The Petitions of Dr. Harriot K. Hunt

Boston physician and women’s rights activist Dr. Harriot K. Hunt spent over twenty years writing yearly petitions to the City of Boston Tax Assessors' office. Many local and regional newspapers published her petitions, granting Hunt and her words widespread attention. Despite this publicity, it appears neither the city nor the state took direct action as a result of Hunt’s letters.

In these petitions, Hunt protested the unjust laws and restrictions that prevented women from becoming full and equal citizens. Her words demonstrate a clear understanding of the past and a recognition of the current world in which she lived.

See below for a selection of transcribed petitions.

1852

In October 1852, Harriot Hunt submitted her first petition after seeing a naturalized male Irish immigrant obtain citizenship and, thereby, the right to vote. In the following letter, Hunt’s prejudice towards certain male populations heightens her feelings regarding the injustice done towards women. Hunt also outlines another grievance of hers: the limited educational opportunities for girls in the city.

1852 Petition

To Frederick U. Tracy, Treasurer, and the Assessors, and other authorities of the City of Boston, and the citizens generally.

Harriot K. Hunt, physician, a native and permanent resident of the City of Boston, and for many years a tax payer therein, in making payment of her city taxes for the coming year, begs leave to protest against the injustice and inequality of levying taxes upon women, and at the same time refusing them any voice or vote in the imposition and expenditure of the same. The only classes of male persons, required to pay taxes, and not at the same time allowed the privilege of voting, are aliens and minors. The objection in the case of aliens, is, their supposed want of interest in our institutions and knowledge of them. The objection in case of minors is, the want of sufficient understanding. These objections certainly cannot apply to women, natives of the city, all whose property and interests are here, and who have accumulated by their own sagacity and industry, the very property on which they are taxed. But this is not all; the alien by going through the forms of naturalization, the minor on coming of age, obtain the right of voting, and so long as they continue to pay a mere poll-tax of a dollar and a half, they may continue to exercise it, though so ignorant as not to be able to sign their names, or read the very votes they put into the ballot boxes. Even drunkards, felons, idiots, or lunatics of men, may still enjoy that right of voting, to which no woman, however large the amount of taxes she pays, however respectable her character, or useful her life, can ever attain. Wherein, your remonstrant would inquire, is the justice, equality, or wisdom of this? That the rights and interests of the female part of community are sometimes forgotten or disregarded in consequence of their deprivation of political rights, is strikingly evinced, as appears to your remonstrant, in the organization and administration of the city public schools. Though there are open in this State and neighborhood, a great multitude of colleges and professional schools, for the education of boys and young men, yet the city has very properly provided two high schools of its own, one Latin, the other English, at which the male graduates of the grammar schools may pursue their education still further at the public expense, and why is not a like provision made for girls? Why is the public provision for their education stopped short, just as they have attained the age best fitted for progress, and the preliminary knowledge necessary to facilitate it, thus giving the advantage of superior culture to sex, not to mind? The fact that our colleges and professional schools are closed against females, of which your remonstrant has had personal and painful experience, having been in the year 1847, after twelve years of medical practice in Boston, refused permission to attend the lectures of Harvard Medical College, that fact would seem to furnish an additional reason, why the city should provide at its own expense, those means of superior education, which, by supplying our girls with occupation and objects of interest, would not only save them from lives of frivolity and emptiness, but which might open the way to many useful and lucrative pursuits, and so raise them above that degrading dependence, so fruitful a source of female misery.

Reserving a more full exposition of the subject to future occasions, your remonstrant in paying her tax for the current year, begs leave to protest against the injustice and inequalities above pointed out.

This is respectfully submitted,
Harriot K. Hunt, 32 Green street.
Boston, Oct. 18, 1852.^[1]

The first page of Harriot K. Hunt's 1853 petition.

Boston City Archives

1853

Hunt’s second petition features similar arguments as her first; in this letter, however, she makes direct connections between women’s fight against an unjust government with that of the Founding Fathers almost eighty years earlier. She also references the 1853 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention, during which several women appealed to the Convention to address women’s rights issues.

1853 Petition

To the authorities of the City of Boston (Mass.) and the Citizens generally:

Harriot K. Hunt, physician, a native and permanent resident of the city of Boston, and for many years a tax-payer therein, in making payment of her taxes for the coming year, again protests against the injustice of levying taxes without a right of representation. The present system of taxation is a serious wrong, a violation of justice, as well as a violation of republicanism. If, all of the women in Massachusetts, who are citizens, only ten felt this wrong, those ten should be redressed; but when nearly 2000 petitioners presented themselves, through their signatures, to your Constitutional Convention on this vital question, it was “inexpedient” for the Convention to take any action in relation thereto. What woman of thought can “consent” to be governed (for that is the argument) under the present subversive party, elements that bring into office those who are to represent her. No reasonable or satisfactory answer has ever been given to woman on this subject, only that man represent her through fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons; your remonstrant has no such representation; and there are many in like situation.

“State, county, and city tax,” the former, the expense of the Constitutional Convention, in which she had no voice (but petition) and how facical that power of petition when she can neither express, assent, nor dissent, to its doings, but be unjustly taxed, and, like an idiot, lunatic, or infant, be compelled to meet it. Of the “City Tax” one word: The inequality and injustice of our Public School System, in having no High School for girls, while our boys have both a Latin and High School, was spoken of in her last Protest, and our privileged right of petition tested, by the voice of at least 2700 for such High School, this petition was duly presented last spring, and whatever action may have taken place on the School Committee, the public are ignorant. No High School for girls has as yet been organized. With these views, which might be more fully carried out, with the increase of her tax, will, in consequence of your Constitutional Convention, which can result in no permanent good, since the great central element of justice, was by the committee on our petitions winked into “expediency,” and no minority, report, nor any act of the Convention, vindicated or even recognized the right of woman, on the real basis of representation, Humanity.

Thus, dissatisfied with city expenditures, the inequality of public school, (sexualising education,) your remonstrant pays her taxes compulsorily, instead of cheerfully, feeling within her that element of patriotism which inspired her as well as your Forefathers, in the utterance of that deep, full, and clear sentiment—

“Taxation without representation is tyranny.”

This is respectfully submitted,
Harriot K. Hunt.
32 Green-St., Nov. 5, 1853.^[2]

1861

In her 1861 petition, Harriot Hunt recognizes the current turmoil of the Civil War and uses this moment as a chance to reflect and question the country’s founding principles, which, she argues, must be extended across both race and sex. Furthermore, Hunt holds men responsible for the instition of slavery, the Civil War, and the ongoing impediments to women’s equal citizenship.

1861 Petition

Boston, December 12th, 1861.

To Frederick U. Tracy, Treasurer, and the Assessors and other Authorities of the city of Boston, and the citizens generally, and the Legislature in particular:

An external version of the Declaration of Independence has caused our civil war: “All men are born free and equal,” rendered whites and males, through ignorance, love of power and selfhood, thereby crushing the colored race, making insane those who hold them in bondage—thus our civil war, to clear away the impediments to an understanding of the word Freedom, which knows neither sex nor color.

“Governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.” Had this principle been recognized in its essence, sex alone could not have monopolized the right of suffrage. Males, intemperate, vicious, one shade removed from guardianship, can appear at the polls, ignoring a proper qualification of this highly important act.

Woman, in her womanhood, could never have permitted slavery, an institution which blights every thing she holds sacred, through her conjugial and maternal nature. Even the expense of such a vile system would have attracted her economic eye.

Now, she is to be taxed to bear her part in a civil war which she has had nothing to do in creating; family ties have been and are still to be ruptured by deaths the most aggravating; widows and fatherless children are to be thrown upon the world. Man, through taxation, is to devise and control the means to meet these exigencies, while woman is passively to submit to his decisions, though it reduce her property to a minimum of its former value; so “taxation without representation” assumes a deeper significance than ever before in the history of our country.

Shams, cheats, falsities, still continue in our municipal affairs, attracting the solemn consideration of our best minds, and qualifications for suffrage will yet be a necessity, growing out of an enlightened public conscience.

In this period of civil war, in this struggle for a higher perception of freedom, in this signal era of our country, when bondage after bondage is being removed, that bondage may be seen in its true light, when our national eagle is spreading her wings over those hitherto only nominally protected, woman is beginning to take courage, and is willing to bide her time, till man shall be morally strong enough to recognize her right as citizen in a republic.

This is respectfully submitted,
Harriot Kezia Hunt.
32 Green street.^[3]

Selection of Hunt's 1864 petition as published in The Liberator.

The Liberator, December 23, 1864.

1864

Hunt’s 1864 petition contains the most optimism as she looks towards the final months of the Civil War. The emancipation of African Americans gives her hope for a reformed society following the war, one in which the founding principles will be realized and women will be ensured the rights they deserve.

1864 Petition

Boston, Dec. 7, 1864.

To Frederick U. Tracy, Treasurer, and the Assessors and other Authorities of the City of Boston, and the Citizens generally:--

The question of freedom in a free country is, in a most wonderful manner, becoming developed, through the fulfillment of our obligations to the colored race. Nobleness of soul has burst forth through conventionalism, customs and habits. Latent principles, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, are now demanding thought and practical application.

The question of suffrage now stands before the country as a gigantic subject. By whom, for whom, and to whom this right belongs; and how to be exercised—what qualifications, what restrictions—calls for thought of not only the professed legislator, but the moral conservatist and political economist.

Our last election, when our ballot-box was guarded by military power, though unseen, and our noble soldiers gave their votes, though absent from home, was significant of an advanced step on the subject; and we confidently affirm that, as we have moved, so shall we move, until the word MALE shall be expunged from our statute books: and persons, individuals, not sex, be standards.

Three-fifths representation was rendered obsolete, through emancipation of color, based on principle. Male representation will share the same fate, through emancipation of sex, based on moral and intellectual growth.

Each one of us is on trial; events are shaping themselves for the highest expression of philanthropy—of love to the neighbor. Permitting the ignorant, the imbecile, the intemperate an equal footing at the ballot box with the noble, the brace, the true, not only degrades suffrage, but places over us rulers who are no law unto themselves.

So, cheerfully, hopefully and trustingly, I enter again my protest against taxation without representation; and can say what my eyes do see even now is marvellous; and so, from year to year, until more marvels occur.

E Pluribus Unum has a deeper meaning; and Freedom will yet be scanned as to height and depth, as well as to length and breadth; for moral plummets will continue to sound depths which were supposed fathomless, and the present method of suffrage will follow slavery in due time.

This is respectfully submitted.
Harriot K. Hunt
32 Green street.^[4]

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Questions to Consider

1. What arguments does Harriot Hunt give for women’s right to vote?
2. In what ways does Hunt connect the women’s rights movement to the American Revolution? To the Abolitionist Movement?
3. How does the Civil War influence Hunt’s point of view?
4. Compare her 1852 and 1864 petitions. How are they similar, and how do they differ?

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Footnotes

[1] Transcribed from: Harriot K. Hunt, Glances and Glimpses; or, Fifty years social, including twenty years professional life (Boston: J.P. Jewett & Co., 1856) 294-295. Accessed September 2020 https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-55631380R-bk#page/304/mode/2up.

[2] Transcribed from: Harriot K. Hunt, “Petition,” The Una Vol 1, no. 12 (December 1853), 185.

[3] Transcribed from: Harriot K. Hunt, “Taxation without Representation,” The Liberator, January 03, 1862.

[4] Transcribed from: Harriot K. Hunt, “Taxation without Representation,” The Liberator, December 23, 1864.