In this comprehensive history of women's antislavery petitions addressed
to Congress, Susan Zaeske argues that by petitioning, women not only
contributed significantly to the movement to abolish slavery but also
made important strides toward securing their own rights and transforming
their own political identity.
By analyzing the language of women's antislavery petitions, speeches
calling women to petition, congressional debates, and public reaction to
women's petitions from 1831 to 1865, Zaeske reconstructs and interprets
debates over the meaning of female citizenship. At the beginning of
their political campaign in 1835 women tended to disavow the political
nature of their petitioning, but by the 1840s they routinely asserted
women's right to make political demands of their representatives. This
rhetorical change, from a tone of humility to one of insistence,
reflected an ongoing transformation in the political identity of
petition signers, as they came to view themselves not as subjects but as
citizens. Having encouraged women's involvement in national politics,
women's antislavery petitioning created an appetite for further
political participation that spurred countless women after the Civil War
and during the first decades of the twentieth century to promote causes
such as temperance, anti-lynching laws, and woman suffrage.
Petitions representing only a fraction of those signed by hundreds of
thousands of men and women calling for the abolition of slavery received
by Congress between 1831 and 1863. Courtesy of the Foundation for the
National Archives.
