Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Abergen.

This day, September 24th, 1810, the fort at Baton Rouge is under the control of a group of armed

settlers, the day before the fort, which was under the control of the Spanish had been attacked by a group led by a man named

Philamon Thomas a few days later after this attack after capturing some other force in the area the group declared themselves independent

Spanish flags came down flags with a white star on a field of blue were raised and the Republic

of West Florida was born it would die 47 days later but still it was a

breakaway republic right there on the Gulf Coast at a very interesting moment in

American history. So here to discuss as always is Nicole Hemmer of Columbia.

Hello, Nicky.

Hey Jody.

And our special guest for this episode

in the next episode as well,

Kristen Soltis Anderson, Polster at Echelon Insights,

author of The Selfy Vote. Thank you, author of the selfie vote.

Thank you, Kristen, for doing this.

Thank you for having me.

And you are, we should just get this out of the way.

You are a native of Florida, and do you want to go ahead

and point out that this technically did not happen in the Florida that we

know today. Well when I got your note saying hey we're going to do this episode

about the Republic of West Florida I was like how have I never learned about this?

...