Women Submit Thousands of Anti-Slavery Petitions to Congress

By 1837–38 the American Anti-Slavery Society coordinates mass petition campaigns with hundreds of thousands of signatures — mostly from women, who could not vote. Over 130,000 petitions with 2 million signatures flood Congress in a single session. The Gag Rule exists specifically to suppress these. The petitions represent the largest organized political action by women in US history to that point.