The relationship between middle-class antebellum white women and the various reform movements to which they chose to dedicate seemingly inexhaustible supplies of time and energy has sparked some of the most lively dialogue among literary, historical, and cultural scholars of nineteenth-century America, including Christine Stansell, Lori Ginzberg, Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Barbara Epstein, and Jean Fagan Yellin. At first glance, Signatures of Citizenship might not seem to have much to add to this conversation. However, Susan Zaekse's study of the rhetorical and political power of antebellum women's antislavery petitions recounts an inspiring and engaging story of determined women whose extraordinary courage, persistence, and passion had an indelible impact on American politics.

Having collected over three million women's signatures for their anti-slavery petitions between 1834 and 1863, these activists provided Zaeske with a rich source of information about the way (mostly white) antebellum women deployed the contemporary discourses of separate spheres, moral motherhood, evangelical religion—and ultimately Enlightenment discourses of natural rights—as a way to construct their political identities. As one of the only civil rights available to women, petitioning offered them an opportunity to shape public dialogue and even the United States Constitution in the form of the Thirteenth Amendment. With roots in pre-modern England, petitioning historically served as a vehicle by which the disempowered appealed to their rulers to resolve personal grievances, thus obliging the powerful to respond to the disenfranchised. In Jacksonian America, according to Zaeske, petitioning became used for more overt political purposes by both men and women.

Zaeske's study divides women's antislavery petitioning into five chronological phases between the years 1831 and 1865 when the Thirteenth Amendment was passed. Initially, women not surprisingly displayed the supplicating and reverential attitude characteristic of the so-called cult of true womanhood. Following the form of a prayer, their petitions stressed the humility and modesty of the petitioners, appealed to the wisdom and authority of male superiors, and identified the signers as "residents" or "inhabitants" rather than citizens. To readers familiar with the extensive scholarship on nineteenth-century domesticity, Zaeske's analysis makes perfect sense. But Zaeske's book distinguishes itself by bringing the voices of so very many antebellum women into the forefront and giving them the analytical attention they deserve.

However, Zaeske also recognizes the exclusions upon which the liberation of these voices depends. In a fascinating section, she notes how in the early years of petitioning, women justified what was seen as their intrusion into public discourse by claiming to speak for those who could not speak for themselves—particularly those slave women whose suffering resulted from the disruption of family life and other violations of the domestic values so dear to bourgeois women of the north. In seeking to identify themselves with these women, white women often conflated their own victimization as subordinated wives with the plight of the captive slave. This not only effaced the differences between white and black women but also mandated that their alleged "sisters" in bondage remain silent and suffering. Had they voiced their complaints themselves, these black women would have stripped their protectors of one of their more powerful justifications for public speech.

For those readers frustrated with present-day politicians' lack of response to protest movements, the political and cultural impact of the work of these women is particularly inspiring. Women's petitions clearly affected Congressional activity: "gag" rules enacted in both 1836 and 1838 prohibited any further anti-slavery petitions from reaching the floor. As a voice of opposition to these gag rules, John Quincy Adams emerges from Zaeske's study as a major advocate for women's political rights. But her study focuses most of its attention on female activists: Zaeske devotes a...