September 1, 2025 • 17 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, Esther de Berdt Reed wasn’t content to sit on the sidelines during the Revolutionary War. While the fighting dragged on and morale among Patriot soldiers dropped, Reed launched an ambitious campaign with other women to raise funds and provide relief for the troops. When she presented her plan to George Washington, he had his own ideas for how their efforts should be used. But Esther wasn't willing to go down without a fight.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
And to find and search for the Our American Stories podcast,
go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Today we have the story of Esther Reid, a woman
whom during the Revolutionary War went to great lengths to
(00:32):
support the Continental Army. Professor Woody Holton of the University
of South Carolina will be sharing with us her story.
Here's Professor Holton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
One of my favorite discoveries researching a book on the
Revolution was Esther Reid, the woman who stood up to
George Washington and she died. Was plagiarized by Thomas Jefferson,
but in a good way. She was born in Britain
in seventeen forty six, and when she was in her
(01:11):
early twenties, she met a young man who was in
Britain for a legal education. His name was Joseph Reed
and he was from America and they two fell in love.
The two of them married and they moved back to
America together in seventeen seventy It's one of the amazing
(01:32):
things about Esther Reid is just four years after moving
to America. We have the First Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia,
and a bunch of the delegates had dinnered with Esther
and Joseph Reed, and one of them pronounced her a
daughter of liberty. That is, she had already become a solid,
(01:53):
enthusiastic patriot for the American cause, even though she'd only
lived in America for four years. Her husband, Joseph, was
also a great patriot. He became a secretary to George
Washington and then Adjutant General in the Continental Army. But
that's also what got Joseph in trouble, because in seventeen
(02:13):
seventy six, George Washington, as commander in chief, made a mistake.
He should have evacuated a fort called Fort Washington on
the Hudson River in what's now New York City, and
Washington didn't, and the fort was captured with six thousand
men in it. Reid wrote a letter criticizing his commander
(02:37):
in chief, George Washington, and to his great chagrin, George
Washington accidentally, on purpose opened this letter and saw that
his protege, Joseph Reid was criticizing him, and it really
put a real Paul in their relationship, they continued to
(02:59):
work together Washington and Joseph Reed. In seventeen seventy nine,
Joseph Reed became the President of Pennsylvania. That was the
highest office in this new state of Pennsylvania during the
American Revolution. But I want to take it to the
spring of seventeen eighty, which was the real low point
(03:23):
of the Revolutionary War near where I live down in Charleston,
South Carolina. The British captured not only the town of Charleston,
but of six thousand nin Continental Army. And there were
problems internal to America too. The soldiers hadn't been paid,
and they weren't getting their the required amount of food
(03:47):
or proper uniforms, and so, as George Washington put it,
there was a mutiny.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And dissension throughout the army.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I mean, one of the most amazing incidents of desertion
was a bunch of Continental soldiers here they are fighting
for liberty that they just had enough, and so they
mass deserted and were going to This was an upstate
New York and they were going to go to a
British fort up New York, Canada and dessert to the
other side. And their commanding officer had to resort to
(04:20):
sending Oneida.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Indians, they're one of the six nations of.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
The Iroquois, to go capture these Americans who had tried
to desert to the British, and the Unitas did catch
up with them and killed thirteen of them. Some escaped,
some were brought back to face justice. It was dark days,
(04:44):
and once it was literally dark days, because there was
a weird thing that happened in the heavens in May
of seventeen eighty.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
In the middle of the day, the sky went dark.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And people knew from their almanacs w there was going
to be in the clips and this was not in
the clipse. It just suddenly went dark, and the whipper
wheels sounded, and the cocks crowed and all that, and
many people believe, oh my god, we're having darkness in
the middle of the day. This is the end of
the world. It sort of made sense, given how bad
things were going for the Patriot side. It eventually went away,
(05:22):
and historian to think that what really had happened was
forest fires up in Maine had put so much smoke
into the air that it blackened the sky farther south.
It really sort of symbolizes that these were dark days
for the Americans.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And this is where as to Reed becomes part of
the story.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
She wanted to do something to improve the morale of
the soldiers that were already enlisted, and so she came
up with this idea of getting the women of Philadelphia
to go door to door and raise money and then
divide it up among the troops as a special gift
(06:04):
among the soldiers, and just as a way of telling
them that they had not been forgotten. That was her
great fear was that, you know, and this happens a
lot in our country now as well as other countries.
People who are not having to go fight the war
forget about the troops. And she really wanted them to
know that they were remembered. But she had a problem
(06:25):
in organizing this effort, and that was that women in
those days, or at least ladies in those days, weren't
supposed to go out knocking on strangers' doors. They really
weren't supposed to be in the street alone.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you've been listening to Woody Holton of the University
of South Carolina share with us the story of Esther Reid,
and he's setting the table and people who think we're
facing hard times today just don't understand what hard times
were and how what our troops were going through. Well,
we could have lost it, they could have just left.
And efforts like this from S. The Reid changed the game,
(07:05):
changed the calculus, the morale of the troops. Think about it,
they weren't paid and indeed they were deserting in mass.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story of S.
The Reed, the story of the founding of our country
and our first war and our first Civil War. Here
on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories
(07:32):
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
(07:53):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we
continue with our American Stories. We've been listening to Professor
(08:13):
Woody Houlton of the University of South Carolina share with
us the story of Esther Reid. Esther was born British
but moved to America after marrying her Patriot husband, Joseph Reed,
who would, by the way, become the President of Pennsylvania.
The Patriots had experienced some devastating losses in the war,
and Esther had begun to worry about the morale of
(08:35):
our troops, so she decided to raise money for them,
and was encouraging other women to do the same. Back
again as women back when women did not knock on doors,
let's return to Woody.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
She had to sell them on the idea of doing this,
so she published this extraordinary thing in the newspaper called
Sentiments of an American Lady, where she made the case
that American women, just like American men, were born for liberty.
And she also cited examples of role models, you could say,
(09:15):
of women in history who had stepped out and made
serious changes. And she mentioned, for instance, Elizabeth who was
one of the most powerful monarchs that England had ever had,
the example of Catherine the Great of Russia, another powerful woman.
And she used an interesting expression in her essays to
(09:36):
Reed did to describe what Catherine the Great and what
Elizabeth the First had done, and that was she said,
they had extended the Empire of liberty. She, as to Reid,
was the first person ever to use that phrase empire
of liberty for an earthly matter. That is, people had
(09:58):
used empire of liberty as a euphemism expression for heaven.
So she published this essay and got a lot of
other women involved. They had a committee of thirty nine,
that is, three representing each of the thirteen states, and
they raised a ton of money. Everything's going pretty well
with the fundraising until Esther Reed wrote Commander in Chief
(10:23):
George Washington, saying, Okay, we've raised all this money. We
need to figure out the practical matter. Reductive involved Martha
Washington in distributing the money to the troops, and George
Washington wrote back saying, hold on, I know, my men.
These are mostly guys in their twenties, some younger than that,
(10:44):
and if you give them cash money, they're going to
go out and blow it on liquor. And so not
only will they not have anything of value for that,
but I'll have a drunken army to confront the British
with and so I don't want direct of cash to
the soldiers. Here's what I want you to do instead.
I want you to go out and buy a bunch
(11:05):
of cloth, linen cloth, and you women use that cloth
to sew shirts for the soldiers. And Asa Reid wrote
back saying, whoa, we don't want to do it that
way because we don't want to give the soldiers something
they need. We want to give them something they want.
(11:26):
That is, the army owes uniforms, including shirts, to its soldiers.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And so it's your.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Job, George Washington, she was saying as tactfully as she could.
He was a very intimidating guy. Even then, it's your
job to provide the clothing for the soldiers. So we
don't want to give them something they're supposed to be
getting anyway. We want to give them something nice. Well,
George Washington wrote back, saying shirts. It should really be shirts.
(11:54):
So she did give in and said, okay, we'll make
the shirts one of the things. That just what was
Yet she gave in on the shirts, but she didn't
give in on another matter, and that involves knowing that
Pennsylvania politics was very divided. It wasn't Republicans Democrats. Then
it was Republicans and constitutionalists and a very different Republican
(12:17):
party from the one we have today. Those were her
husband's enemy he was a member of the Constitutionalist Party. Anyway,
Washington had said, Hey, I want you to buy cloth
with this money, but I want you to put the
money in this new bank, a private bank started by
a bunch of these Republican politicians in Pennsylvania. And she
(12:39):
wrote back basically saying, but you know, this thing was
started by my husband's enemies, and if I put the
money in there, they're going to give me bank notes
in returns sort of IOUs, and that money will be
worth less than the money that I put in, and
that's going to hurt my cause. And so she stood
up to George Weshton. She said, no, that makes her
a very rare person. You know, she was only thirty
(13:05):
three years old standing up to George Washington. And ladies
were not supposed to do that. But they collect all
this money, they spent it on cloth and then did
comply with what Washington desired about the shirts.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And the women ended up making.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Two thousand shirts to give to Continental soldiers. And one
of the fun little flourishes is that each woman sewed
her name into the back of the shirt, so the
soldier would know that there was one particular woman who
had done this for him. And again, her whole point
was to show that they were remembered.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
The saddest part.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Of this story comes on September eighteenth, seventeen eighty, when
they were right in the middle of sewing these shirts,
and when she suddenly came down with attack of dysentery
and died on September eighteenth of seventeen eighty at the
age of only thirty three. The campaign continued without her.
(14:08):
One of the things to say about Esther Reed's death
is that generally, when women died in those days, if
they were famous like her, she's the wife of the
highest official in the state, they'll put an obituary, but
they're always very general and really interchangeable. Oh, she was
wonderful wife, wonderful mother, but nothing specific about them. But
(14:30):
when she died they did do the generic obituary, but
then they also specifically talked about this amazing effort that
she had done on behalf of the soldiers, And in fact,
the newspaper speculated that one reason for her death was
imposing on herself too great a part of the task,
(14:52):
like seven thousand soldiers who died of British bullets and
another twenty thousand soldiers who died of disease during the war.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
In a sense, she had given her life for the cause.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
As I said, the effort continued, and it's a good
thing it did, too, because on January first, seventeen eighty one,
just a couple months after she died, there was a
mutiny among the Pennsylvania soldiers of the Continental Army. Over
all these issues like not getting their pay and not
getting proper clothing and food that had been promised to them,
(15:26):
and they actually marched towards Philadelphia. Or most interesting they
did to appease the soldiers was they gave each of
them a shirt, and so many of these mutinying soldiers
were was brought back to being a loyal soldier again
by being given one of these shirts that Esther, Reid
(15:49):
and these other women had produced. So that's one thing
that happened after her death. Another thing is that Thomas
Jefferson wrote one of his most famous letters. He of
course is most famous for writing the Declaration of Independence,
but he's also coined some of the best known phrases
(16:09):
that we use when we talk about the American Revolution today.
So one of those was Empire of liberty. He was
the first person to describe the United States as an
empire of liberty. And it's an interesting expression because we
don't always associate liberty with empire. But he was hoping
(16:29):
that the United States could become an empire of liberty.
But you might remember that when I was talking about
the essay that ester Reid wrote in June of seventeen
eighty called Sentiments of an American Woman. In that essay,
she became the first person to use the phrase empire
(16:49):
of liberty for anything other than as.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
A word as a phrase for heaven.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And she sent that essay to Martha Jefferson, the wife
of Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia. So I can't
prove this, but I'm pretty sure that Thomas Jefferson got
that phrase empire of liberty not out of his amazingly
creative brain, but he borrowed that idea from the late
(17:16):
Esther Reid.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And a terrific job on the production by Faith Buchanan
and a special thanks to Professor Woody Houlton, Professor at
the University of South Carolina, and his book Liberty Is Sweet,
The Hidden history of the American Revolution and by the way,
the role women played. We talk a lot about that
here on the show and will continue to do so.
American women were born for liberty. Esther Reid said those
(17:45):
words would make it to Jefferson's pen and change the world.
The story of Esther Reid here on our American Story.
This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories.
They show where America is the star and the American people.
And to find and search for the Our American Stories podcast,
go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Today we have the story of Esther Reid, a woman
whom during the Revolutionary War went to great lengths to
(00:32):
support the Continental Army. Professor Woody Holton of the University
of South Carolina will be sharing with us her story.
Here's Professor Holton.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
One of my favorite discoveries researching a book on the
Revolution was Esther Reid, the woman who stood up to
George Washington and she died. Was plagiarized by Thomas Jefferson,
but in a good way. She was born in Britain
in seventeen forty six, and when she was in her
(01:11):
early twenties, she met a young man who was in
Britain for a legal education. His name was Joseph Reed
and he was from America and they two fell in love.
The two of them married and they moved back to
America together in seventeen seventy It's one of the amazing
(01:32):
things about Esther Reid is just four years after moving
to America. We have the First Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia,
and a bunch of the delegates had dinnered with Esther
and Joseph Reed, and one of them pronounced her a
daughter of liberty. That is, she had already become a solid,
(01:53):
enthusiastic patriot for the American cause, even though she'd only
lived in America for four years. Her husband, Joseph, was
also a great patriot. He became a secretary to George
Washington and then Adjutant General in the Continental Army. But
that's also what got Joseph in trouble, because in seventeen
(02:13):
seventy six, George Washington, as commander in chief, made a mistake.
He should have evacuated a fort called Fort Washington on
the Hudson River in what's now New York City, and
Washington didn't, and the fort was captured with six thousand
men in it. Reid wrote a letter criticizing his commander
(02:37):
in chief, George Washington, and to his great chagrin, George
Washington accidentally, on purpose opened this letter and saw that
his protege, Joseph Reid was criticizing him, and it really
put a real Paul in their relationship, they continued to
(02:59):
work together Washington and Joseph Reed. In seventeen seventy nine,
Joseph Reed became the President of Pennsylvania. That was the
highest office in this new state of Pennsylvania during the
American Revolution. But I want to take it to the
spring of seventeen eighty, which was the real low point
(03:23):
of the Revolutionary War near where I live down in Charleston,
South Carolina. The British captured not only the town of Charleston,
but of six thousand nin Continental Army. And there were
problems internal to America too. The soldiers hadn't been paid,
and they weren't getting their the required amount of food
(03:47):
or proper uniforms, and so, as George Washington put it,
there was a mutiny.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
And dissension throughout the army.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
I mean, one of the most amazing incidents of desertion
was a bunch of Continental soldiers here they are fighting
for liberty that they just had enough, and so they
mass deserted and were going to This was an upstate
New York and they were going to go to a
British fort up New York, Canada and dessert to the
other side. And their commanding officer had to resort to
(04:20):
sending Oneida.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
Indians, they're one of the six nations of.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
The Iroquois, to go capture these Americans who had tried
to desert to the British, and the Unitas did catch
up with them and killed thirteen of them. Some escaped,
some were brought back to face justice. It was dark days,
(04:44):
and once it was literally dark days, because there was
a weird thing that happened in the heavens in May
of seventeen eighty.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
In the middle of the day, the sky went dark.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
And people knew from their almanacs w there was going
to be in the clips and this was not in
the clipse. It just suddenly went dark, and the whipper
wheels sounded, and the cocks crowed and all that, and
many people believe, oh my god, we're having darkness in
the middle of the day. This is the end of
the world. It sort of made sense, given how bad
things were going for the Patriot side. It eventually went away,
(05:22):
and historian to think that what really had happened was
forest fires up in Maine had put so much smoke
into the air that it blackened the sky farther south.
It really sort of symbolizes that these were dark days
for the Americans.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
And this is where as to Reed becomes part of
the story.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
She wanted to do something to improve the morale of
the soldiers that were already enlisted, and so she came
up with this idea of getting the women of Philadelphia
to go door to door and raise money and then
divide it up among the troops as a special gift
(06:04):
among the soldiers, and just as a way of telling
them that they had not been forgotten. That was her
great fear was that, you know, and this happens a
lot in our country now as well as other countries.
People who are not having to go fight the war
forget about the troops. And she really wanted them to
know that they were remembered. But she had a problem
(06:25):
in organizing this effort, and that was that women in
those days, or at least ladies in those days, weren't
supposed to go out knocking on strangers' doors. They really
weren't supposed to be in the street alone.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
And you've been listening to Woody Holton of the University
of South Carolina share with us the story of Esther Reid,
and he's setting the table and people who think we're
facing hard times today just don't understand what hard times
were and how what our troops were going through. Well,
we could have lost it, they could have just left.
And efforts like this from S. The Reid changed the game,
(07:05):
changed the calculus, the morale of the troops. Think about it,
they weren't paid and indeed they were deserting in mass.
When we come back, more of this remarkable story of S.
The Reed, the story of the founding of our country
and our first war and our first Civil War. Here
on our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories
(07:32):
we tell about this great country, and especially the stories
of America's rich past, know that all of our stories
about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith,
are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College,
a place where students study all the things that are
beautiful in life and all the things that are good
in life. And if you can't cut to Hillsdale, Hillsdale
(07:53):
will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to Hillsdale dot edu to learn more. And we
continue with our American Stories. We've been listening to Professor
(08:13):
Woody Houlton of the University of South Carolina share with
us the story of Esther Reid. Esther was born British
but moved to America after marrying her Patriot husband, Joseph Reed,
who would, by the way, become the President of Pennsylvania.
The Patriots had experienced some devastating losses in the war,
and Esther had begun to worry about the morale of
(08:35):
our troops, so she decided to raise money for them,
and was encouraging other women to do the same. Back
again as women back when women did not knock on doors,
let's return to Woody.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
She had to sell them on the idea of doing this,
so she published this extraordinary thing in the newspaper called
Sentiments of an American Lady, where she made the case
that American women, just like American men, were born for liberty.
And she also cited examples of role models, you could say,
(09:15):
of women in history who had stepped out and made
serious changes. And she mentioned, for instance, Elizabeth who was
one of the most powerful monarchs that England had ever had,
the example of Catherine the Great of Russia, another powerful woman.
And she used an interesting expression in her essays to
(09:36):
Reed did to describe what Catherine the Great and what
Elizabeth the First had done, and that was she said,
they had extended the Empire of liberty. She, as to Reid,
was the first person ever to use that phrase empire
of liberty for an earthly matter. That is, people had
(09:58):
used empire of liberty as a euphemism expression for heaven.
So she published this essay and got a lot of
other women involved. They had a committee of thirty nine,
that is, three representing each of the thirteen states, and
they raised a ton of money. Everything's going pretty well
with the fundraising until Esther Reed wrote Commander in Chief
(10:23):
George Washington, saying, Okay, we've raised all this money. We
need to figure out the practical matter. Reductive involved Martha
Washington in distributing the money to the troops, and George
Washington wrote back saying, hold on, I know, my men.
These are mostly guys in their twenties, some younger than that,
(10:44):
and if you give them cash money, they're going to
go out and blow it on liquor. And so not
only will they not have anything of value for that,
but I'll have a drunken army to confront the British
with and so I don't want direct of cash to
the soldiers. Here's what I want you to do instead.
I want you to go out and buy a bunch
(11:05):
of cloth, linen cloth, and you women use that cloth
to sew shirts for the soldiers. And Asa Reid wrote
back saying, whoa, we don't want to do it that
way because we don't want to give the soldiers something
they need. We want to give them something they want.
(11:26):
That is, the army owes uniforms, including shirts, to its soldiers.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
And so it's your.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Job, George Washington, she was saying as tactfully as she could.
He was a very intimidating guy. Even then, it's your
job to provide the clothing for the soldiers. So we
don't want to give them something they're supposed to be
getting anyway. We want to give them something nice. Well,
George Washington wrote back, saying shirts. It should really be shirts.
(11:54):
So she did give in and said, okay, we'll make
the shirts one of the things. That just what was
Yet she gave in on the shirts, but she didn't
give in on another matter, and that involves knowing that
Pennsylvania politics was very divided. It wasn't Republicans Democrats. Then
it was Republicans and constitutionalists and a very different Republican
(12:17):
party from the one we have today. Those were her
husband's enemy he was a member of the Constitutionalist Party. Anyway,
Washington had said, Hey, I want you to buy cloth
with this money, but I want you to put the
money in this new bank, a private bank started by
a bunch of these Republican politicians in Pennsylvania. And she
(12:39):
wrote back basically saying, but you know, this thing was
started by my husband's enemies, and if I put the
money in there, they're going to give me bank notes
in returns sort of IOUs, and that money will be
worth less than the money that I put in, and
that's going to hurt my cause. And so she stood
up to George Weshton. She said, no, that makes her
a very rare person. You know, she was only thirty
(13:05):
three years old standing up to George Washington. And ladies
were not supposed to do that. But they collect all
this money, they spent it on cloth and then did
comply with what Washington desired about the shirts.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
And the women ended up making.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Two thousand shirts to give to Continental soldiers. And one
of the fun little flourishes is that each woman sewed
her name into the back of the shirt, so the
soldier would know that there was one particular woman who
had done this for him. And again, her whole point
was to show that they were remembered.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
The saddest part.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Of this story comes on September eighteenth, seventeen eighty, when
they were right in the middle of sewing these shirts,
and when she suddenly came down with attack of dysentery
and died on September eighteenth of seventeen eighty at the
age of only thirty three. The campaign continued without her.
(14:08):
One of the things to say about Esther Reed's death
is that generally, when women died in those days, if
they were famous like her, she's the wife of the
highest official in the state, they'll put an obituary, but
they're always very general and really interchangeable. Oh, she was
wonderful wife, wonderful mother, but nothing specific about them. But
(14:30):
when she died they did do the generic obituary, but
then they also specifically talked about this amazing effort that
she had done on behalf of the soldiers, And in fact,
the newspaper speculated that one reason for her death was
imposing on herself too great a part of the task,
(14:52):
like seven thousand soldiers who died of British bullets and
another twenty thousand soldiers who died of disease during the war.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
In a sense, she had given her life for the cause.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
As I said, the effort continued, and it's a good
thing it did, too, because on January first, seventeen eighty one,
just a couple months after she died, there was a
mutiny among the Pennsylvania soldiers of the Continental Army. Over
all these issues like not getting their pay and not
getting proper clothing and food that had been promised to them,
(15:26):
and they actually marched towards Philadelphia. Or most interesting they
did to appease the soldiers was they gave each of
them a shirt, and so many of these mutinying soldiers
were was brought back to being a loyal soldier again
by being given one of these shirts that Esther, Reid
(15:49):
and these other women had produced. So that's one thing
that happened after her death. Another thing is that Thomas
Jefferson wrote one of his most famous letters. He of
course is most famous for writing the Declaration of Independence,
but he's also coined some of the best known phrases
(16:09):
that we use when we talk about the American Revolution today.
So one of those was Empire of liberty. He was
the first person to describe the United States as an
empire of liberty. And it's an interesting expression because we
don't always associate liberty with empire. But he was hoping
(16:29):
that the United States could become an empire of liberty.
But you might remember that when I was talking about
the essay that ester Reid wrote in June of seventeen
eighty called Sentiments of an American Woman. In that essay,
she became the first person to use the phrase empire
(16:49):
of liberty for anything other than as.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
A word as a phrase for heaven.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
And she sent that essay to Martha Jefferson, the wife
of Thomas Jefferson, the governor of Virginia. So I can't
prove this, but I'm pretty sure that Thomas Jefferson got
that phrase empire of liberty not out of his amazingly
creative brain, but he borrowed that idea from the late
(17:16):
Esther Reid.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
And a terrific job on the production by Faith Buchanan
and a special thanks to Professor Woody Houlton, Professor at
the University of South Carolina, and his book Liberty Is Sweet,
The Hidden history of the American Revolution and by the way,
the role women played. We talk a lot about that
here on the show and will continue to do so.
American women were born for liberty. Esther Reid said those
(17:45):
words would make it to Jefferson's pen and change the world.
The story of Esther Reid here on our American Story.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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