The bold, dramatic figure of Antigone has inspired radical women across the ages by her (fictional) defiance of arbitrary state power. The similarly bold Maria Stewart1 (1803-1879) is less well-known, despite her real-life achievements. Even when her place as the first American-born woman to give a public speech to a mixed audience of men and women is acknowledged, the full and dangerous revolutionary context into which she emerged, and which she helped shape, is often overlooked. So while many worlds separate Sophocles’ Antigone from the work and thought of Maria Stewart, what connects them is vital to feminist revolutionary philosophy.