by Congress to residents of the District. In 1801, jurisdiction over separation and alimony cases was moved from Congress to the Circuit Court, and in 1860, so was jurisdiction over divorce. This shift was in line with what was taking place in other states, as the number of petitions for divorce grew steadily in the first half of the 19th century. Alricks was ultimately granted a divorce by the district court of the District of Columbia. Divorce petitions, although limited, specific, and personal, were the first incremental steps for women in crafting a political identity separate from men by taking ownership of the right to request relief.
Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of President Abraham Lincoln, petitioned Congress four years after her husband’s death, seeking a pension. Although her husband did not die on the battlefield, she regarded his death as a direct result of the Civil War. Mary Lincoln, ill and living abroad, used language familiar from other women’s petitions. She emphasized her distress and desperation, and threw herself on the mercy of men in a position to relieve her suffering. “In consideration of the great services my dearly beloved husband has rendered to the United States and of the fearful loss I have sustained by his untimely death his martyrdom I may say, I respectfully submit to your Honorable body this petition hoping that a yearly pension may be granted me.” Finding no other options for relief from her difficult circumstances, in 1870, a bill was passed giving Mary Lincoln $3,000 per year.
For the first half of American history, petitions were one of the only formal means available for women to participate in politics. Writing and disseminating petitions expanded the role of women in politics, leading to national suffrage, and ultimately to women serving in Congress. The petitions that women signed and sent to Congress tell the story of the United States as it expanded and changed. But the petitions also chronicle the stories of individual women as citizens of this country, told in their own words.
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Sources: Sarah Zaeske, Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, & Women’s Political Identity (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Raymond W. Smock, ed., Landmark Documents on the U.S. Congress (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Inc., 1999); National Archives and Records Administration, Our Mothers Before Us: Women and Democracy, 1789-1920 (Washington, D.C.: The National Archives Foundation, 1998); Stephen A. Higginson, “A Short History of the Right to Petition for the Redress of Grievances,” The Yale Law Journal 96, no. 1 (Nov. 1986): 142–166; Martin Schultz, “Divorce in the South Atlantic States: Origins, Historical Patterns, and Recent Trends,” International Journal of Sociology of the Family 16, no. 2 (Autumn 1986): 225–250; Mary Hershberger, “Mobilizing Women, Anticipating Abolition: The Struggle against Indian Removal in the 1830s,” The Journal of American History 86, no. 1 (Jun. 1999): 15–40; Nancy F. Cott, “Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eighteenth Century Massachusetts,” The William and Mary Quarterly 33, no. 4 (Oct. 1976): 586–614.
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the election and swearing-in of the first woman in Congress, we will publish a series of blog posts about the early women Members and the changing role of women in the institution. Check back each month through 2017 to see the latest posts.
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