Anti-Gag Rule Petition, 1837 | Records of Rights

The undersigned Women of Brooklin in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, have learned with astonishment and alarm, that your honorable body did, on the 21st of December last, adopt a resolution in the words following, to wit:
Your memorialists consider this resolution a violation of the Constitution of the United States–of the right of the people of the United States to petition–and of the right of their Representatives to freedom of speech . . .

Anti-Gag Rule Petition 1837

Many Americans were outraged by the gag rule. It resulted in an increased number of antislavery petitions as well as numerous petitions like this one against the rule itself.

National Archives, Records of the U.S. House of Representatives