to help her and prevent her and her family “from perishing this winter.” Like other women who raised the needs of their family in petitions, this mother named children but never mentioned a husband.20
The number of references to women who appeared to be sole providers for themselves and their families is striking. Sarah Collier cited the distress of her children as the primary basis for her appeal and explicitly referenced their dependence on her. Speaking of herself in the third person, Collier wrote, “She humbly hopes that your honour will grant her liberation as her confinement will only serve to increase her distress as her children are almost helpless and chiefly depending on their parent[’s] industry.”21 Women believed that motherhood was the right chord to strike with male reformers who held the key to their freedom. The concept of republican motherhood was already circulating, carving out an important role for women’s domestic leadership in shaping the polity. Women like Collier risked judgment of failure about their parenting skills and life choices, but they still believed drawing attention to their role as mothers was their best hope in convincing their visitors to recommend them for a pardon.
Elizabeth Elliot wrote to the Supreme Executive Council of the state requesting remission of fines for her conviction for selling liquor without a license. Elliot did not claim innocence but begged remission from the ten-pound fine. She probably supported herself and her family through her tippling house. Though she did not present the suffering of her children as the basis for her request, she did end her appeal by stating, “Your unfortunate petitioner is a poor widow who hath a family of five small children.”22 In cases such as Elizabeth’s, it was clear that she did not have a husband. The absence of references to male providers signals several things. One, women without the economic support or political authority of men were more likely to be imprisoned. Two, female petitioners were more successful in appealing to the sympathies of reformers if they presented themselves as single women with children. In the absence of a named husband, progressive men would assert their own patriarchal benevolence, offering financial or legal relief to women who were failed by other men.
Petitioners exhibited varying degrees of deference, with women’s petitions generally more excessive in their demonstrations of both suffering and submission. In November 1787, prisoner Catharine Usoons sent a letter to John Morrison, a coppersmith and charter member of PSAMPP. Her petition deployed themes that would resonate with her male audience by deferring to Morrison, emphasizing her own vulnerability and dependency, and highlighting her role as a mother. She pleaded, “To your honour the dismal and deplorable situation I now labour under with my young infant at my breast, have not any cloaths to put on and am almost starved … I hope your honour will take it into your charitable consideration as it will never lay in my power to pay the restitution lay’d on me wile I lay in Jail and I have been here 18 months and suffer’d inconsiderable, and I am afraid myself and child will starve this winter without your honour.”23 Catharine’s appeal offered PSAMPP members a range of ways to help her. Short of actually paying the fees for her release, PSAMPP could see to it that she received some clothing—at least the standard shift—and adequate food. Written expressions of submission by women reinforced their appropriate position vis-à-vis men and served as evidence of their successful reformation. By demanding deference and submission from female convicts—two traits central to women’s proper role in society—reformers ensured women would have a greater likelihood of reformation than the men. The rhetorical submission of the petition only further enforced this.
Male petitioners had a host of different issues to navigate. Manliness was measured by independence for men in the early republic. The working poor, servants, slaves, and imprisoned men strove for expressions of independence in place of actual financial independence.24 Male prisoners were eager to reassert themselves as providers for their families, and this idea often shaped the basis and tone of their petitions. They were not looking for handouts but merely the opportunity—both noble and appropriate-to support their wives and children. James Parkins wrote, “Your well known sensibility and the goodness of your heart I flatter myself will be an advocate for a whole family and by your benevolence and kind influence I anxiously wish that a drooping family may once more smile and thank their generous benefactors.”25 Parkins made his case based on the collective needs of his family rather than his individual desires. Other men wrote explicitly about the particular family members who depended on them. Alexander Drian’s petition to the Supreme Executive Council cited the needs of his two-year-old child and wife in critical condition as grounds for leniency and a remission of his fine.26 John McCrum begged to be released so that he could “go work honestly for my bread and my wife as I always did before,” adding that he would rather be dead than to see his “wife suffer as she does.”27 Prisoners worried about their families and believed that the well-being of innocent women and children would inspire the benevolent reformers to help them. This turned out to be true in many cases. For example, the Visiting Committee of PSAMPP advocated the payment of the dollar fine that kept prisoner William Ketsel from being with and supporting his “wife and three children.”28 The idea that men deserved the opportunity for success because their families were dependent on them only became stronger in Philadelphia during this period, as wage labor replaced long-standing terms of servitude or slavery for society’s most vulnerable.
Gendered notions of economic self-sufficiency and independence were less forgiving of men who needed assistance.29 This is precisely why male prisoners framed their requests in more expansive terms. Jacob James could not make the complete bail he was offered and ended up in jail awaiting trial—a common cause of people’s imprisonment. James basically requested a loan from PSAMPP for his bail money and promised to pay the debt back weekly until it was discharged. This was an unusual and creative request. He rooted his appeal, however, in the needs of his family and his desire to take care of them. James wrote, “Hon[ore]d Sir I have a wife and one child in grate distress on the account of my being in this place and can not be any help to them.”30 James entered a dependent relationship with his benefactors based on his desire for freedom. He (and others like him) staked a claim to independence (and therefore manliness) by asserting his relationship to his dependents.31
Patrick Kain claimed to have unknowingly harbored two escaped convicts and ended up in prison as a result. Kain offered several reasons why PSAMPP should assist him, none as powerfully or dramatically stated as his need to provide for his family. Obviously distraught, he proclaimed, “I have a wife and three small children and have myself lost a leg in the service of the country and have sailed since 7 voyages with Capt. Cunningham and if I am detained here and loose the chance of a berth god knows what will become of my wife and children.”32 Men never cited their children alone as those in need of their aid, suggesting they were never expected to be the primary or sole caretakers of children. Men could be providers for families, not caretakers of children. Thus, they referred to their wives and families, in marked contrast to women, who often described themselves as the sole custodians of children.
Despite hints of things to come, including a decrease in use of the language of deference and an increase in the use of petitions for collective political action, the petitions written by prisoners in Walnut Street Jail from 1787 to 1789 are more reflective of the petition’s past than of its future. Even the more assertive and entitled petitions penned by debtors would not have raised the ire of reformers. They were still petitions, after all, a genre of communication that “acknowledged the power of the rulers and the dependence of the aggrieved.”33 Prisoners were nothing if not dependent—and reformers were happy to oblige requests that did not threaten this hierarchy. Still, imprisoned men were placed in an impossible position: they had to practice deference and obedience while demonstrating the markers of citizenship—independence, agency, and strength. The petition only further highlighted this tension, which can be seen in attempts by some men to assert themselves more boldly. Men used the petition in multiple ways, attempting to navigate the paradoxical relationship between submission and self-determination. They did this most persuasively not by rooting their arguments in claims of independence, liberty, democracy, or citizenship, but rather through their own relations of dependency—by framing themselves
