Petitioning Congress

The right to petition Congress is guaranteed by the Constitution. Petitions are one of the original means for people to communicate formally with their Members of Congress. Petitions are usually addressed to a particular Member or to Congress as whole, and express support or opposition to policies or issues. In the House, petitions are referred from the Member who received them to the Clerk of the House. The Clerk passes petitions to the Speaker of the House, who then sends them to the committee with the most relevant jurisdiction.

In 1789, Baltimore tradesmen petitioned Congress (above) to ask that tariffs be placed on certain goods in order to limit imports and generate domestic production. Seven hundred and fifty citizens signed on. Later that year, Congress passed three acts that provided for administering customs tariffs and collecting duties.

Whether slavery would be allowed to expand to America’s western territories drew considerable interest from citizens in the mid-nineteenth century. Citizens of Chicago petitioned Congress to prohibit slavery and the slave trade by an act of Congress for the territories of the United States in 1850. The petition above came in response to the Compromise of 1850, which, among other things, admitted California as a free state, but also included the controversial and disastrous Fugitive Slave Act.

Food standards were a new idea in 1890, when the petition above was sent to Congress from Avon, New York. The petitioners supported H.R. 8522, a bill defining the required ingredients for lager beer. Free from “adulterants, such as corn, rice, starch, glucose and other substitutes,” lager beer was made from malt and hops. “Pure and unadulterated, it is not only a mild, but an exceedingly wholesome beverage.” This bill was referred to the Ways and Means Committee, but was not reported out.

Largely unregulated, the food industry manufactured and sold tainted products as late as the nineteenth century. This petition targeted beer, but manufacturers frequently tampered with milk, bread, and other staples to increase profits. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 created legal guidelines for food safety.

In 1830, women living in Steubenville, Ohio, sent a memorial (above) to Congress protesting the federal policy of removing American Indian nations from their land, often by force. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 created a one-sided treaty arrangement in which the federal government took land from sovereign American Indian nations in the east in exchange for land west of the Mississippi River, at times using the military to force tribal removal.

Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins, an activist and author, served as the intermediary between her Paiute community in Nevada and the federal government. The petition above requested that the Paiute be restored to their Malheur Reservation in eastern Oregon. Winnemucca describes the hardship of “families . . . ruthlessly separated” by their removal from the Oregon reservation. The petition was referred to the House Committee on Indian Affairs.

Although we associate petitions most frequently with the nineteenth century, citizens continued to send them well into the 20th century. Thomas Hart Benton, one of the most famous American regionalist artists of the mid-20th century, sent every Member of Congress a petition with a unique twist in 1951. The artist urged federal aid after disastrous flooding in the Kansas-Kaw River valley—affecting Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. But along with the usual written request, he added a piece of his artwork (below) that illustrated the devastation more eloquently than words.

Although the solution Benton particularly advocated for—national flood insurance for residents of high-risk areas—did not become law until the 1960s, relief funds were appropriated for flood victims the following year.

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