 Mr. Wilkinson is once again part of a plot by former vice president Aaron Burr to try to rally up old American troops and organize military action against Spanish-controlled New Orleans with the explicit goal of creating, you know, a new government there with Aaron Burr at the head. And he brings in, you know, he talks to Andrew Jackson about it and William Henry Harris and lots of interesting characters. And it's actually Wilkinson who, at this point, I think Wilkinson was on the payroll of the Spanish, Native American tribes, the British, the American government, Burr's group. I mean, it's just fascinating. He was definitely billing maximally. But it's really still up to this point where there is still a lot of movement along these lines. And that kind of sets the stage for when we get this environment where, you know, the Louisiana Purchase comes to be. One of the other things I think is interesting is the historical framework that we're building off of here. What we're thinking about, you know, Napoleon is at, you know, at his peak within France, right? There is a lot of stuff that's happening in the global environment that is also playing a role here in setting up, you know, the Louisiana Purchase. And originally, you know, the Louisiana Purchase was not, you know, pushed by the Jefferson administration, but rather, as you outlined in the book, you know, part of, you know, initial diplomatic talks, you know, more broadly. Can you just talk about kind of the framework that gets us into the actual conversations of the purchase itself? Yeah, sure. So just to sort of speed through the American history, which we've been covering in prior episodes, obviously the U S constitution gets passed. And then in 1795, I believe there was Pickney's treaty, which basically allowed the United States to trade on the Mississippi River. This was done with a little bit of coercion in the sense that Spain was now fearful of after Jay's treaty of an alliance between Britain and the United States. So this is sort of, well, we're able to one, you know, once, once again, sort of use our might to threaten to get what we want. And of course this, I believe it was Robert Morris who noted that this would increase the land values in that area of which he held. So there you go. You got all of the crony interests there and by 1800. So around when, when, when Jefferson became president in 1801, there was a lot of sort of worldwide politics going on that, you know, tangentially would affect the United States. Notably Spain had secretly agreed to transfer its control of Louisiana to France. Okay. Now a couple of things, Louisiana back then did not just refer to the state of Louisiana, which we have now. Okay. New Orleans was the most important part of that. All right. Obviously it's a port city. It's at them. It's at the end of the Mississippi River. It's right on the Gulf, but Louisiana, the land stretched all the way up to basically Montana. So you can look at a map online and you can just see how large this area was. And so transferring it from Spain to France was obviously a major power play because the Spanish government was seen now as very decrepit. It was sort of holding onto a crumbling empire and it acquired, you know, in many, you know, hundreds of years ago, et cetera. Louisiana itself had bounced around in control and Spain says they're going to transfer it to France, provided that France helps them install some Spanish royalty into a various government in Europe. And France agrees never to transfer to Great Britain or the United States. Okay. So unfortunately for Spain, France basically said, no, we're not going to do that. The United States was worried when France had control of Louisiana because they said, all right, here is now a different animal than what we've dealt with with Spain. You've got Napoleon. He is currently, you know, riding high in Europe. Then there's a string of successes in the early 1800s. So clearly he had potential, but very quickly on Napoleon realized that it just wasn't feasible to have a French presence in North America, colonies, et cetera, especially when he had to deal with war in Europe and Great Britain. Okay. This Louisiana issue featured prominently in the United States politics at the time. Jefferson had initially wanted to just purchase New Orleans or at least get control of the Mississippi River, but then the entire land soon became available to him. And this was an enormous temptation.