Eliza Harriot O'Connor, Exemplar, and the Summer of 1787

Abstract: This essay recounts the inspiring story of Eliza Harriot O'Connor, the first female lecturer in the United States and an advocate for ambitious women's education. Through her lectures, newspaper advertisements, and plans for a female academy, Eliza Harriot advanced the idea of "female genius"—the belief in women's equal intellectual and political capacity. Her public lecture in May 1787, attended by George Washington, and her persistent presence in Philadelphia during the Constitutional Convention, suggest her influence on the gender-neutral language of the Constitution. The essay briefly situates Eliza Harriot within a broader transatlantic movement for female education and representation involving women such as Catharine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft. It also traces Benjamin Rush's opposition to her model of education and the larger backlash to female genius that culminated in constitutional exclusions of women and people of color. By recovering Eliza Harriot's example, the essay suggests a reimagined constitutional history beyond the men inside Independence Hall.