Include our Live Programming today. If you want to see more about the andersonville Historic National site and you missed our coverage, including coverage of the funeral ceremony, we will show it again tonight at 6 00 and 10 00 p. M. Eastern time on cspan 3 or you could see it online at www. Cspan. Org h istory. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2015] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] up next, Jo Ann Trogdon talks about William Clarks participation in possible treasonous activities before he went out with Meriwether Lewis to this court will explore the Louisiana Purchase. Jo ann im here to speak about the William Clark you may not know about. Most of you have seen the billboard showing the William Clark that we think we know. The billboard is two or three blocks away at the corner of the i70 overpass. Wall a mural on a brick and it is a large building, so it is quite a big mural. It shows lewis and clark and the lewis and clark expedition. I think that is the caption on it. It shows clark well, we think of him as stolid and sto ic and basically simple. I dont mean intellectually challenged, but just as an uncomplicated individual. I think that is the understanding we have all been handed down. Thought of the more complex of the two, we would probably vote for Meriwether Lewis who committed suicide in 1809. After you are familiar with what i have about 2 , you might vote for clark because until now, we have not known about him. I want to talk about how i came upon this information. I am a lawyer and i have done research into the history of st. Charles, which is my birthplace, too. 200te a book in 1991, years of faith a history of st. Charles parish. What i loved about that the chance i had researched the spanish archives because at that time, st. Charles was a, you know, years before the Louisiana Purchase it was part of the spanish empire. Of course, we dont think of it that way today. Throughe chance to look and to research the information and the spanish records of burials, marriages, and baptisms. I should not say spanish because they were written in french. That was the basis for my book about st. Charles. In doing so, i found there was a littleknown journal that was traceable back to the Spanish Government. 17981801, the Spanish Government, spain itself was trying to increase immigration west of the mississippi, and those who would emigrate west of the mississippi were mostly noncatholic, because that was the predominant population east of the mississippi. The Spanish Government for a few years relaxed the rules on marriages rather than force people who wanted to get married in their territory to convert to catholicism. They allowed them to agree that they would it raise her children catholic and a priest could marry them. Otherwise, they would not be married. During these years, someone named William Clark, with a great big signature like this, signed in this one register in st. Charles, the marriage register, he signed William Clark as a witness. I did not pay too much attention until one day after my book came out. A photographer from the postdispatch came by to photograph something 200 years old, the only thing we could come up with like the john hancock. These attentiongetting images were the signatures of William Clark for this book. This guy looked at me and said, is this the signature of the William Clark . And i spoke truthfully. Well, i dont know. [laughter] it had concerned people who were not members of the parish, because they were noncatholic. He said, well if it is the signature of the William Clark, you missed a big story. [laughter] i thought, well, maybe i did. I dont know. So the next thing i did was get to a library, the university of Missouri Library in st. Louis. I looked and looked. This was long before that was a biography of clark. A littlei could do was information i could find about the lewis and clark expedition, both of which said nothing about what William Clark was doing in 17981801. Finally i came upon a reference to a journal in columbia, missouri. William clarks original journal, the William Clark before he went on the expedition with lewis. Five years before that, in the year 1798, that William Clark had written about his travels. I called a copy of that and i realized it is the one whose that the one that signed the register in st. Charles was a different human clark. William clark. By the time i learned that come on this journal which was the exact years i was looking for, 17981801, for the future explore. It was about travel he took in those years. I will tell you a little bit about the journal itself. I will show you. This is the best i can do. This is so valuable and so revered that it is locked up in the state Historical Society of missouri in columbia. It has been there since 1928. It is really a little bit larger taller, butttle bit it opens like a steno pad. William clark used it like this. He started writing down here, went over the gutter and wrote on the next page. He started with a diary over the top and he kept ledger entries for his expenses at the back. In the middle, he drew a map of the city river. Im getting ahead of myself the mississippi river. Im getting ahead of myself. This is a photograph of clarks journal. It is marbled and it had a lot of pages he signed, probably because he knew he was going on a river trip. Every other page, blots. This journal was in the state Historical Society since 1928. But in 1923, its surfaced from who knows where. I dont know. I cant trace it back anymore before 1923. In that year, this journal and 4 im sorry, three others of clark and one of Meriwether Lewis were sold to a collector in st. Louis. The collectors name was William Clark breckenridge. No, he was not a descendent, he was not a relative of William Clark. But, he knew a bargain when he saw one. I still cant believe these prices. I am asking you to consider my goodness, what were they thinking . The 17981801 journal of William Clark, we can Clark Breckenridge bought for . 50. [crowd gasps] yeah. In that same transaction, he bought a similar size journal of William Clark which he wrote in 1809 and it has information in it about his reaction when he learned that Meriwether Lewis had apparently committed suicide, or that he was dead. Inestimable value. . 50 for that one. There were two others that clark wrote when he was a superintendent of indian affairs. . 25 for each of those. The kicker im saving the best for last Meriwether Lewis astronomy notebook. Guess how much that went for . A nickel. Jo ann five cents. Yes, it went for a nickel. What did William Clark breckenridge think . I think you judge them by what he paid for them. He thought the real gems of his collection were the civil war sheet music that he had collected and some scrapbooks of newspaper clippings. He did not value these five journals, four of clark and one of lewis. He was an elderly man and died a few years later. After his will had gone through probate, the state Historical Society bought these items. 1928. It was the year before the great depression, which led into world war ii, which led into decades of neglect because i guess there just was not enough money and interest to research them. 1960s, thethe National Union catalog of manuscript resources paid attention to them. It was a national publication. I think now it is online. For some rise in, they miss described the 17 night misas cribed the 1798 journal. It was not until a couple years ago that people paid attention to it. No one matched clarks journal entries with his ledger entries were checked other resources to find out what was going on. Well, what was really going on, as the title says, dubious pursuits. Dubious in the sense of what does this all at up to . Fraught with uncertainty is the definition, and that is the one i think is most apt here. I will break the dubious pursuits down into three. Bribery, smuggling, and involvement with conspirators. Highlyplaced americans who were working against the interests of the United States. There are three names to remember, and im writing these down because they are clarks journal. They are Samuel Montgomery brown, who is a career of illgotten gains, jed Benjamin Sebastian of the Kentucky Court of appeals, who lived not far from the clark family near louisville, and he was one of the principals in the spanish conspiracy, and the kingpin of the spanish conspiracy with general James Wilkinson, the highestranking officer in the u. S. Army and, in the words of the man who was his commander before he died, general Anthony Wayne, wilkinson was from the bark to the very core, a villain. [laughter] wayne also called him the worst of all bad men. He knew what he was dealing with. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough. My information comes from clarks own words in his journal. Notebook,l it the because that is how they refer to it in the state Historical Society. I have found corroboration for words in it in spanish archives. The reason i knew to look there is because i use them in my book about st. Charles, missouri. When i came up with questions, i thought, well, lets see what the spanish archives say. I was unprepared for what i found. I have a degree in spanish and lets see. I told you how i came upon clarks journal. Just trying to scare myself spare myself to embarrassment. In 1798, William Clark was a 27yearold veteran of the u. S. Army. He had served in the army for four years before that. Got now in 1796. Inhad stayed gotten out 1796. He had stayed a lieutenant the whole time. No distinction except for serving in the battle of fallen timbers. In 1794 he was trying to help the United States get control of the territory north of the ohio river. Clark route was in the military was in logistics prowess in the military was in logistics and a couple of secret missions to spanish territory. More about that in my book. Wrote his younger brother the youngest of the brothers was William Clark, edmund was the brother closest in age and i think they were close in heart, too. He wrote that he wished to get out of the army and start a business on the mississippi. He said, my wish is on the mississippi because i think there is a great opening for success there for a man with viable connections in new orleans, which was spanish territory. Williams two brothersinlaw with the head of spanish passports to do commerce there. He had their example as may be an inspiration for him, because i think every now and then they sent loads of tobacco and other products from kentucky down to spanish new orleans for sale. When people did that, when they had any transaction with new orleans, americans wanted their proceeds paid in pieces of eight. The United States back then was not able to produce its own paper or coined money. That would not come for several years afterwards. In 1798, the spanish silver dollar, the real. We call it the pieces of eight. That was the currency most in demand in the United States. In 1798,William Clark, gets out of the army, free at last, and he decided he would embark on this trip to spanish new orleans. He called it the small adventure of tobacco. He bought a couple of used flat boats, patch them up, caulked them, hired seven deckhands, and and they set down the river on march 7, 1798. He had the notebook. He began his diary entries right away. He wrote almost nothing about his cargo. I will get to that in just a minute. On the ohio river, things went well. He wrote in it every day, whether it was 10 words or so, with an average of 16 words as he worked down the river. Things went well on the ohio. He was able to ford at night. They did not have to pull over because the ohio lived up to its reputation as the best riviera. They got to mississippi and he had to pull over every night. He made rapid progress on the mississippi. He stopped at every american fort on the way. Fort messick in southern illinois. He stopped there, did a little business. It theped they called fort at chickasaw bluff. It is now in memphis. He stopped at a fort that they called walnut hill, but is now vicksburg. He entered spanish territory at new madrid. He had to show passport. He did the same at baton rouge. Finally, he got to new orleans thatril 24, and he noted in his journal. And then his entries in the diary just about stop. Would write things like wrote,r days, he huh. For 19 days, he wrote nothing extraordinary happened. Oh wait. He is selling cargo. He is making money. A extensive a blue, this was a Business Venture. Where is the information obst businessthis was a venture. Wheres the information about his product . He sold a hogshead of tobacco. A hogshead was a Standard Container for tobacco. If you are familiar with the 55 gallon drum, they put them out on the highways, the hogshead was probably more like the height of this podium. It would hold maybe 70 or 80 gallons. They were filled with tobacco. Clark said so little about his cargo. I thought, well, what was he doing . I thought, maybe i had better check the spanish archives. At least this was about money and the spanish treasury collected taxes on what clark did. I checked the spanish archives. , theretreasury record was one exhaustively detailed, several pages about here mo Guillermo Clark showing up on april 24, and right away he unloaded one of the flat boats. There were people with carts. He used their services and had them cart tobacco to the customhouse, where the tobacco was open, the hogshead were wait, and tobacco was inspected. All of this information is in the spanish archives, but not in clarks journal. I thought, why . Was this a Business Venture . My goodness. The tobacco in one treasury book having to do with export. I checked another treasury book having to do with sales make locally. My goodness, yes. Exhaustivequally description of furs. Clark had brought almost two tons of furs. Skins, ottereer and beaver pelts down the river, too. He made no mention in his journal about those things. I have no idea why. He also carried bacon and ham to sell. All of these things were appraised by officers in the Customs House and they figured out what they were worth. It was a lowball figure they came up with because spain was not trying to encourage was trying to encourage american commerce, so they did not want to tax americans too high. They set the duty at 6 . That came to 17. That was the duty that clark would owe. Points notebook at that he began writing, and i will review these entries that he makes. These are in his journal. He owes the Royal Treasury 17. 30. He writes, i gave eight pounds of bacon to the officers of the Customs House. He paid four dollars to be officers of the customhouse. He gave wine to eight inspectors. Total bribe to inspectors. And he repeated. Three dollars. It looks to me as though he was not paying his duty so much as he was riding the officers. Ribing the officers in charge it was a widespread practice. It was not just clark. Many other individuals engaged in that because it was the way to do business at the time. Said, i thought if this is a business trip, where our clark watch records about doing business . Im not sure. When it came to bribery, then i got interested in whether William Clark made a connection with the business agent of his brothers in law, they had a spanish passport to do business. Clark did not write anything of his name. This individual who was a business agent i hate to say it, but his name was daniel clark. It was another nonrelative of William Clark. Who,s an irish immigrant with his uncle of same name, again, daniel clark, uncle and nephew, not father and son, they had an extremely Successful International trading business in new orleans and they did business with, you know, the brothersinlaw of William Clark in louisville, they did business with people in the british islands, they did business with people in philadelphia and on the east coast. Daniel clark junior was a very wellversed in bribery. That was the secret to his success. , ofas also the master, too smuggling, of having money smuggled out of spanish new orleans. Bribery and smuggling were both contrary to spanish law. There were explicit laws against them. The spanish did not want their money going back to the United States. Of course, the goal of americans was to get legal tender they could use ins