Elbridge Gerry Part Two is now available!
Feb. 26, 2023

4.17 - Unsettled Ground

4.17 - Unsettled Ground

Year(s) Discussed: 1807-1812

With changes happening in the nation's capital and abroad, the Madison administration worked as 1811 gave way to 1812 to navigate through new circumstances. In the House of Representatives, new leadership came to the forefront with an expansionist agenda. Around the same time, the nascent independence movements in Spanish America continued apace and Tecumseh traveled to the Gulf South to recruit nations there to join his confederacy. Unbeknownst to all of them, geologic tensions were building in a seismic zone along the Mississippi River. Sources used for this episode can be found at https://www.presidenciespodcast.com.

Special thanks to Alycia of Civics & Coffee and Roberto of the History of Saqartvelo Georgia and Tsar Power for providing the intro quotes for this episode, and thanks to Christian of Your Podcast Pal for his audio editing work on this episode!

The transcript for this episode can be found here.

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  • Hall, Kermit L, etc, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
  • Feldman, Jay. When the Mississippi Ran Backwards: Empire, Intrigue, Murder, and the New Madrid Earthquakes. New York: Free Press, 2005.
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  • Madison, James. “To Thomas Jefferson, 7 February 1812,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-04-02-0182. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 4, 5 November 1811–9 July 1812 and Supplement 5 March 1809 – 19 October 1811, ed. J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, Jewel L. Spangler, Ellen J. Barber, Martha J. King, Anne Mandeville Colony, and Susan Holbrook Perdue. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999, pp. 168–170.] [Last Accessed: 1 Jan 2023]
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  • Pinkney, William. “To James Madison, 8 December 1811,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-04-02-0063. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, Presidential Series, vol. 4, 5 November 1811–9 July 1812 and Supplement 5 March 1809 – 19 October 1811, ed. J. C. A. Stagg, Jeanne Kerr Cross, Jewel L. Spangler, Ellen J. Barber, Martha J. King, Anne Mandeville Colony, and Susan Holbrook Perdue. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1999, p. 54.] [Last Accessed: 30 Dec 2022]
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  • Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Louise and Aylmer Maude, trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 [1869].
  • Weir, Howard T., III. A Paradise of Blood: The Creek War of 1813-14. Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2016.

Featured Image: "Drawing of the New Madrid Earthquake" [c. pre-1852], courtesy of Wikipedia

Intro and Outro Music: Selections from “Jefferson and Liberty” as performed by The Itinerant Band