| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Susan Zaeske. Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity. (Gender and American Culture.) Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 253. Cloth $49.95, paper $19.95.
In the earliest mass petitioning against slavery (1831–1835), women offered deferential "prayers" while men used assertive language to petition members of the U.S. Congress. Yet their humble stance did not soften the negative response to those women who allowed their names to appear in the political arena. Susan Zaeske argues that the key factors propelling women to enter the public fray were the examples, first, of British women petitioning against slavery, and second, of American women petitioning against Indian removal and for temperance laws (pp. 43–44). Petitioning made women aware of their rights as citizens, a change in women's identity that Zaeske sees reflected in the more assertive language used by women petitioners after 1840.	1
How women traveled this road to political awareness is an important question whose analysis is relevant to understanding of democratic developments in other times and places. In the American antislavery campaign, women's earliest petitions literally prayed that "fathers and rulers" act against slave trading and its cruel separation of families. Citing Christian precedent, organizers noted that their petitions were like those of Esther, the biblical figure who risked death when she petitioned her husband to stop the planned slaughter of her people, the Hebrews. Bringing together petition texts, congressional speeches, and an extensive range of letters and newspaper articles on petitioning, Zaeske's narrative provides a lively tour of the controversy and process surrounding antislavery petitioning.	2
During a second phase of petitioning (1837–1840), Zaeske sees the omission of deferential language as evidence that women were moving toward more political consciousness. But she acknowledges that this change might have resulted from the gag rule, which tabled petitions mentioning slavery and encouraged the kind of one-sentence petitions that Congressman John Quincy Adams could slip into the official record.	. . .

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