Although few northern representatives during the 1830s defended abolitionists’ right of petition, especially that of abolitionist women, John Quincy Adams rose to the occasion. “Sir, was it from a son—was it from a father—was it from a husband, that I heard these words?” demanded the former president. “Does this gentleman consider that women, by petitioning this House in favor of suffering and distress, perform an office ‘discreditable’ to themselves, to the section of the country where they reside, and to the nation?” Adams offered Howard a chance to retract his assertion: “I have a right to make this call upon him. It is to the wives and to the daughters of my constituents that he applies this language.” Howard stood his ground. Adams retorted with a four-day harangue defending the propriety of women involving themselves in political matters and of exercising their constitutional right of petition.

As the exchange between Howard and Adams illustrates, ongoing debates over the reception of petitions not only linked northern civil rights with the issue of slavery but led congressmen to discuss women’s participation in politics. Given the large proportion of antislavery petitions signed by women, in the course of defending abolitionists’ right to petition in general, it became necessary for Adams to defend women’s right of petition in particular. Having violated traditional norms of respectable gender behavior, the womanhood of female petitioners was especially vulnerable to attack by those who hoped to indict the character of petitioners as grounds for rejecting the petitions in order to silence discussion of slavery. Indeed, opponents spurned the petitions’ conservative characterizations of women’s prayers on behalf of the slave as extensions of Christian duty, recognizing them instead as radical attempts to justify women’s incursion into the exclusively male realm of congressional debate. Conflating acceptable gender behavior with constitutional rights, adversaries argued that because it was improper for women to petition Congress, they had no right to petition Congress. Women, they argued moreover, could not reason logically or act independently—basic qualifications for republican citizenship—and therefore their petitions should not be seriously considered. Adams responded to attacks on female antislavery petitions, which were leveled for the most part by southern members and a handful of northerners, by exposing the conflation of acceptable gender conduct with the exercise of natural rights. There was no doubt, he argued, that women possessed a constitutional right of petition, and exercise of that right should not be contingent on the character of petitioners. Yet not only did Adams attempt to safeguard women’s right of petition, but he insisted that women were citizens and, remarkably, questioned whether women might not also possess the right to vote.

Members who wished to silence discussion of slavery could argue, furthermore, that female petitions should be disregarded because abolition women were improperly interfering with the business of Congress. Representative Jesse Bynum of North Carolina preached, “It was not in the field, nor is it in the cabinet, where the counsel of lovely woman has been found most potent; to adorn her sex, she is destined for a different sphere.” Though he claimed to pay “cordial homage to the fair sex,” Wise stated that he believed woman’s sphere of action was drawn clearly and that she should not move beyond it: “Woman in the parlor, woman in her proper sphere, is the ornament and comfort of man; but out of the parlor, out of her sphere, if there is a devil on earth, when she is a devil, woman is a devil incarnate!” Another Virginian, Representative J. Garland, confessed that he did not like to see women “madly shooting out of their proper sphere, and undertaking to control national politics. I do not like to see them become politicians.” For their own good, Representative Patton of Virginia directed women petitioners, most of whom he believed to be single, to find “something else to do.” He hoped they would find good husbands and “that they may spend their days and their nights in some employment more likely to give them pleasure, and do the world a benefit than drawing their petitions, so well calculated to produce effects so little likely to give them satisfaction or comfort after they are produced.” William Cost Johnson of Maryland recommended that northern representatives instruct their women petitioners “to attend to knitting their own hose and darning their stockings, rather than come [here] and unsex themselves, be laid on the table, and sent to committee to be reported on.”³

Having castigated female petitioners for violating norms of acceptable gender behavior, opponents criticized the petitioners for lacking womanly virtues. “Women become most mannish grown” when they “assume the part that men should act alone,” pronounced Bynum poetically. Wise branded them “devils,” “demons,” and “furies” who were “hissing rage, and rapine, and rape, and murder, on our lives and property, and matrons and maids, of the South.” Maintaining that by sending petitions, abolition women were attempting to incite slaves into insurrection that would endanger the lives of southern women and “hazard the life and safety of the dear and tender offspring clinging to the bosoms of their own sisterhood,” Patton condemned their heartless behavior as unwomanly. He compared what he perceived as the hostile actions of northern women to the restrained behavior of southern ladies, stating that “they must be very different from their sex of any class that I have been acquainted with, if they would persevere in any course that went to hazard everything dear to their sex.” Patton professed to be certain that if northern women were informed as to the effect they were producing “upon the helpless, defenceless objects of their blind charity, they, being Christians, (as all women are, or should be) would leave the thing to God.”⁴

Southern congressmen also attempted to block reception of female petitions by claiming that women lacked the qualifications for participation in public deliberation. Representative Robertson of Virginia insisted that the “offensive memorials” be returned to members who presented them (he did not want them “to be preserved forever among the archives of the nation”) because in many cases they had been “signed by women and children ignorant of the institutions under which we live, and not knowing, it is to be hoped, the consequences of their folly.” The Constitution “went no further than to declare the right of petition,” Bynum contended, because if it had, the dignity of Congress would have been endangered. “The most frivolous petitions from women, children, boys, or lunatics, might be received, at a great consumption of the time of this House, and at an enormous expense to the people.” Bynum’s arguments for excluding female antislavery petitions echoed a rationale formulated by Thomas Jefferson during the early national period to curtail demands for extended political representation. Jefferson had classed women with infants and slaves among those “who had no will [and who] could be permitted to exercise none in the popular assembly; and of course, could delegate none to an agent in a representative assembly.” Not only did Bynum, like Jefferson, refuse the possibility that women could apply reason to the discussion of important questions, but he warned that if their irrationality were allowed to seep into Congress, the consequences would be dire. If the House were to receive petitions from females, he cautioned, the whole body “might be converted into scenes of levity and frivolity totally destructive of the dignity and character of wise legislation.” Here again Bynum argued along the same lines as Jefferson, who in 1816 had rationalized excluding women from “the public meetings of men” to prevent “depravation of morals and ambiguity of issue.” Bynum said he “could not conceive a more degrading condition than this House would be placed in, by consuming its time, at an enormous expense to the Treasury, in receiving and listening to the petitions and memorials of old grannies and a parcel of boarding-school misses, in matters of state and legislation. . . . The Congress of the United States was no place for them.” Bynum then explicitly connected fears of women’s irrationality with denial of their right of petition. It could never have been the intention of the framers of the Constitution to allow the reception of petitions from women, Bynum postulated. “In that august body there was too much wisdom, dignity, and patriotism, to presume it.”⁵

In addition to disdaining the irrationality of female antislavery petitioners, opponents denied women’s ability to act as independent agents, dismissing the petitions as the scribblings of “unthinking” women who had been duped by “cowardly” ministers. Garland charged that “the abolition priests of the North” had led “pious females so unwarily into their schemes.” Bynum denounced female petitioners as “weak” and “deluded” creatures upon whom “an ambitious, cunning, designing, but dastardly priesthood” had cast a trance. Employing anti-Catholic rhetoric common to that time, he confessed that southerners understood full well “the unholy ambition of the priesthood” who had “kindled up” the flame of abolitionism and “who were now engaged in taking the advantage of the ignorant women and boys throughout the country.” “Look at the petitions; what one was not headed by a priest of some denomination or other, and filled up in part of women and children, adults and boys?” Bynum complained that women, led by power-hungry “priests” as in the days of the crusades, were on the verge of starting a religious war. The Christians of the South, “whose religion it is to hold slaves,” vowed Bynum, would not “yield in their love for their religion and piety to those of the North, who have thus undertaken to pass sentence of condemnation on them.” Wise, too, charged that women petitioners did not act on their own volition but had been corrupted by ministers, whom he also branded as “priests.”⁶

Congressmen should squelch women’s petitions without a hearing, went another line of argument, because women could not bear the responsibility of the effects of their pleas. Representative Garland lamented that the female petitioners “have not brought themselves to contemplate the awful consequences of their rash proceedings.” Bynum predicted that when agitation over slavery resulted in civil war, female abolitionists and their allies would flee the scene: “Where, then, will be found their women and children, who crowd this House with silly petitions? Where their priests? In the tented field? No, sir, but skulking, shivering, shrinking from danger and responsibility, and even then denying the part that they had once taken in getting up this tragic drama. Will their women then be seen in the field, amid the clangor of arms and the shouts of victory, or heard in the cabinet with the cries of their children around them?” Because women by their nature could not defend the Union, Bynum argued, their petitions that were likely to incite a war should be disregarded. Fundamentally, the representative denied women the right to participate in public deliberation because they could not fulfill a major obligation of citizenship: risking one’s life in military service to defend the republic.⁷

Taken as a whole, the case for discarding female abolition petitions amounted to a two-tiered attack on women who attempted to expand their participation in politics. Opponents denied that petitioning against slavery was an extension of female moral duty, instead labeling it a clearly political action related to a clearly political subject. By bursting into congressional debate over the political issue of slavery, detractors maintained, northern females acted in such an unbecoming, unwomanly manner that their reputation, if not their sanity, was doubtful, and the House had no obligation to hear the requests of such deluded individuals. This objection amounted to denying women the right of petition because exercising that right fell outside norms of respectable womanly behavior. Slaveholders also developed a second level of arguments to build a republican rationale for denying women the right of petition and, more generally, claims to citizenship. Women, they maintained lacked the requisite virtues of republican citizenship: they could not deliberate rationally, act independently, or fulfill a citizen’s obligation to serve in the military. Not unlike the scenario in which the representatives formally abrogated the right of slaves to petition and questioned that of free blacks, members suggested that women possessed no citizenship rights. “Have women, too, the right of petition?” asked Wise at one point in the debates. “Are they citizens!”⁸

Given the obstreperous attacks southerners leveled against female petitioners, it was necessary for northern members to do much more than deny that antislavery women harbored political motivations. They had to defend the character of female petitioners. As Adams complained, the petitions had been treated with contempt, and “foul and infamous imputations” had been “poured upon a class of citizens as pure and virtuous as the inhabitants of any section of the Union”: females. Likewise, Lincoln represented petitioners from his district as “pure, elevated, and [of as high] intellectual character as any in the world, men and women, kind and generous, and of tenderest sympathies, who would no sooner do an injury or an act of injustice to any human being than the most chivalrous or true-hearted of the sons or daughters of the South.”¹⁰

Yet at issue in the arguments over the character of female antislavery petitioners was more than their reputations as women. At issue was their status as citizens. Adams readily apprehended that attacks on the character of female petitioners effectively denied women’s right of petition, and he took Howard to task for representing the exercise of the right of petition as disgraceful to women as well as to their section of the Union and the nation as a whole. “Now to say, respecting women, that any action of theirs was disgraceful, was more than merely contesting their legal right so to act,” Adams averred; “it was contesting the right of the mind, of the soul, and the conscience.” This was no “light question,” no mere quarrel over the honor of a few women, he emphasized. It concerned “the very utmost depths of the Constitution of the country” and affected “the political rights of one half of the People of the nation.”¹¹

Throughout the debates over reception of female petitions in which southerners repeatedly indicted the womanhood of petitioners, Adams maintained vehemently that there was no legal or constitutional principle linking the right of petition with the character of petitioners. When Adams presented a petition purportedly signed by nine ladies of Fredericksburg, Virginia, Representative Patton, who had lived in that city, assailed Adams for bringing before the House a petition from “mulatto” women of “infamous character.” Patton said he could not permit himself to believe that “the gentleman from Massachusetts would have persisted in being the organ through whom such a petition should be presented.” He swore “on his honor and veracity as a man” that he did not believe that there was the signature of “any decently respectable individual in Fredericksburg” attached to the petition, that the only name he recognized was that of “a mulatto free woman of infamous character,” and that he believed that other names were those of “free negroes, all of whom he believed to be bad.” He insisted, therefore, that the petition be taken from the table and returned to Adams.¹²

Patton’s insinuation that the petition emanated from prostitutes, disclosed Adams, influenced him not a wit in deciding whether or not to present the paper. Rather than worrying over the character of the petitioners, Adams said that he “adhered to the right of petition.”

Although he held steadfast to the belief that the right of petition was absolute no matter the character of memorialists, Adams grasped the opportunity afforded by Patton’s attack on the reputation of the petitioners to turn the table and question the character of opponents of women’s petitions. When in the course of debate Patton disclaimed actually “knowing” the “bad” women who had signed the petition but stated that he “knew of them,” Adams said he was glad to hear it, for otherwise he would ask “if they were infamous women, then who was it that had made them infamous?” Not their own color, he judged, but their masters. Adams said he was inclined to believe this because “there existed great resemblances in the South between the progeny of the colored people and the white men who claimed the possession of them. Thus, perhaps, the charge of being infamous might be retorted upon those who made it, as originating from themselves.”

Adams’s comments threw the House into great agitation, for he had stabbed brutally at the honor of southern gentlemen. Despite the fact that in February 1837 he faced formal censure for casting character aspersions on southerners in return for the imputations against the Fredericksburg women, he persisted in the strategy of questioning the character of representatives who opposed female petitions. Adams shamed representatives who would turn a deaf ear to women’s petitions, asking each member to suppose that his own mother was one of the petitioners: “Would you reject and turn the petition out of doors, and say that you would not even hear it read?” “Every member of the House has, or had, a mother,” he observed, adding that “in the whole class of human affections, was there one sentiment more honorable, or more divested of earthly alloy, than that which every man must entertain for his mother.” He hoped that Representative Thomas Glascock of Georgia would withdraw his objection to the reception of a female petition “for the sake of that gentleman’s character as a man; [and] for the sake of his character as a son.”¹⁴

Indictments of the character of southern members as well as defenses of the virtue of female petitioners seemed to depart from the principle that all people, blacks and women included, possessed a constitutional right of petition. Yet understanding as he did the common connection between what were perceived as women’s duties and the rights these duties entailed, in his 1838 speech Adams focused on extending the reach of women’s duties to include political affairs. Unlike the majority of women’s antislavery petitions in the first phase of their campaign, Adams did not shy away from characterizing the actions of female petitioners as political. Rather, he endeavored to alter the meaning and connotation of that term. In response to Howard’s claim that women had no right to petition Congress on political subjects, Adams asked rhetorically, “What does the gentleman understand by ‘political subjects’?” Adams answered that “every thing which relates to peace and relates to war, or to any other of the great interests of society, is a political subject. Are women to have no opinions or action on subjects relating to the general welfare?” Fellow Massachusetts representative Caleb Cushing bolstered Adams’s statements, maintaining that “it seems to me a strange idea to uphold, in this enlightened age, that woman, refined and educated, intellectual woman, is to have no opinion, or no right to express that opinion.”¹⁵ While Adams answered imputations that women had breached the political domain by broadening the definition of politics to encompass concerns acknowledged to reside within the province of woman, Cushing vouched for women’s capability to participate in rational deliberation, to act like citizens.

Contrary to repeated allegations that it was “discreditable,” “unbecoming,” and “masculinizing” for women to involve themselves in political matters, Adams maintained that there were plenty of instances in which “the action of women was held up as the highest virtue, and their interference in politics was recorded with praise.” Endeavoring to show that Howard’s principle that women should have nothing to do with political affairs possessed no grounding in the Bible, he cited the case of Deborah, a judge and prophetess during the infancy of the Jewish nation; of Jael, who slew the enemy of her nation; and of Esther, who saved the Jews by petitioning. Adams also mentioned Abigail, Huldah, and Judith. Indeed, he said, he could go through the entire history of the Jews and find innumerable examples of women who “not only took an active part in the politics of their times, but who are held up with honor to posterity because they did so.” Turning to secular history, Adams challenged Howard to “find there that it is ‘discreditable’ for women to take any interest or any part in political affairs.” Adams bid opponents of female petitioners to examine the character of Aspasia, an Athenian woman whom Socrates praised as “an excellent mistress of the art of rhetoric.” Invoking a historical example cherished by southerners, Adams asked whether they had “forgotten that Spartan mother, who said to her son when going out to battle, ‘My son, come back to me with thy shield, or upon thy shield.’”

Hoping to take advantage of patriotic sentiments, Adams also invoked heroines of the American Revolution. After recalling the work of the “ladies of Philadelphia” who outfitted Washington’s troops when they were destitute of clothes, he praised the women of Charleston who petitioned for the release of Lt. Col. Isaac Hayne. In the midst of adducing this example, Adams shouted, “Where is the chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations?” But Howard was not in the House. Adams railed, “I want him to discuss this point. Here were women who entered deeply into concerns relating to their country, and felt that they had other duties to perform, besides those to the domestic comforts of their husbands, brothers, and sons. They petitioned! I want him to listen to their petition, all glorious to their memories as it is!” He then proceeded to read the rather lengthy petition. But Adams did not stop there. He called up the example of Deborah Gannett, who had adorned herself in men’s clothes, joined the patriot army, and fought for three years until she was wounded. Members of the House were aware of Gannett’s feats because within recent memory they had voted to give her husband a military pension based on the services of his wife and had praised her on the grounds that she had “fought and bled for human liberty.” After commending Gannett’s actions, which involved rushing physically into “the vortex of politics,” Adams asked how Howard could conceivably think it wrong for women to petition on a matter of politics. Aiming his last example from the Revolution directly at Howard, who had returned to the chamber, Adams recounted that the ladies of Baltimore won praise from all over the country by making summer clothing for the army of Lafayette. “Sir,” said Adams, “was it from the lips of a son of one of the most distinguished of those ladies of Baltimore—was it from the lips of a descendant of one of the most illustrious officers in that war that we now hear the annunciation that the political and public services of women are to be treated with contempt? Sir, I do hope that honorable gentleman, when he shall reply to this part of my argument, will modify his opinions on this point.”¹⁶

Howard was not about to wait for a chance to reply. He rose and begged permission to speak. Adams yielded the floor. Howard protested vociferously against classifying the generous and patriotic ladies of the Revolution with the female petitioners on Texas annexation, stating that he saw “not the slightest resemblance” between the conduct of the ladies of Baltimore during the Revolution and that of the women who were petitioning Congress against the admission of Texas: “When the relatives and friends of women are in the field, struggling amidst perils and sufferings for the independence of the country, undergoing all sorts of hardships and privations, without sufficient food or raiment, nothing could be more becoming to the female character than that, by the exercise of their needle, or influence, or industry, they should try to alleviate the toils of their gallant defenders.” In his rejoinder Adams accused Howard of harboring an opinion about women much like that entertained by the Turks: women have no souls. This opinion, said Adams, was not shared by the nation generally, and it reflected cruelly on the conduct and character of the women of the republic.¹⁷ While Howard attempted to contain women’s political participation to actions linked directly with their domestic duties, Adams sought to stretch those links to political concerns.

Although Adams redefined politics to include all subjects relating to the general welfare and adduced numerous historical examples of women’s involvement in politics, he was far from ready to “countenance the general idea that it is proper, on ordinary occasions, for women to step without the circle of their domestic duties.” Instead he recommended a three-pronged test by which one could determine whether it was proper for women to deviate from the custom of remaining distant from politics. When presented with such a circumstance, prescribed Adams, one must inquire “into the motive which actuated them, the means they employ, and the end they have in view.” Adams then applied this test to the case at hand, the petitions against annexation of Texas. As for the motive, he said, it was of the “highest order” of purity: “They petition under a conviction that the consequence of the annexation would be the advancement of that which is sin in the sight of God, viz: slavery.” The means were appropriate, Adams said, because it was Congress who must decide the question, and it was Congress to whom the women must petition. Echoing a justification offered by the female petitioners themselves, he stated, “It is a petition—it is a prayer—a supplication—that which you address to the Almighty Being above you. And what can be more appropriate to their sex?” As for the end sought by female petitioners, it, too, was virtuous, pure, and of the most exalted character: “to prevent the perpetuation and spread of slavery through America.” In contrast to Howard’s condemnation, Adams concluded, “the correct principle is, that women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue when they do depart from the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their country, of humanity, and of their God.” Thus Adams repeated the argument employed in the women’s appeals, addresses, circulars, and petitions that it was the moral duty of women to speak for those who could not speak for themselves and to help those who could not help themselves. In fact, Adams believed that benevolent activity was a particularly feminine trait: “I say that woman, by the discharge of her duties, has manifested a virtue which is even above the virtues of mankind, and approaches to a superior nature.”¹⁸

Adams coupled his arguments expanding the scope of women’s duties with defenses of their constitutional rights. During the controversy over the petition from the nine women of Fredericksburg, he held that the right of petition was absolute, and during the uproar over the preponderance of female petitions against Texas annexation, Adams did the same, maintaining that his stance reflected the beliefs of the majority of Americans. “I will ask not whether it is the judgment of this House, but whether it is the sober judgment of the People of these United States, that the right of petition itself is to be denied to the female sex? to WOMEN? Whether it is their will that women, as such, shall not petition this House?” Furthermore, Adams characterized Howard as denying women the right of petition because they had no right to vote. Then he asked, “Is it so clear that they have no such right as this last? And if not, who shall say that this argument of the gentleman’s is not adding one injustice to another?” In a few short breaths Adams, son of the woman who in 1776 threatened that “the ladies . . . will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice, or representation,” went so far as to suggest that women did, in fact, possess the right to vote and that it was an injustice that they were denied the practice of that right. In so doing he embraced a position more radical than that of many women’s rights advocates of his time. On the floor of the House of Representatives he questioned the assumption that the Constitution denied women the right to vote. He suggested that the reason women did not vote was custom rather than lack of a right to the franchise. He declared that outright denial of women’s right to vote was an injustice, as was the denial of women’s right of petition. It would be another eight years before the women of New York petitioned their legislature for the vote, a decade before the National Woman’s Rights Convention would assert that women possessed the right of suffrage, and eight decades before an organized movement of women persuaded Congress and the public to adopt the position Adams began to articulate on Friday, June 29, 1838.¹⁹

Women who had signed petitions were particularly pleased to read Adams’s defense of their actions and showered praises upon him. When he returned to Massachusetts after Congress had adjourned, Adams was greeted by expressions of approbation in the form of several celebratory events hosted by women in towns of his congressional district. On September 4, 1838, the ladies of Quincy hosted a formal picnic and ball to honor him for defending their rights. The event was held on the “Hancock lot,” a piece of land donated to the town of Quincy by John Adams and on which still remained the cellar of the house in which John Hancock was born. Adams’s wife, Louisa, and other ladies of the family joined the party, but Adams remained behind until a deputation of men arrived to escort him to the company. There he was received, he recalled, “by six young unmarried ladies, between whom I was conducted to the large lime-tree in the centre of the lot, there received by two married ladies.” He was then presented to the “lady hostess” of the party and conducted, with his wife, to chairs under an arch of evergreens. Gathered around was a circle of about 200 women. When everyone was in place, the Reverend Peter Whitney, speaking for the ladies, addressed Adams by name and said that he had been invited to the party in token of the ladies’ respect for his long and eminent public services.²⁰

When Adams addressed the group, he thanked the women for their kind celebration and acknowledged the large number of petitions he had received from females of the district. Reviewing scenes from the two most recent sessions of Congress, he recalled that Howard had committed a “violent outrage . . . upon the [female] petitioners, and [an] insult upon the sex.” Adams explained that he felt himself “called upon to repel” the insult and that thereupon ensued his “defence of the rights and fair fame of women.” Adams said that he believed questions about the duty of women to participate in public affairs should be left to women’s own discretion, and he felt assured “there was not the least danger of their obtruding their wishes upon any of the ordinary subjects of legislation,” such as banks, tariffs, and public lands, “all which so profoundly agitate the men of this country.” Women, he trusted, were concerned with other kinds of matters. In fact, he believed that “far from being debarred by any rule of delicacy” from petitioning, by the “law of their nature,” which rendered them kind, benevolent, and compassionate, women were “fitted above all others” for the exercise of this right.²¹ Adams could not bring himself to endorse unlimited exercise by women of the absolute right of petition. Instead he trusted—or perhaps urged—that they would act only on public matters related to woman’s moral duty and would take no interest in purely political matters such as banks and tariffs. In other words, Adams expected female moral duty to guide the exercise of women’s natural rights.

Adams remained steadfast in his conviction that women possessed a natural right of petition and perhaps a natural right to vote, yet he linked the exercise of women’s civil rights to their duties as women. In this sense Adams’s defense of women’s right of petition replicated a pattern Zagarri has identified in periodical literature expostulating on political rights from 1792 to 1825 in which interlocutors employed separate philosophies to delineate the rights of men and women. Men’s rights, she explains, were grounded in Lockean philosophy, which in American practice reified political liberty. Women’s rights, by contrast, were grounded in Scottish Enlightenment philosophies, which made rights interchangeable with duties. Zagarri writes, “By performing their God-given role, women laid claim to their appropriate rights; their appropriate rights became synonymous with their womanly duties.” The conflation of women’s rights and duties served the conservative goal of rationalizing the exclusion of women from direct participation in politics by acknowledging that women possessed rights but limiting their rights to those that flowed directly from domestic duties.²³

Yet Adams construed women’s concerns and duties as reaching beyond the household to “every thing which relates to peace and relates to war, or to any other of the great interests of society” or “the general welfare.”²⁴ These, he said, were rightly women’s concerns. Furthermore, Adams placed these concerns in the category of political subjects, implying that women’s duties extended to participation in political affairs. In this way Adams pushed the logic of Scottish natural rights philosophy in a direction that enhanced women’s social and political equality. However, he was not ready to defend women’s rights by applying Lockean notions that secured universal rights and freedoms to all humanity. Nor was he willing to abandon the notion that men and women possessed different natures and therefore different duties. But Adams did attempt to use political philosophies associated with women’s rights to expand significantly the entailments of women’s duty into what many considered the male political realm. For as Zagarri has observed, the acknowledgment that women did possess natural rights, even though exercise of those rights was circumscribed by gendered notions of duty, amounted to a “discursive key that unlocked the possibility of women’s social and political equality.” A decade before the organized women’s rights movement began to “exploit rights discourse” to claim universal rights for women, Adams moved in that direction with his defenses of women’s antislavery petitioning.²⁵

Yet while Adams championed the right of women to petition and to express openly their views on slavery, there were those among the antislavery ranks who disagreed entirely. Petitioning, conventioneering, and public speaking by women, they feared, were compromising the goals of abolitionism and casting a pall over the movement. The woman question, as it was called, combined with doubts about the efficacy of moral suasion, contributed to growing dissension in the antislavery movement that would result eventually in the disintegration of organized abolition and significant changes in the petition campaign.