Info Brief: Petition

The right to “petition the Government for redress of grievances” is among the oldest in our legal tradition, dating back 800 years to the Magna Carta and receiving protection in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, long before the American Revolution. Ironically, the modern Supreme Court has all but read the right to petition out of the Bill of Rights as an independent basis of constitutional protection, effectively rendering it obsolete by expanding the reach of the Free Speech Clause. But, as with assembly, the right to petition wasn’t simply an afterthought to the Founding generation—or to the many generations that followed.

The petition right goes to our right to share our collective views with the government—often by highlighting problems and suggesting ways of fixing them. And while the right to petition hasn’t played a large role at the Supreme Court, it has an important place in American constitutional history. The colonists used petitions to reach out to the British Crown in the colonial period, raising their complaints—with famous examples like John Dickinson’s “Olive Branch” petition. We used it to justify our split from England, with the Declaration of Independence following years of ignored petitions by the colonists to King George III. And generations of Americans have used it to express their concerns to the government and offer their own vision for building a better America.

In the early years of America, legislatures felt bound to consider and respond to petitions. And the petition right served the important purpose of informing elected representatives about local conditions and popular opinions. So, in the Founding era, you could walk into Congress with a petition to your member of Congress. And then, the petition was read on the floor of Congress—with formal recording and hearing.

The petition right has traditionally been open to everyone equally, including women, African Americans, Native Americans, non-citizens, and even children. So, like the assembly right, it was a key way for disadvantaged groups to be heard. Even when groups couldn’t vote or hold office, they could petition their government and express their views.

In January 1777, Prince Hall—a free African American in Boston—offered a petition for freedom to the Massachusetts House on behalf of seven African Americans.

In fact, Hall began his petitioning campaign to end slavery in 1773, but after 1776, his petition could draw on the powerful vision of freedom and equality written into the Declaration of Independence, arguing that slavery violated natural law. Importantly, Hall’s petition was just one of many similar petitions brought in Massachusetts—using the American Revolution and the language of liberty through the right of petition to destroy slavery.

Notably, this movement was ultimately successful. By 1783, the Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed with Hall that slavery violated natural law and the principles of the Declaration, concluding that slavery was inconsistent with the Massachusetts Constitution and, in turn, ending slavery in the state.

One of the most famous examples of the use of the petition right in early America was when Benjamin Franklin presented an anti-slavery petition to Congress in 1790.

Pennsylvania had the first abolition society in the country—founded in April 1775. The Quakers took a lead role in the society. A decade later, Benjamin Franklin was elected the Society’s president.

Franklin turned to the abolitionist cause late in life. But he had become friends with a number of antislavery activists in his time in Britain and France, and he had long been exposed to the abolitionist views of Quakers. He became an outspoken critic of slavery after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, publishing several essays calling for slavery’s abolition.

In his final public act, he sent a petition—signed in February 1790—to Congress on behalf of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, calling for the abolition of slavery and an end to the slave trade. It called for the First Congress to "devise a means for removing the Inconsistency from the Character of the American People" and "to promote mercy and justice towards this distressed Race"—namely, African Americans. The petition also read: “That mankind are all formed by the same Almighty being, alike objects of his care & equally designed for the Enjoyment of Happiness the Christian Religion teaches us to believe & the Political Creed of America fully coincides with the Position.”

Here, “political creed” was a clear reference to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

The petition was introduced in the House and Senate shortly thereafter. Pro-slavery forces denounced the petition—and it sparked a heated debate in both the House and the Senate. South Carolina Senator Ralph Izard, for instance, took issue with the “fanatics” of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, while his fellow South Carolina Senator Pierce Butler accused Franklin of pushing the country towards disunion because, “The doctor, when a member of the Convention has consented to the federal compact. Here he was acting in direct violation of it.”

The Senate took no further action on the petition. At the same time, the House sent it to a select committee. The House eventually tabled the resolution—putting it to the side—and argued that the Constitution limited Congress’s power to end the international slave trade until 1808. This ended the debate on slavery in the First Congress.

Franklin died two months later.

Another famous example of the use of the right to petition involved anti-slavery petitions in 1830s, John Quincy Adams, and the battle over Congress’s “gag rule.”

A gag rule limits or bans discussing a particular topic in a legislative body.

John Quincy Adams, after being defeated for a second term as President, was elected to the House of Representatives.

Between 1831 and 1836, anti-slavery forces led a massive petition drive—resulting in over 100,000 petitions sent to the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, mostly asking for Congress to either abolish slavery or restrict the expansion of slavery. John Quincy Adams usually took the lead in introducing these petitions, provoking a near riot in Congress.

The House leadership—driven by pro-slavery forces—responded by imposing a “gag rule” limiting petitions. This rule automatically tabled anti-slavery petitions, preventing them from being read or discussed. The argument was that Congress shouldn’t act on them because the national government didn’t have the constitutional power to attack slavery in the states.

Adams argued that the gag rule violated the First Amendment’s right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The petitions kept coming anyway—with 1,500 more between December 1838 and March 1839 alone—mostly about abolishing slavery in Washington D.C., ending the slave trade, and curbing slavery’s expansion.

Congress eventually got rid of the gag rule, with the House concluding that it was unconstitutional in 1844, ending it by a 108-80 vote. Adams wrote the repeal resolution and secured the votes to pass it.

In January 1864, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton—through the Women’s Loyal National League—kicked off a petition drive in support of the abolition of slavery. This petition drive was a huge success, and the League presented Congress with a huge emancipation petition bearing one hundred thousand signatures, nearly two-thirds of them, women.

On February 9, Senator Charles Sumner—the great abolitionist Senator from Massachusetts—introduced the first 100,000 signatures from the petition drive to the Senate. Later, Sumner argued that this petition drive was a key force in the eventual passage and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Throughout the United States—before, during, and after the Civil War—African Americans met in conventions to advance a vision of racial equality and used petitions to share their views with the government. For instance, in 1865, Charles Sumner offered a petition to the Joint Committee on Reconstruction from African Americans in South Carolina calling for “constitutional protection in keeping arms, in holding public assemblies, and in complete liberty of speech and of the press.”

This is just one example of the many ways that African American voices—including gatherings of African Americans in convention and the petitions of those conventions—shaped the landmark laws and transformational amendments enacted after the Civil War.

Finally, in 1866, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton spearheaded a petition drive that led thousands of women to petition Congress for the right to vote. This is just one example of how petition drives allowed women to advance their own vision of sex equality in America.