This week’s podcast opens with a grievance from the Declaration of Independence that rarely gets its share of attention. It sounds simple on the surface. The king tried to prevent the population of these states. Once you start looking at what that actually meant in 1776, the scene becomes far more vivid. It meant blocked land grants, stalled settlements, and a crown that wanted fewer colonists wandering past the Appalachians.

The conversation walks through the almost forgotten plan to create a fourteenth colony named Vandalia. It highlights how close it came to becoming a real place and how British policy crushed it before the first surveyor’s stake ever touched the ground.

The story reaches forward to West Virginia’s modern Vandalia Gathering and its liars contest, a reminder that traditions often grow from broken promises. The past has a long memory. This episode shows why that memory still matters today.