Founding Radicals

Meet the underappreciated yet fascinating early nineteenth-century women who dared to pursue America’s cherished values of liberty and justice for all

Founding Radicals tells the eye-opening stories of American radical speaker, newspaper editor, and philosopher Frances Wright along with a dozen other historically impactful women who were active in the first decades of the American republic. In a time shaped by the revolutionary fervor of the eighteenth century, filled with mavericks and firebrands creating a new country, these women stood out for breaking boundaries and inspiring powerful political and literary change.

Presidents, first ladies, and momentous political firsts like the Continental Congress dominate the traditional story of young America. But there’s another side: the American experiment was also molded by three generations of outspoken women who took on the new nation’s deepest contradictions and profoundest values in speech and in print. Though groundbreaking in their day, the names of these compelling campaigners for freedom have faded from our telling of American history. Yet their impact can still be traced in surprising ways. These women include:
Ernestine Rose, a rabbi’s daughter turned feminist lecturer Maria Stewart, a free African American and one of the first female orators in the young nation Judith Sargent Murray, an American writer whose essay advocating for women’s rights beat Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Women by a year Lucy Say, one of early America’s most respected scientific illustrators
Business owners and poets, activists and philosophers—they all insisted that our country’s real values of freedom, due process, and economic opportunity be afforded to everyone, no exceptions. Their stories show how progressive women shaped this country—and that they deserve to be remembered for their founding role. Their convictions and passions reveal America’s contradictions as a country that prizes freedom but was built on slavery, that preaches religious liberty but was forged by Christian institutions, that rejects aristocratic authority but has limited opportunity for many. Their courage shows how patriotic Americans have long fought to unwind these contradictions to the benefit of all.