Women’s Petitions against Indian Removal
Reading: Alisse Theodore [Portnoy], “‘A Right to Speak on the Subject’: The U.S. Women’s Antiremoval Petition Campaign, 1829-1831,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5 (2002), 601-24.
In late 1829, Catherine Beecher anonymously published a circular letter addressed to the “Benevolent Ladies” of the United States. In this letter, Beecher sympathetically portrayed the “poor Indian[s]” as a dignified people, no longer “naked and wandering savages,” who had made much progress towards becoming Christian and civilized. Although Beecher showed little interest in the native cultures of the Indians of the South, her remarks showed no sign of racism (as distinct from ethnocentrism). Instead, she focused on the fact that the U.S. government had promised to protect these Indians and their lands. (The Indian nations in question included the Cherokee, Chocktaw, Creek, Seminole, and Chickasaw, which were often collectively referred to as the “Five Civilized Tribes” because of their notable adaptation to white, American ways.) Beecher was writing, she declared, because “it has become almost a certainty that these people are to have their lands torn from them, and to be driven into western wilds and to final annihilation, unless the feelings of a humane and Christian nation shall be aroused to prevent the unhallowed sacrifice.” Clearly, Beecher did not believe the rhetoric of the Jackson administration that removal would be voluntary and that it was necessary to protect Indians — instead, she said, Indians’s land would be “torn” from them, and their removal west would lead to their “annihilation.” In short, Beecher thought that she saw through the pro-removal rhetoric to the real reason that Indians were to move west — their “fertile and valuable” lands were “demanded by the whites as their own possessions.” [1]
This letter helped inspire a small but significant petition campaign on the part of American women. Alisse Portnoy has carefully studied this petition campaign. While her article helps document the political resistance to the Indian removal policy, it also shows how women in the early republic period began tentatively to assert a “right to speak” regarding political issues. Portnoy shows that how these women spoke is just as important as the fact that they did so.
Here are several questions to consider when reading this essay:
- What main arguments does Portnoy make?
- What evidence does she bring forward? Where did she get this evidence?
- Where did the petitions come from? What might be the significance of their regional source?
- Why are these petitions historically significant?
- Why weren’t the petitions effective in changing Indian policy?
[1] Catherine Beecher, “Circular Addressed to the Benevolent Ladies of the U. States,” Dec. 25, 1829, in Theda Purdue and Michael D. Green, eds., The Cherokee Removal: A Brief History with Documents, 2nd ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005), 111-14.
March 20th, 2007 at 11:45 am
Professor Voelker hinted at this point, but I wanted to flesh it out a little more. He said, “it also shows how women in the early republic period began tentatively to assert a ‘right to speak’ regarding political issues.”
In this regard, this letter campaign could be seen as the beginning of the modern Women’s Rights movement. The letter was aimed at women only and to a small but significant degree gave the participants some political power that they certainly did not have in any other regard.
In a similar regard, the campaign against slavery before and during the Civil War was often led by women flexing newfound political muscle. By becoming politically active on one issue, the foundation was set for the push for full political rights.
March 21st, 2007 at 2:43 pm
I find it interesting but certainly not surprising that these petitions came from the North, and not just from women but from upper-middle class or socially prominent women. It is easy to see the parallel with the antislavery movement. Of course women and men of the South were not concerned with the arguing against the Indian Removal policies because it would be to their benefit to have new fertile lands available to them. For these petitioners, the issue was a moral and sometimes religious issue, and that is why it was acceptable for them, as women, to be involved in the discussion.
March 22nd, 2007 at 8:50 am
Throughout the article Portnoy discuses that women petitioners saw Indian Removal as an “extraordinary” event and subject in American History, which then and only then they must speak out on what they believe. As Portnoy also discuses they women petitioners took a new spin on the term “republican motherhood”. Using the term “republican motherhood” the women established influence that normally they would not convey onto their husband’s and bother’s government.
These women did not want to see the national honor tarnished in any way. They even went as so far to talk about how these Indian Removal policies would be reflected upon in the future. The petitioning women had to be careful as they drafted the petitions as to not show any ambition to further their careers in politics. If this would have been done the men I would have saw it as a threat to the political system, which would have furthered the ineffectiveness of the petitions.
March 22nd, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Must i admit that women were on the mark for this one by seeing through a man’s (Andrew Jackson administration in particular) BS and giving the big shout-out to the rest of the United States that what the government was doing to the natives of the motherland was actually wrong? I give kudos to Beecher for not falling for the propaganda of our government. Maybe men should listen to women more often.
March 27th, 2007 at 7:36 am
Despite the fact that women were primarily excluded from the public sphere during this time in America, with the influence and support of male authority figures in the North, such as Jeremiah Evarts, the antiremovalist movement gained a significant amount of women support. Both morality and religious beliefs formed the foundation of these petitioners and encouraged these individuals, specifically the women, to boldly declare “their right to speak” and defend the rights previously promised to the Natives by the government. Most of these petitioners believed that Christianizing and assimilating the Natives into American culture was the only just way to deal with the issue.
Catherine Beecher initiated the anti-removal petition campeign that many historians argue was a crucial turning point for women’s rights. I think it is important to note the influence Evarts had on Beecher’s decision. Evarts approached Beecher and said “that American women might save these poor, oppressed Natives, and asked me [Beecher] to devise some method of securing such intervention;” she confidently acted on his words.
March 27th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Portney does an excellent job examining the early foundations of the women’s petition movement. She first points out that most of the women involved in the movement were the daughters of women who were previously in the “Republican Motherhood.” These women believed it was their responsibility to raise virtuous and patriotic children. As these values were taught they no doubt instilled a sense of national pride in the women who would eventually lead the petition movement. In fact, many of the womens petitions explicitly stated that it was their intention to protect the United States “national honor and faith.” It should be noted that this was in the area of indian removal policy only. At this time women did not see themselves as political agents.
The women’s petition movement was also deeply rooted the religous convictions of the time. Many petitions expressed the ideologies of what it meant to be a good Christian. To be a good Christian, they argued, the country should act with piety and benevolance when dealing with indians.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:09 am
In her examination of the women’s petition movement Portney makes a very interesting comparison of women’s compared to men’s anti-removal petitions. Examining the diffences allows for some key insights into the ideologies of both men and women of the early republic.
As noted in previous posts the women’s petitions concentrated primarily on national dignity and the religous convictions. That is, they wanted to act in a benevolent and pious manner as to protect our national honor.
Men, on the other hand concentrated primarily on legal and political institutions. Men believed Indians had a right to the land due to the treaties which were agreed upon. These men were much more concerned with the ideas of the law and justice and payed little attention to the ideas of benevolence and piety.
March 27th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Something that I thought was interesting about these groups of women coming together to petition the Removal Act, was that only a handful of the same women came together to petition/fight against slavery. What would be the difference between the two to women? Wouldn’t they have seen the blacks as “poor and oppressed” as they saw the Natives and feel the need to make them into “civilized” people?
March 28th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
I think that if it hadn’t been the women coming forth about the removal policy, it might hae been overruled. The women had very good ideas and beliefs about the Indian population and realized it was going to be the end of their culture if they were driven from their land as Andrew Jackson so proposed. Maybe if there was more male backing it would have been more successful. Sad to say that back then and still today it isn’t what you know but it’s who you know that gets things recognized.
March 29th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Hello. Professor Voelker invited me to read what you all have written about women’s antiremoval petitions and my essay, and also to say a few words. Thanks so much for your engagement with this issue! I think it’s an important one in women’s and U.S. history, and I appreciate the ways many of you are thinking about the context of the issue–in moments before, contemporary to, and after the campaign.
As it seems for some of you, it is interesting to me, too, that there wasn’t a linear trajectory from antiremoval petitioning to antislavery petitioning to woman suffrage petitioning: it took Beecher abut twenty-five years, for example, finally to realize that it was okay for women to petition against slavery, even though she was against slavery! My sense, though, is that most antiremovalists felt that Native Americans would die, individually and as a people, if they were forced to move–but that African Americans would be better served, would thrive, even, if they were “returned” to Africa (”returned” is such a loaded term, since most African Americans who lived in the United States in the 1830s had been born in the U.S., as had their parents and grandparents–some of whom were European Americans). Many European American antiremovalists believed that “colonization,” or colonizing Africa with African Americans, would be the best solution for everyone, strange and contradictory as that may seem to us now.
Professor Voelker asked me whether I found any evidence in my research that women inpired or led men to actively participate in the antiremoval campaign. I didn’t find any evidence of that happening, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. I know for sure that George Cheever asked his mother to distribute materials for him, and that women in Hallowell were invited to attend an evening discussion about Indian removal that typically was hosted by men (the newspaper ad announced the discussion and specifically said “ladies invited to attend”). But Catharine Beecher and her sister Harriet Beecher (later to be Harriet Beecher Stowe of _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ fame) talked in their letters about writing only to women, rather than to women and men or to men.
Sorry for the long post! But it’s fun to talk with people about these issues. Good luck with your semester.
April 17th, 2007 at 7:06 am
DATABASE OF PRIMARY SOURCES ON ANTI-REMOVAL PETITIONS
UWGB students can access a database of primary documents related to the anti-removal petition campaign at:
http://tinyurl.com/2hmze3
These documents are part of a database called “Women and Social Movements in the United States.”
April 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
REVIEW OF PORTNOY’S BOOK, Their Right to Speak
See http://tinyurl.com/3xb7da for a good review of Alisse Portnoy’s book on the anti-removal campaign, antislavery, and women’s rights. Also, Portnoy responded to the review at :
http://tinyurl.com/3agph5