For likely the first time in the United States, a woman gave a public lecture. George Washington was there

In the summer of 1787, as Constitutional Convention delegates gathered in Philadelphia, educator Elizabeth Harriot Barons O’Connor gave a series of public lectures. She is believed to be the first woman in the United States to do so. Her story reveals that America’s framing moment did not belong solely to white men. It also provides new insight into the extraordinarily influential role George Washington, president of that convention, had at that moment in history.
Born in 1749 in Lisbon to British parents, Eliza Harriot* came of age in a remarkable political era. The 1780s were the Age of the Constitution—a period in which the transatlantic political culture was dominated by debates over the meaning of the word. What began as a concept referring to a political system of government slowly shifted to mean the specific written document of that system. The evolution was gradual, halting, and incomplete, and during this time, political ideas were malleable and what belonged in constitutions was uncertain and contingent. For women as well as for people of color, this liminal time created an opportunity to challenge the long-held Western intellectual view that held them as inferior. The matter of education, therefore, was a political battleground; opportunities for education were vital to prove that others were equal in capacity to white men.

Out of the Parlor
The concept of “female genius”—the idea that women had equal capacity—increasingly took root in the late 18th century. In England, France, Ireland, and the United States, it became an argument not only for women’s education but also for broader constitutional participation. In the 1780s, no national written constitution specifically barred women from participating in politics. The case against their participation often stemmed from the limits of their education and their perceived inability to speak in public. Therefore, expanding education became a critical step, and opportunities for women—and to a far lesser extent for free people of color—began to expand. In the Age of the Constitution, promoting equal education was inextricably connected to broadening the boundaries of participation in the system of government.

Women did not conventionally learn Latin and Greek, so one way to demonstrate equal capacity was to find classical models of female genius. In 1790, the British constitutional historian Catharine Macaulay surfaced the story of Hortensia in her argument for equal female education. The most famous of classical female orators, Hortensia argued successfully in the Roman Forum against taxing women to pay for the civil wars in the wake of Julius Caesar’s death. Her example proved that women could act as political representatives and speak as powerfully as men.

Speaking in public as this classical figure had would demonstrate women’s capacity to participate in politics. In London, in the early 1780s, female debating societies with names such as La Belle Assemblée, Female Parliament, and Female Congress discussed questions such as “Ought not the women of Great Britain to have a voice in the election of Representatives, and to be eligible to sit in Parliament?” and “Is it just, in this enlightened age, to preclude Ladies from voting in elections, or sitting in the Senate?” In the United States in 1783, a young male Princeton orator gave a speech before George Washington and members of Congress urging more extensive female education. And in 1786, a printed version of this speech declared that it “has ever been a sign of barbarity and cruelty to suppress a female genius and a female education” and that women were “entitled to the rights and privileges with their heroic brethren.” 

A Woman at the Podium
When Eliza Harriot gave her extraordinary lectures in Philadelphia, she embodied this push for a greater role for women within the body politic. And recognizing George Washington’s political and cultural influence, she enlisted it for her purposes. Attendance by the revered statesman, particularly on the eve of the Constitutional Convention, ensured national newspaper coverage.
Although the Constitutional Convention was supposed to start on Monday, May 14, basically only the Virginia delegates (of which Washington was one) had arrived to join Pennsylvania’s by that date. On Friday, May 18, Washington dined at Grey’s Ferry, a public garden with waterfalls, grottos, and Chinese bridges and pagodas. As usual, he had tea. The temperature was 67 degrees, and the sky was overcast, with rain and thunderstorms. After tea, he accompanied Mary Morris and her female friends to Eliza Harriot’s 7:30 p.m. lecture at the University of Pennsylvania’s University Hall. Mary Morris, the wife of financier and delegate Robert Morris, was an influential and civic-minded philanthropist.

That night, Washington’s attendance was anticipated. In fact, Eliza Harriot—“the Lady in the University”—had postponed her lecture “at the particular desire of several Ladies and Gentlemen of distinction,” as her advertisement explained. The newspapers reported that Washington had been accompanied by friends of both sexes “to the University, to hear a lady deliver a Lecture on the Power of Eloquence.” As the convention delegates were preparing to participate in debates that would lead to the drafting of a new constitution, Eliza Harriot’s lecture addressed the power of speaking.

In his private diary, Washington would describe her lecture at the university as “tolerable.” Tolerable—a word whose 18th-century meaning was akin to “acceptable although not quite ideal”—was a condescending and yet also remarkably positive judgment by a man with a broad and cosmopolitan cultural bent. Indeed, that Eliza Harriot would continue to communicate with Washington and receive his good wishes for her school in Alexandria a year later provided further validation.

According to the newspaper commentators of the day, the lecture was a success, delivered to “general applause” said one. Another—“one of your most constant hearers”—described her “copious voice and fine expression.” The popularity of her performance among women was apparent: It was “the subject of conversation” in “every female circle,” apparently all favorable. Another account described the Friday night “crowd of elegant ladies” of “most splendid appearance.” Furthermore, Washington’s presence had led Eliza Harriot to “express more copiously, emphatically, and distinctly, the sublimer parts of composition.” 

Show of Support
Washington’s character—described as equally amiable and illustrious—demonstrated an acceptance of a woman speaking in public. Acknowledging some inevitable criticism, one newspaper account—likely written by Eliza Harriot or her husband—recognized that a “superficial” person accustomed to “undervalu[ing] all female talents” would dismiss Washington’s attendance as condescension. (Of course, the newspaper hastened to add that, for Washington, attendance at any event was condescension.) But any man of “judgment and penetration” would grasp that Washington showed discerning judgment and did not undervalue female talents. Implicitly, to judge female genius as inferior was to lack intellectual depth and accurate perception. Washington represented male respect for female genius.

According to the Philadelphia Independent Gazetteer, Washington’s attention and patronage of the “lady lecturer” proved he was as great as “Cyrus or Scipio”—the Roman general Scipio and the Persian king Cyrus. Newspapers in New York and Connecticut reprinted this account in which, by patronizing a speech given by a woman, Washington was tied to the greatness of the classical republican past. Such an analogy was a common trope in the 1780s, leveraged to legitimize late 18th–century American republican government.

Intriguingly, these two generals of antiquity appeared in popular stories about respecting women. Taken from Livy’s history of Rome, the “Continence of Scipio” described how a beautiful woman prisoner was offered to the young man. The classical sources made clear she was considered a sexual prize, but Scipio nevertheless returned her unharmed to her betrothed. By drawing a parallel between Washington attending Eliza Harriot’s lecture and Scipio refusing to view women as sexual property, the commentary implied that the belief in female inferiority rested on a belief about women as sexual property. Like Livy’s Scipio, Xenophon’s Cyrus also respected women. In the story, Cyrus protected Panthea—the captured wife of a king—who was desired by Araspus, one of Cyrus’s subordinates. Once again, the story suggested that a great man refused to treat women as sexual objects and inferiors.

Eliza Harriot herself referenced classical sources. In her lecture, she delivered at least a portion of one of the most famous orations in the classical canon: “On the Crown” by the Athenian orator Demosthenes. His prayer, delivered by Eliza Harriot, appeared in print: “Hear me, ye immortal Gods! and let not these their desires be ratified in heaven! Infuse a better spirit into these men! Inspire their minds with purer sentiments! … But to us display your goodness, in a speedy deliverance from impending evils, and all the blessings of protection and tranquility!” An anonymous commentator interpreted her oration as a comment on the failure of the Rhode Islanders to appear for the convention. Perhaps Eliza Harriot had suggested the connection, perhaps not. Regardless, the link between her lecture and the Constitutional Convention was now explicit, and her words and readings were interpreted as political commentary. By mid-June, the account had made its way into the Providence paper. Eliza Harriot had become Demosthenes, and the absent delegates were cast as the ancient opposition.

A Woman’s Place
As the Constitutional Convention began, “the Lady who has lectured in the University” with George Washington in the audience had become well known, and word of her lecture slowly spread beyond Philadelphia. In addition to George Washington, Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and Charles Pinckney may have also attended. As other delegates streamed into town, Eliza Harriot continued to run advertisements for her lectures and likely gave an additional two. It is possible that her performance inspired the gender-neutral (for the era) language of the Constitution. The cumulative impact of her remarkable feat cannot be known.
Eliza Harriot brought the concept of female genius to the United States. Its advocates argued that women had equal capacity and deserved an equal education and political representation. Its detractors, who feared it undermined male political power, felt deeply threatened. By 1792, Eliza Harriot experienced struggles that reflected the larger backlash faced by women and people of color as newly written constitutions provided the political and legal tools for exclusion based on sex, gender, and race.
Nevertheless, during the Age of the Constitution, the promise was there. Eliza Harriot’s public lecture was a first in the United States. George Washington—the likely future leader of the new nation—had attended it and deemed it “tolerable.” The event signaled American participation in a transatlantic gender trans-formation. Eliza Harriot was not just lecturing in University Hall—although if that were all she had been doing, it would have been extraordinary. She was providing a model for women’s equal participation in public life. With Washington’s patronage, she had deserted the parlor for the forum.

*This article refers to Elizabeth Harriot Barons O’Connor by the first name she used in her signature, the part of her name that she chose herself.