"We the Ladies": Collective Petitioning by Women in Antebellum and Civil War Texas.

Two men who sat on the trial jury also signed the petition, but ultimately Governor Pease granted no pardon.[35] It is significant that at no point in the petition did those signing it refer to themselves as citizens; indeed, the petition opened with the words, "The undersigned Petitioners, with due respect to your Excellency, would represent." The petitioning campaigns of Texas women described in this article did not embrace overtly political causes, such as abolitionism, which were often championed by groups of northern female petitioners but would have posed a challenge to the southern way of life and carried a risk of physical assault or worse for those women engaged in canvassing for petition signatures.[13] Instead, these women were petitioning to seek mercy for a convict and were motivated by compassion for the criminal or that person's close family.[14] It was unusual for a woman (or group of women) to petition for clemency on behalf of a convicted person to whom there was no connection by blood or marriage. On June 20, 1862, Colonel Thomas Carothers, the superintendent of the Texas State Penitentiary, was visited by an apparently tearful Frederika Riebeling, who successfully urged him to change his mind and follow the example of his two predecessors in supporting her campaign to secure a pardon for her husband, Charles. [Extracted from the article]