DID Ep 5 - The Lost Republic

For 74 days in 1810, there was a country on the Gulf Coast that most Americans have never heard of.

It had a flag, a government, a governor, and a claim to territory stretching from modern-day Louisiana toward Mobile Bay and the Perdido River. Then, almost as quickly as it appeared, it vanished.

In this episode of Dauphin Island Diaries, we explore the story of the Republic of West Florida, a short-lived nation born from the collision of Spanish colonial rule, American expansion, frontier settlement, and international intrigue during the age of Napoleon.

Along the way, we'll visit:

• Spanish West Florida and its disputed boundaries
• The Louisiana Purchase and competing territorial claims
• The Federal Road and Fort Stoddert
• Reuben Kemper and the early filibuster movements
• The capture of Fort San Carlos at Baton Rouge
• Governor Fulwar Skipwith and the Republic of West Florida
• Mobile Bay's place in the struggle for control of the Gulf Coast
• The annexation of West Florida by the United States

We'll also examine the roles played by James Madison, William Claiborne, Harry Toulmin, James Wilkinson, and others whose decisions helped shape the future of the Gulf Coast.

Though the Republic of West Florida existed for only 74 days, the events surrounding its rise and fall helped determine the future of modern Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.

Sources

Research for this episode was drawn primarily from:

• The Rogue Republic: How Would-Be Patriots Waged the Shortest Revolution in American History by William C. Davis
• Fort Stoddert: American Sentinel on the Mobile River, 1799-1814 by Mike Bunn and Susie Hartman

Additional information was drawn from:

• Alabama Encyclopedia
• Dictionary.com
• Historical reference materials used for fact-checking and chronology

Special thanks to historian Mike Bunn for insights shared during an interview conducted on June 9, 2026, which provided additional context for several aspects of this story.

🎙️ Credits

Hosted by Big John Summers

Produced by Summers Media Enterprises

Foley/Sound effects recorded by Big John Summers

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to Dolphin Island Diaries. This is a podcast dedicated to the history of Dolphin Island, Mobile Bay, and the Gulf Coast that surrounds it. Twice each month we bring you a story about the people, the places, and the moments that have shaped this island, and the waters and coastline beyond it. Some of these stories are well known. Others have been buried by time and storms and shifting shorelines. But they're still here. So wherever you are, whether you're on the island, remembering it or discovering it for the first time, find a comfortable place, take a deep breath, relax, and settle in. Because this is one of those stories. The early American settlers were always looking westward. For those who arrived on the east coast and then began driving into the hinterland, it was the Appalachians that beckoned. For those who made it as far as the western slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, it was the vast plateaus and river valleys beyond that that called. And then the Mississippi, and then the Great Plains, and so on until the Pacific shone in front of them. That's very oversimplified, of course, but not necessarily inaccurate, nevertheless. But from the perspective of the white settlers, there was a wilderness to be tamed. There were tremendous opportunities, business, agricultural, and even political. There were just a few really significant problems, problems that were sometimes ignored until they couldn't be ignored any further. And often those problems were those who considered themselves the rightful owners. Ever since Christopher Columbus started making trips to the Americas in the late 15th century, the major European powers of the time had been planting flags all over the hemisphere and claiming vast swathes of land for their own crowns. Spain, France, Portugal, Holland, Great Britain. It mattered little that these lands were not unoccupied. Might makes right, and those tribes were just wasting most of that land anyway, in the minds of those who planted the flags. In fact, the first of those major powers really to colonize what they called, quote, the New World, end quote, Spain, saw the natives more as one, peoples to be conquered, two, peoples to be forced to Catholicism, and three, peoples to force to become their labor force. When those people died in droves due to disease and a lack of adaptability to the forced labor practices of their conquerors, Spain, and the other European powers as well, they began importing people from a different continent, Africa, to work in those mines and on those plantations. So by the time the United States had won her independence, a number of things were undoubtedly true. First of all, forced African labor was fully ensconced on the North American continent. Secondly, the Native American tribes' claims to their ancestral homelands were, for all intents and purposes, going to be ignored by white settlers as much as they could be. Thirdly, three European powers had risen to the top of the food chain in terms of colonial powers in North America, Spain, France, and Great Britain. And fourthly, the United States had won her independence and was working to consolidate that, and it wasn't satisfied with where things were at that point. It was going to grow. And it was going to compete with those European powers to the extent that it possibly could. Now, it'd be years before the term manifest destiny would be coined to describe that Westward expansionist policy and philosophy of the young United States. But anyone now looking back can clearly see that at the dawn of the 19th century, that it was already feeling that way in the United States. That was already the feeling and philosophy of the United States, even if they didn't yet have that term to define their intentions. And to be fair, this trend had already established itself before there even was a United States. On the western slopes of the Appalachians, in what would in time become the state of Tennessee, a group of settlers created their own independent government in the Watauga Association for a time before it would be absorbed by North Carolina, right about the time the American Revolution was cranking up. A decade later, it would reappear in another form as the state of Franklin in the same place. And this is relevant to our story because Spain already looked at the Westward expansionism of the U.S. with distrust. And they briefly negotiated with state of Franklin governor John Severe with an eye toward Franklin becoming a buffer against that Westward U.S. expansionism. And let me pause here for just a moment to put in a shameless plug for the sister podcast, The Tennessee History Nerd. This week's episode, episode 14, The Failed Republic, focuses specifically on the state of Franklin. You can find that episode wherever you're listening to this one. But for our purposes today, by early 1789, Franklin was a memory, and the people still kept coming. As the 19th century dawned, Spain held Florida, but not just the area we think today of Florida. That was East Florida. West Florida extended from the Perdito River all the way across to what is today Eastern Louisiana. That meant that much of what is today coastal Alabama and Mississippi was not American territory at all. It was Spanish territory. And the French, once again, were in Louisiana from an ownership standpoint, anyway. They'd lost that land in the Seven Years' War when they ceded those lands to the Spanish who had sided with them against the British. And then after the success of the U.S. Revolution inspired the French to rise up against their monarchy, and then that revolt devolved into anarchy. An ambitious and opportunistic Corsican corporal by the name of Bonaparte consolidated power, declared himself emperor, and set about conquering everything he could lay his hands on. Along the way, in 1800, he did some horse trading and swapped Spain, some of the territories in Tuscany that he'd conquered for the Louisiana territories in North America. Akin to a compulsive gambler, he was thinking of how he would expand the French Empire, and then reality hit. First, there was a slave revolt underway in Haiti that wasn't going well for the French. In fact, it would eventually result in France losing Haiti altogether. And it would be established as a slave-free nation in 1804 by those former slaves who not only had won their freedom, they won their independence. Secondly, war is expensive. France's treasury had already been pretty well wiped out by supporting the American colonies in the American Revolution. And this was, in part, one of the drivers of the French Revolution. And Napoleon's own desire for conquest drove this as well. He had famously noted an army marches on its stomach. And feeding an entire army for only one day is costly. Doing so for entire campaigns is exorbitantly expensive. So in 1803, he sold his Louisiana territory to the United States. It was a win-win situation for both of these nations. France got $15 million that Napoleon Bonaparte desperately needed for bankrolling his war machine, and the U.S. doubled its territory overnight. The interesting thing is that this had been in Spanish hands and administered by Spain by way of their government in Havana, Cuba, since effectively the end of the Seven Years' War, what we in the United States call the French and Indian War. And the transfer from Spanish to French oversight was by no means complete by the point that Napoleon sold the Louisiana territory to the United States. So even though the legal ownership was passing from French to American hands, in a large sense, its true administration was passing from Spanish hands to American hands. Meanwhile, at the turn of the century, Georgia still claimed to own everything from the East Coast to the Mississippi River, south to the Spanish border and north to the border with North Carolina and the new state of Tennessee. And then a massive land fraud scandal involving essentially the entire government of the state of Georgia called the Yazoo Land Scandal began in the mid-1790s and resulted in Georgia's cession of their western lands to the United States government in 1802. And that created the Mississippi Territory from those lands. And in 1799, Major Andrew Ellicott surveyed the southern border of the United States, the 31st parallel. This line, known as the Ellicott Line, stretched from the Atlantic coast all the way to the Mississippi, and it marked the frontier between U.S. territory and Spanish territory. It still matters today for a significant stretch because the modern border between Florida and Georgia, which was ultimately agreed upon in the 1860s, is only just a few feet from Andrew Ellicott's original line. By 1810, Spain and all of Europe really was distracted in dealing with the conquest-minded French Empire. In 1808, Napoleon forced the Spanish monarch Charles IV and his son Ferdinand VII to abdicate, and he installed his own brother as the new king of Spain. And in 1805, the U.S. established a post road called the Federal Road, which ran from Milledgeville, Georgia to Fort Stoddart. Now, Fort Stoddart doesn't exist today. You can't go visit it today. But it was located just above the Ellicott line on the Mobile River, near modern-day Mount Vernon, Alabama. And at first, this road was only four feet wide and it was poorly maintained. But its intent was to provide a line of communication from the U.S. to its distant frontier during a time when those lines of communication were anything but efficient. By the end of the first decade of the 1800s, this road was in the process of being widened to 16 feet to facilitate the movement of Army troops and wagons as the rapid, by early 19th century standards, deployment of U.S. Army forces to defend the frontier might be necessary. But the same road that was wide enough for Army wagons was also wide enough for civilian wagons as settlers poured into the new territory and across the border into Spanish West Florida. And Spain's trouble with the Bonaparte meant that the things going on in the North American colonies on the Gulf of Mexico would have to be dealt with more or less locally. And by this point, friction was beginning to develop between Spain and the American settlers moving into the area. First, many of those settlers weren't necessarily all that particular as to whether they moved into areas that were held by Spain or held by the United States. And many were fine with the Spanish oversight of their areas. Spain was issuing grants even to American settlers in the area, and they tended overall to be fairly lenient, sometimes even lax in their administration. This was a two-edged sword, though, because even though it promoted growth, sometimes that growth was from people who were less inclined to be good citizens and more inclined toward independence. Additionally, one area that Spain was not as lax or lenient, they were generally quite assertive in their collection of duties on goods that passed through their ports. And at one point, they held the access to all the rivers that led from the Gulf into the hinterland. So agricultural products being produced in the American territory of Mississippi had to pass through Spanish-controlled lands, whether they went down the Mississippi, the Mobile, the Tinsaw, the Pascagoula, the Perdido, or any other of the several rivers that fed into the Gulf of Mexico. And sometimes those duties were quite steep, effectively erasing any profit that a shipper might have expected to earn on the sale of those goods. And sometimes those duties were quite steep, effectively erasing any profit that a shipper might have expected to have earned on the sale of those goods. And there was a very real perception from a lot of people in the United States and their Western territories that the area that was then becoming known as the Southwest, the areas in modern day Louisiana, southern Mississippi, and southern Alabama, were that they were areas of very real opportunity. One of those people was a man by the name of Reuben Kemper. Kemper was a young killboat man from near modern-day Cincinnati, Ohio. He was hired by a man by the name of John Smith. Now, Smith was a Baptist preacher, but also was a merchant in the Northwest Territory in the area of modern day Ohio. He saw opportunity to profit in the area on the lower Mississippi, both in land speculation and in the sale of merchandise. And he ultimately decided that Kemper was the man to lead such an enterprise for him in the area of Baton Rouge. As noted by author William C. Davis in his book The Rogue Republic, quote, merchants in New Orleans faced considerable pains in getting goods the 100 miles upstream to Baton Rouge. But a barge coming from Cincinnati could let the current do the work and cover 60 miles or more in a day. With Napoleon at war with almost everyone, European goods bound for New Orleans and upriver markets often fell prey to the privateers of several nations. That shortage could work to the advantage of a resourceful merchant like Smith. End quote. And so this is how Reuben Kemper and ultimately his brothers Nathan and Samuel ended up in this area, settling for a time in a place called Bayucera, which was below the Ellicott line in Spanish territory. And that's an important distinction because we don't think about a border with another nation, especially a European nation, in that area today at all. But in the early 1800s, it was the reality that the Elicot line was the line of demarcation with U.S. territory to the north and Spanish territory to the south. Even today in Alabama, near Mobile, where that Elicot line stood is the Ellicott Rock. You can still go visit that today. Now, Ruben Kemper is going to be a fairly notable person in the road to the Republic of West Florida becoming a reality. So to provide some additional context on how that came to be, Smith decided to make Ruben Kemper his business partner. Kemper enlisted the help of his brothers and they settled in Bay Ucera, but they weren't doing particularly well with the business. And Smith, whose plans had been to use the profits of the venture to fuel his political ambitions in the Northwest Territory, and he was accustomed to 100% profits on his previous ventures, he became disillusioned with the lack of progress being made by the Kempers and providing those profits to him that he'd anticipated. And so he ended up dissolving the partnership and attempting to recoup his investments. As you might expect, this didn't go over especially well with the Kempers. Smith's use of the Spanish legal system to try to gain satisfaction from the Kempers led them basically to declare a personal vendetta on both Smith and the Spanish government. And so the Kempers became what were known as filibusters. Now, today we mostly think of a filibuster as a tactic used in the U.S. Senate to delay or prevent the passage of a measure in that House by taking the floor and refusing to yield it. Some speakers in the past have exercised this tactic by doing crazy things like reading a phone book. But basically, it's intentionally not speaking on any matter of substance necessarily, but holding the floor and refusing to yield it for an actual vote. A filibuster in the sense that we're talking about here, though, with the Kempers, would be defined as something like an irregular military adventurer, especially one who engages in an unauthorized military expedition into a foreign country to foment or support a revolution. That's the dictionary.com definition of the term filibuster that applies to this set of circumstances. And that's exactly what the Kempers sought to do in 1804 and those who joined them, even creating a kind of declaration of independence that borrowed heavily from Thomas Jefferson's language in the 1776 United States Declaration of Independence. But even though the Kempers were able to recruit a number of malcontents in the area, their revolution failed. The Kempers and their friends were dissatisfied with Spanish rule of the area at this time, but many of the other American settlers weren't. And thus the general uprising that the Kempers presumed would happen failed to materialize. So for a time, the Kempers and their colleagues were persona non grata in the area. One simply does not attempt to foment a revolution in an area and not cause hard feelings from the government one is attempting to overthrow. But in time, things largely settle back down. Largely. But Smith continued to try to recoup his losses, and there continued to be contention between him and the Kempers. But what also happened is that life moved on, and it moved on in some very interesting ways. For one thing, Americans continued to move into the area. For another, Napoleon's peninsular campaign in Europe and his deposing of the Spanish monarchs and installing his own brother on the Spanish throne caused a ripple effect throughout the Spanish colonies. The Spanish imposition of duties on American goods passing from the American territory to the Gulf and vice versa also was causing serious abrasion. Even supplies being shipped to Fort Stoddart for the United States were being taxed. And this didn't sit well with the United States government. And then there came this realization regarding the Louisiana Purchase, or at least it was a perception, whether it was really legally correct or not, that since the boundary of the previous French possessions went westward from the Perdito River, all of the modern-day Alabama and Mississippi panhandles should have been included in the Louisiana Purchase. And that would have meant that the U.S. would own Mobile Bay, which would include all the Mobile Tensor Delta. It would include the mouth of the Pascagoula River, and it would include the entire Mississippi Delta. And Spain basically then said, not so fast, my friend. We never sold West Florida. France never possessed West Florida when it transferred Louisiana. The Louisiana purchase did not include West Florida. Therefore, this is still Spanish territory. And this is where the fact that the territory had never been fully transferred back into French hands after the secret. Third Treaty of San Ildefonso had occurred. And so, as the old saying goes, possession is nine-tenths of the law. And Spain possessed the land. But all these pressures and the continued settlement of the area with more and more American settlers and the removal of the generally popular Spanish district commandant Carlos de Granpre, though he was very much disliked by the Kempers, and then his replacement with the ineffective Charles de Halt de Lases was coming to a head. And so in 1810, settlers in the far western parishes of Spanish West Florida finally were ready, more generally than six years previously, with the Kempers, to rebel and create their own government. Many of the Americans resented De Lases and more importantly, some of his ministers and subordinates, and they began meeting. Throughout the summer of 1810, from June until September, three public conventions were held, as well as many secret private meetings. Out of those meetings came the ultimate rebellion that established the Republic of West Florida. Early on September 23rd, 1810, armed rebels stormed the fort at Baton Rouge, Fort San Carlos. Two Spanish soldiers were killed in the assault, and Delasis was captured in the assault. And then the flag of the Republic of West Florida was raised over the fort. Now, I want to take just a moment to talk about this flag because it's one of the few lasting legacies of the short-lived Republic of West Florida. It was a solid blue field with a single white star in its center. At least two other important flags drew inspiration from this flag. First, the Brunett flag that was the flag of the independent Republic of Texas was different from the Republic of West Florida flag in that the star on the Brunette flag was gold instead of white. But otherwise, it was the same. And the single white star on the Lone Star flag of Texas draws its inspiration directly from those earlier flags. Also, the Bonnie Blue flag used at various times by the Southern Confederacy was different from the Republic of West Florida's flag only in that it used a darker blue than that of the Republic of West Florida. Those who drove and led this secession of those parishes in West Florida immediately set about creating a legitimate government. They sent a declaration of independence to Spain. They elected Fulworth Skipwith as their governor. They created a bicameral legislature. They'd already organized a militia under Faleman Thomas, which is what took Fort San Carlos from the Spanish military. They showed every intention of acting and functioning as a legitimate independent nation state. And then Reuben Kemper showed up again. He'd been absent when things started going down and almost missed the revolution he tried to start six years earlier. But at this point, he recognized that there was a very real opportunity for West Florida to include Mobile and Mobile Bay as part of the new republic. And so he organized his force or gathered his mob, depending on which sources you check, and he headed east. He and his force camped out east of Mobile in the area around modern-day Bay Manette and waited. There was supposed to be an additional force joining him. Kemper was waiting for a force that never would arrive. The force under Sterling Dupree that Kemper presumed would be joining his force was instead using the confusion of the circumstances to raid and plunder the area around Pascagoula under the flag of the Republic of West Florida. And Kemper's men weren't doing a lot better. Now, they weren't raiding and plundering the way the Dupre's men were, but the Kemper camp where the men were bivouaced had basically turned into a drunken party. It was more like a college fraternity party than a real military camp. And over time, men began leaving and returning to their own lives until only a couple dozen men remained. And then Kemper was arrested in Fort Stoddard. He'd been arranging for arms and munitions to be procured for the attack on Mobile. Harry Toulman, the federal judge of eastern Mississippi, had Kemper arrested to prevent the attack on Mobile that he learned was Kemper's objective. And in doing so, he probably did Ruben Kemper a huge favor. The men of Kemper's camp were so preoccupied with their drunken revelry, no pickets or men on watch, that they were thus easily captured by the Spanish soldiers under Mobile Governor Vicente Fulch. But in the West Florida capital of St. Francisville, things were moving ahead with the formation of the West Floridian government and the inauguration of Governor Skipwith on November 29, 1810. And so for 74 days, the Republic of West Florida existed in what is now the toe of the boot in the state of Louisiana. And then it all came to an abrupt end. As noted previously, communications from the United States to this region and vice versa were notoriously slow. 74 days is really how long it took for the news of the revolt to reach Washington, D.C., for President James Madison to determine a response, and for that response to get back to U.S. forces under William Clayburn. Madison's proclamation of annexation was issued on October 27th, acting without authorization by Congress, but recognizing the urgency of the matter. When news reached Governor Skipwith, he was very bitter. He felt like the U.S. had abandoned the area and their right to possession. But the U.S. had been playing the long diplomatic game with Spain, asserting their right of possession of the area under the Louisiana Purchase, but choosing not to risk military action at that time with the Spanish Kingdom. The feeling had been that eventually Spain would relent. And this was the very reason for the actions that Judge Harry Toulman had taken against Reuben Kemper. He was concerned that if Kemper and his merry band of filibusters were permitted to do what they planned to do, it would create or could create an international incident that would endanger that situation for the U.S. with Spain. And the rebellion by West Florida also achieved what the U.S. wanted. Americans taking territory away from Spain without the U.S. government having to exert military power. Skipwith was bitter, but his government had done exactly what Madison and Jefferson before him had been hoping for. And so Skipwith's term as governor of the Republic of West Florida lasted less than a fortnight. On December 10th, 1810, the United States took possession of the territory encompassed by the former Republic of West Florida. The single star of the flag of the Republic of West Florida was lowered. The Stars and Stripes flag was raised in its place. And because the story of the Republic of West Florida as an existing entity is so short, the real narrative of it is in its prologue and its epilogue. Because what happened after was, in no small part, driven by what had happened in the time leading up to the formation of the Republic. And there are a great number of things that were interconnected. And there were also a large number of things that were happening in the area at the same time that we haven't talked about that certainly were of interest, but due to time constraints around the length of our episode, we're not able to include in our discussion. First of all, this area was a hotbed of intrigue in the early 1800s. Three major powers had a presence in the area either officially or unofficially. Of course, Spain was the primary one, but the French and the British were still around and interested in what happened in the area. And of course, the United States was there. There was also a secret society with which Aaron Burr was associated. Now, Burr was, of course, the vice president under Thomas Jefferson, and he had killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel. That had effectively ended any hope Burr had for any kind of continued political career in the United States. And so now he's looking for other opportunities on the frontier. General James Wilkinson, the most senior officer in the U.S. Army, had outed Burr, who was arrested by Edmund Pendleton Gaines for treason. By the way, he's the guy for whom Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island is named. Now, Burr was ultimately exonerated to Jefferson's disgust, but he was forced out of the public spotlight altogether after that. Just over two years after the U.S. annexed the Republic of West Florida, U.S. forces under General Wilkinson took Mobile and Mobile Bay from the Spanish during the War of 1812. The Spanish commander of Fort Carlota, which would be renamed Fort Conde, surrendered without a fight when he recognized that the U.S. had a vastly superior force. The irony of Wilkinson's outing of Burr and of his taking Mobile from Spain is that much later it was discovered that Wilkinson had been the infamous Agent 13. He'd been on the Spanish payroll for years as an intelligence resource inside the United States government. In fact, his outing of Burr was probably a move to protect himself. As a result of Wilkinson's taking of Mobile Bay, construction of Fort Ballier began on the east side of the mouth of the bay. It would be captured briefly by the British and would later be the site of a much more extensive fortification that would play a significant role in the Battle of Mobile Bay. And that would be called Fort Morgan. The events that led to the creation of the short-lived Republic of West Florida are fascinating, but quite frankly, they're far more complex than I've been able to share in this short time. It would be very easy to flatten this event to simply settlers moved into the Spanish-held area. They got enough settlers together to create a rebellion and revolted, and the United States annexed them. And that description is true, but it doesn't convey all that was going on at Fort Stoddart, at Natchez, at New Orleans, in Mobile, in Baton Rouge, etc. And why? The fact is there were at least two nations who wanted the territory and a third one that formed and wanted it too. But ultimately, it proved to be part of Manifest Destiny, even though it wasn't called that yet. And so that's going to do it for this episode of Dolphin Island Diaries, The Lost Republic. If you're interested, as we noted earlier, our sister podcast, the Tennessee History Nerd, talked in this week's episode about how another group of settlers attempted to create their own republic on the western slopes of the Appalachians in what is modern-day East Tennessee in the failed state. You can listen to that wherever you're listening right now. In our next episode, if all goes as planned, we're going to look at the history of the Sentinel at the mouth of the bay, that lone spire that we call the Sand Island Lighthouse. I hope you'll join us in two weeks as we visit that story when we again explore where memories intermingle with the sand, the waves, and the wind. Until then, I'm Big John Summers, and these are Dolphin Island Diaries. May you enjoy fair winds today and a beautiful Dolphin Island sunset. So, as is my custom, before we close out completely, I want to acknowledge where I got the information for this episode. First of all, unlike a lot of topics we've discussed already, there's not a vast variety of extensive resources on this topic. So this episode was researched primarily from William C. Davis's The Rogue Republic, how would-be patriots waged the shortest revolution in American history. And Mike Bunn and Susie Hartman's Fort Stoddart, American Sentinel on the Mobile River, 1799 to 1814. Additional information came from the Alabama Encyclopedia, Dictionary.com, and other historical reference sources used for fact-checking and chronology. I'd like also to thank historian Mike Bunn for insights shared during a personal interview on June 9, 2026, which helped to provide additional context for several aspects of this story. As I noted earlier, this time in history is far more complex than I was able to convey in this week's episode due to time constraints. My goal for each of these episodes is 30 to 45 minutes. The audio book for the Rogue Republic is almost 14 hours. The audio book for Fort Stoddart is just over four hours. So there is a lot more information on these events, the people that are involved in these events, and the narrative around all of that. And I encourage you to look into these resources as they present a much more complete rendering of the complexity and interdependence of the events of this period. I'm very thankful for these resources as well as others like them. And I couldn't do what I'd do without all the work and scholarship that they've already done before me. And as always, thanks so much for listening.