Description: "A biography of Eliza Harriot Barons O'Connor, an educator whose 1787 Philadelphia public lecture attended by George Washington might have inspired the gender-neutral language of the Constitution. Explores women's public roles and political power following the American Revolution through the early nineteenth century, tracing the story of white and Black women's struggles for education and suffrage at a transformative moment"--
Review Quotes:
Contemporaries of the traveling lecturer and educational entrepreneur Eliza Harriot, including General Washington, knew her well. But later generations of Americans forgot her, and with her, the depth and breadth of proto-feminism in our founding era. What a thrill, then, to see Eliza Harriot restored to the pantheon by one of our most gifted writers, Mary Sarah Bilder.
--Woody Holton, University of South Carolina, author of Liberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution