from Spanish America, with the explicit recognition that they were kingdoms in their own right and not colonies of Spain. Elections were set to send delegates to Spain to participate in the Supreme Central Junta. Although in the Spanish Empire there was not an ongoing tradition of high level representative government, found in Britain and British North America, towns in Spain and New Spain had elected representative ruling bodies, the cabildos or ayuntamientos, which came to play an important political role when the legitimate Spanish monarch was ousted in 1808. The successful 1809 elections in Mexico City for delegates to be sent to Spain had some precedents. The Hidalgo revolt, 1810–1811 Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla is now considered the father of Mexican independence. His uprising on 16 September 1810 is considered the spark igniting the Mexican War of Independence. He inspired tens of thousands of ordinary men to follow him, but did not organize them into a disciplined fighting force or have a broad military strategy, but he did want to destroy the old order. Fellow insurgent leader and second in command, Ignacio Allende, said of Hidalgo, "Neither were his men amenable to discipline, nor was Hidalgo interested in regulations." Hidalgo issued a few important decrees in the later stage of the insurgency, but did not articulate a coherent set of goals much beyond his initial call to arms denouncing bad government. Only following Hidalgo's death in 1811 under the leadership of his former seminary student, Father José María Morelos, was a document created that made explicit the goals of the insurgency, the Sentimientos de la Nación ("Sentiments of the Nation") (1813). One clear point was political independence from Spain. Despite its having only a vague ideology, Hidalgo's movement demonstrated the massive discontent and power of Mexico's plebeians as an existential threat to the imperial regime. The government focused its resources on defeating Hidalgo's insurgents militarily and in tracking down and publicly executing its leadership. But by then the insurgency had spread beyond its original region and leadership. Hidalgo was a learned priest who knew multiple languages, had a significant library, and was friends with men who held Enlightenment views. He held the important position of rector of the Seminary of San Nicolás, but had run afoul of the Inquisition for unorthodox beliefs and speaking against the monarchy. He had already sired two daughters with Josefa Quintana. Following the death