The Glenn Beck Program - Mapping America’s Future： Lewis & Clark and the Louisiana Purchase ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 11

00:00:00.000 When you travel well, your KLM Royal Dutch Airlines ticket takes you to more than just your destination.

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00:00:10.360 and the realisation that neither of you is actually good with directions.

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00:00:20.400 our crew is here to give you a trip home that goes just as planned.

00:00:25.660 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. When you travel, travel well.

00:00:30.000 It is a sweltering August 9th in 1791, deep in the mountains of Saint-Domingue. 0.87

00:00:42.020 We now know that as Haiti.

00:00:44.200 The air is humming with the sound of cicadas and frogs and something else.

00:00:50.100 Whispers, hurried footsteps, the rustle of bodies moving through tall grass.

00:00:55.860 Tension coils in the atmosphere, just like it does right before a violent storm.

00:01:01.760 A small clearing opens up among the thick trees.

00:01:04.900 Torches flare.

00:01:06.260 Shadows jump against the tree trunks.

00:01:09.380 Dozens of men and women gather in a tight circle,

00:01:12.140 their faces streaked with sweat, eyes wide with fear and anticipation.

00:01:17.500 They're runaway slaves, and they have nothing to lose.

00:01:21.440 At the center stands a man, a priest of African voodoo tradition, a leader of this insurgency.

00:01:29.280 He chants incantations that echo through the trees. 0.86

00:01:32.760 Beside him, a priestess dances with hypnotic repetition.

00:01:37.000 Drums quicken, the rhythm builds, a black pig is dragged forward, a knife flashes, blood

00:01:42.980 spills out into the dirt as an offering to the spirits.

00:01:46.640 A cup catches the blood and is passed around.

00:01:51.440 One by one, the participants take a drink and make a vow of vengeance against their white oppressors. 0.58

00:01:58.800 There is no turning back now.

00:02:04.000 As later recorded by a French doctor, one of these runaway slaves recalled the words that were spoken that night.

00:02:10.200 The hour of vengeance is coming. 0.99

00:02:14.060 Tomorrow night, all the whites are to be exterminated. 1.00

00:02:18.360 No more delays. 1.00

00:02:20.180 No more fears.

00:02:21.440 The conspiracy extends everywhere, leaving the wights no refuge or hope of salvation. 0.68

00:02:29.340 All will meet the same fate. 1.00

00:02:31.680 And if some elude our blades, they will not escape the fire that is going to reduce the plane to ashes.

00:02:39.940 Just days later, the spark turns into an inferno.

00:02:47.020 Sugar fields become walls of flames.

00:02:49.900 night skies glow orange, armed bands surge from the hills, masters are dragged from beds,

00:02:56.140 whole families are slaughtered. Over the next month, 800 plantations burn to the ground.

00:03:03.100 More than a thousand French slaveholders and their families meet gruesome ends.

00:03:08.220 Hacked with machetes, impaled, sawed in half, the slaves rise up in a brutal frenzy of retribution

00:03:15.740 and blood. The most profitable colony on earth collapses in blood and smoke. This is the beginning

00:03:25.900 of the Haitian Revolution. It is the first and only successful slave revolt in history.

00:03:37.960 This bloody uprising on a Caribbean island doesn't just reshape Haiti somehow, improbably, 0.59

00:03:43.860 this night in the jungle, this blood oath, this explosion of violence and terror sets off a chain

00:03:50.860 reaction that leads to the greatest real estate bargain in world history. It's a land deal. It

00:03:57.640 will double the size of the United States and forever change the nation. A deal that sets the

00:04:03.460 stage for a new century of scientific discovery, commerce, innovation, heroes, villains, trauma,

00:04:10.600 and triumph, a deal that complicates the fragile American experiment in self-government.

00:04:20.020 This is the American story, The Beginnings, adapted from the book of the same title

00:04:26.560 by David Barton and Tim Barton. Episode 11, Lewis and Clark and the Louisiana Purchase.

00:04:34.500 In 1762, France claimed an enormous swath of North America

00:04:42.860 and named it Louisiana, in honor of King Louis XIV.

00:04:48.060 It was not a small colony.

00:04:49.760 It was an inland empire, about four times larger than France itself.

00:04:54.500 It stretched from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains,

00:04:58.120 from the Gulf of Mexico to the Cold Plains of the North.

00:05:02.280 Then, France lost the French and Indian War to the British.

00:05:06.440 France quietly handed Louisiana to its ally, Spain, to try to keep it out of British hands.

00:05:13.560 In the treaty that followed the war, Britain stripped France of all of its other mainland

00:05:17.880 possessions in North America. But France did not walk away empty-handed. They got to keep

00:05:23.640 their sugar islands in the Caribbean, colonies that were so profitable that they made the vast

00:05:29.160 forests and rivers of Louisiana seem like a bad investment by comparison. Britain basically

00:05:35.400 shrugged at Spain owning the Louisiana territory. Spain was a power in steep decline and really

00:05:41.940 wasn't considered a threat. For decades, Louisiana remained mostly wilderness. The one town that

00:05:48.380 mattered was New Orleans, a humid port at the mouth of the Mississippi River, a home to about

00:05:54.260 5,000 people, most of them French-speaking. It was the hub on the river highway that carried the

00:06:00.540 crops of America's western farmers to the sea. For years, under Spanish rule, Americans had

00:06:07.480 access to the Mississippi River. A 1795 treaty guaranteed the U.S. right to ship on the river

00:06:14.340 and store goods in New Orleans. But then the French Revolution rippled across the Atlantic.

00:06:20.440 The old alliance between the U.S. and France shattered.

00:06:23.960 When John Adams became president, the U.S. stopped paying its Revolutionary War debt to France,

00:06:29.760 arguing that the money had been owed to a king who no longer had a head.

00:06:34.560 France responded by seizing American ships.

00:06:37.400 Naval skirmishes followed and an undeclared conflict erupted known as the Quasi-War.

00:06:44.440 By 1800, a new man ruled France.

00:06:47.120 a general with volcanic ambition and a talent for moving history just by a sheer force of will.

00:06:53.640 His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. He ended the Quasi-War because he had a more pressing enemy,

00:07:00.780 Britain, as usual. He also had larger ambitions in Europe. Glancing toward the Caribbean, 0.59

00:07:07.120 he saw a way to fuel those ambitions, rebooting an old sugar empire.

00:07:11.540 Haiti was the crown jewel of the New World. By the 1790s, it produced more wealth than all of

00:07:18.720 Europe's other American and Caribbean colonies combined. The wealth was created at the brutal

00:07:25.240 expense of 500,000 slaves working 8,000 plantations to produce 60% of Europe's coffee

00:07:33.240 and 40% of its sugar. More than twice as many Africans were shipped to Haiti

00:07:38.700 as to the entire United States.

00:07:42.120 And now those slaves were in open revolt.

00:07:45.720 From the chaos emerged a former slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture.

00:07:51.080 He was self-educated, ruthlessly disciplined.

00:07:54.180 He had once owned a small plantation and a handful of slaves himself,

00:07:57.820 but he became the central military and political force of the revolution.

00:08:02.100 The French would later call him Napoleon Noir, the Black Napoleon.

00:08:08.700 By the time Thomas Jefferson took office as the third president of the U.S. in 1801,

00:08:14.260 Toussaint had effectively taken control of Haiti.

00:08:18.200 Jefferson, who loved science, geography, and had an insatiable curiosity,

00:08:23.080 had dreamt of a great farming republic stretching west.

00:08:27.140 He believed America's future lay well beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

00:08:31.420 But when he learned that Napoleon had made peace with Britain in 1801

00:08:35.120 and was now free to focus on the Caribbean, a chill ran through his administration

00:08:39.560 because Napoleon did two things almost simultaneously.

00:08:42.460 First, he secretly signed a treaty with Spain to take back Louisiana.

00:08:47.740 Second, he assembled the largest overseas expedition France had ever launched.

00:08:53.620 40,000 troops, 74 ships, and all placed under the command of his brother-in-law,

00:09:00.280 General Charles Leclerc.

00:09:02.600 Napoleon sent them to Haiti to first crush Toussaint, restore slavery, and rebuild the sugar machine.

00:09:09.860 Well, General Leclerc also carried sealed orders. 0.78

00:09:13.400 Once Haiti was secure, he was to sail on to New Orleans and re-establish French control over Louisiana.

00:09:20.640 For Jefferson, this was the nightmare scenario.

00:09:24.480 Spain had been weak and predictable, but France was neither of those things.

00:09:28.180 Whoever controlled New Orleans controlled the Mississippi River, which meant control over the economic lifeline of the American West.

00:09:36.920 Jefferson appointed a quiet, persistent diplomat named Robert Livingston as ambassador to France.

00:09:43.160 Now, Livingston and Jefferson were both on the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence.

00:09:48.900 But now, Jefferson gave him a single urgent mission, purchase New Orleans.

00:09:53.740 He authorized $2 million for the deal, nothing more, no territory, just the city.

00:10:00.060 In 1802, Jefferson wrote to Livingston.

00:10:03.080 Every eye in the U.S. is now fixed on this affair of Louisiana.

00:10:08.600 Perhaps nothing since the Revolutionary War has produced more uneasy sensations through the body of the nation.

00:10:16.840 While Livingston got to work pressing the French to sell New Orleans, events in Haiti turned savage.

00:10:23.080 Toussaint withdrew his army into the mountains and he avoided any pitched battle.

00:10:27.340 He let Yellow Fever become his ally, and half of the first wave of the French troops died of the disease without ever firing a shot.

00:10:35.820 In the summer of 1802, the desperate French invited Toussaint to negotiate.

00:10:40.300 It was a trap. When he showed up at the appointed time and place, he was shackled and rushed aboard a ship bound for France.

00:10:48.120 Isolated in a cold prison cell in the Jura Mountains, he died 10 months later.

00:10:55.820 General Leclerc, trying to finish the job, wrote to Napoleon. 1.00

00:10:59.000 We must destroy all the mountain Negroes, men and women. 1.00

00:11:03.320 Only keep the children under 12 years old. 1.00

00:11:06.340 A month later, Leclerc himself died of yellow fever.

00:11:10.140 The war spiraled into atrocity. 0.93

00:11:13.220 The French imported bloodhounds trained to hunt humans.

00:11:16.680 entire villages were exterminated. But still, the rebels fought on. By 1803, over 30,000 French

00:11:24.800 soldiers and 350,000 Haitians were dead. On New Year's Day, 1804, Toussaint's second-in-command

00:11:32.820 declared independence and ordered the massacre of most remaining whites in Haiti. Napoleon later

00:11:40.280 admitted, The Saint-Domingue business was a great piece of folly on my part. It was the greatest 1.00

00:11:45.940 error that in all my government I ever committed. I ought to have treated with the black leaders 1.00

00:11:52.020 as I would have done the authorities in the province. But even as Haiti slipped from his 0.57

00:11:57.520 grasp, Napoleon still intended to hold Louisiana. He began to assemble a second force in Holland,

00:12:04.660 a hundred ships, 10,000 troops. They were meant to cross the Atlantic and occupy New Orleans.

00:12:11.660 Meanwhile, Jefferson's Secretary of State, James Madison, dined with a French ambassador in Washington and delivered a warning.

00:12:18.920 Louisiana was too vast, too expensive, too restless.

00:12:23.180 Even if France took it, it would one day break away just as the American colonies had broken from Britain.

00:12:30.240 While Napoleon's advisors dismissed the warning, honor demand that they keep the colony.

00:12:36.000 And that's when everything began to go wrong.

00:12:38.920 Supplies to the force in Holland were delayed.

00:12:41.320 The best summer sailing weather passed.

00:12:43.320 Then severe winter ice locked the fleet in Dutch ports.

00:12:46.780 Spring storms caused further delay.

00:12:48.540 Finally, in April 1803, the ships were deemed ready.

00:12:52.720 And then a courier arrived with urgent orders from Paris.

00:12:56.480 The entire expedition had been cancelled.

00:13:00.780 Robert Livingston was baffled.

00:13:02.620 Napoleon's finance minister offered only a shrug, saying,

00:13:05.460 You know the temper of a young conqueror.

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00:14:55.220 In March 1803, as Napoleon's frozen fleet waited in Holland and Robert Livingston waited in Paris,

00:15:01.380 President Jefferson made another move.

00:15:03.180 he sent James Monroe across the Atlantic. Monroe was not just another diplomat. He was the former

00:15:09.660 ambassador to France, a Revolutionary War veteran, a man with credibility in both Europe and the

00:15:15.240 American West. This time, Jefferson expanded the mission. Monroe was now authorized to spend up to

00:15:21.960 $10 million for New Orleans, as well as West Florida. And if the negotiations failed, Monroe

00:15:28.640 Monroe was instructed to go straight to London and explore an alliance with Britain.

00:15:34.000 It was a quiet, aggressive ultimatum, sell to us or we will turn to your greatest enemy.

00:15:44.680 Weeks later, while Monroe was still at sea, Napoleon attended Easter Mass in Paris.

00:15:50.600 After the service, he summoned two of his most trusted advisors.

00:15:54.600 The French disaster in Haiti had changed the strategic map.

00:15:58.100 The British Navy ruled the oceans, another war with Britain was coming and Louisiana

00:16:02.340 suddenly looked like a liability, a drain on Napoleon's military resources.

00:16:06.760 He was obsessed with thwarting the British.

00:16:10.760 Napoleon spoke first.

00:16:11.760 I wish, if there is still time, to take from them any idea that they may have of ever possessing

00:16:18.580 that colony.

00:16:20.280 I think of ceding it to the United States.

00:16:23.720 They ask of me one town in Louisiana, but I already consider the colony as entirely lost.

00:16:30.240 And it appears to me that in the hands of this growing power, it will be more useful to the policy and even to the commerce of France than if I should attempt to keep it.

00:16:41.360 Well, his finance minister agreed, better to sell the land than lose it to the British.

00:16:45.640 The minister of the Navy objected, to abandon the colony, he said, would be contrary to the honor of France.

00:16:52.660 Well, the next morning, Napoleon ended the debate when he said,

00:16:55.780 I renounce Louisiana. It is not only New Orleans that I cede. It is the whole colony without

00:17:01.940 reserve. I know the price of what I abandon. I renounce it with the greatest regret. To attempt

00:17:08.720 obstinately to retain it would be folly. Across the city, Robert Livingston was summoned to the

00:17:15.540 office of Charles de Talleyrand. De Talleyrand was Napoleon's foreign minister. Crafty, notoriously

00:17:22.320 corrupt. He was famous for getting rich off bribes from foreign governments, which he liked to call

00:17:27.440 commissions. Livingston once again made his well-worn pitch. The United States wished to buy

00:17:33.440 New Orleans. Well, de Talleyrand barely let him finish. He blindsided Livingston with an unexpected

00:17:39.280 question. What if, instead of just New Orleans, the United States bought the entire Louisiana

00:17:45.940 territory? All of it? Well, the very next day, James Monroe arrived in Paris. He listened in

00:17:53.380 disbelief as Livingston told him about the sudden offer. They'd been authorized to buy a city. They

00:17:58.880 were now being offered half a continent? Napoleon's finance minister urged speed. Napoleon's mood

00:18:05.940 changed like the weather, and the deal had to be signed before another storm of ambition rolled in.

00:18:11.160 Livingston wrote urgently to the Secretary of State, James Madison,

00:18:14.940 The field open to us is infinitely larger than our instructions contemplated.

00:18:19.800 We shall do all we can to cheapen the purchase, but my present sentiment is that we shall buy.

00:18:25.640 Every moment is precious. But in 1803, under the best conditions, it took a letter a minimum

00:18:30.980 of a month to get across the Atlantic. So from the time Livingston wrote his letter,

00:18:35.440 it would take at least two months likely much longer to receive a reply meanwhile inside

00:18:41.520 napoleon's palace his family erupted his brother stormed into his bath chamber his younger brother

00:18:48.240 quickly followed and they railed against the sale both threatened to go public and rally

00:18:52.880 opinion against it how could france just give away an empire napoleon exploded out of his luxurious

00:18:58.880 bathtub in rage soaking his brothers his mind was made up negotiations raced forward the terms

00:19:05.360 were staggering. The United States would pay $15 million for the land, which included assuming $4

00:19:12.260 million that France had previously agreed to pay for the damages to the American shipping

00:19:16.560 during the quasi-war. In return, America would receive 828,000 square miles, nearly 530 million

00:19:26.140 acres, at about 3 cents an acre. In modern terms, that's about 41 cents per acre. It was the largest

00:19:34.880 single land transfer in world history. But the only catch was the treaty required ratification

00:19:41.740 in the U.S. Senate by October. Well, back in Washington, Jefferson received official word

00:19:47.740 from Livingston about the deal on July 3rd, 1803. But his first reaction was not celebration. It was

00:19:53.980 dread. Because the Constitution didn't say the president could buy foreign empires, doubling the

00:19:59.900 size of a nation without permission from the states was a little problematic. James Madison,

00:20:04.880 one of the primary architects of the Constitution himself, argued that while the document did not

00:20:09.440 explicitly grant the power, it also didn't forbid it. Ironically, it was the same type of implied

00:20:16.100 powers argument that Alexander Hamilton made about the creation of the National Bank,

00:20:20.500 which Jefferson and Madison so strongly opposed. Jefferson was unconvinced. He drafted a

00:20:27.660 constitutional amendment. He worried about state rights. He worried about precedent. He worried

00:20:32.460 about the New England states already suspicious of western expansion and how they might fracture

00:20:37.500 over this. Then a letter arrived from Livingston in August. He warned that Napoleon might be

00:20:43.600 getting cold feet. He was about to crown himself emperor and giving away continents was not a very

00:20:49.360 emperor-like thing to do. Time was running out. Jefferson. He abandoned the amendment idea.

00:20:57.660 The process would take too long and likely kill the deal.

00:21:01.320 Instead, he got busy persuading two-thirds of the Senate to approve the deal and the House to fund it.

00:21:07.960 In the House, John Randolph of Virginia tried blocking the funding, but his motion failed by two votes.

00:21:14.020 Finally, in the Senate, the treaty passed 24 to 7.

00:21:17.780 James Monroe, acting on his own initiative, had already arranged financing for the $2 million down payment through the banks in Britain and Holland.

00:21:25.040 It was an efficient move, even if he wasn't legally authorized to do it yet.

00:21:30.680 But the deal was official.

00:21:32.680 The Louisiana Territory, which included all or part of 15 present-day states,

00:21:38.880 now officially belong to the United States.

00:21:42.040 In November, the French flag in New Orleans came down and the stars and stripes were raised in its place.

00:21:48.540 Robert Livingston, exhausted but exhilarated, wrote,

00:21:51.900 We have lived long, but this is the noblest work of our whole lives.

00:21:57.460 The treaty which we have just signed has not been obtained by art or dictated by force.

00:22:03.340 Equally advantageous to the two contracting parties, it will change vast solitudes into

00:22:09.020 flourishing districts.

00:22:10.940 From this day, the United States take their place among powers of the first rank.

00:22:16.020 Napoleon never fully explained why he sold the territory, but he did say this.

00:22:20.860 This accession of territory strengthens forever the power of the United States.

00:22:26.320 And I have just given to England a maritime rival that will sooner or later humble their pride. 0.70

00:22:32.680 For Napoleon, ultimately, it was still all about sticking it to England.

00:22:37.460 A British historian would later call it, quote,

00:22:39.820 Bonaparte's greatest single failure of imagination.

00:22:44.140 Thomas Jefferson had seen great potential for his nation in the western half of the continent.

00:22:48.740 In fact, in early 1803, when he asked Congress to pay to send James Monroe to France,

00:22:54.420 he also requested $2,500 for an ambitious scientific exploration of the territory.

00:23:00.900 And he asked his 29-year-old secretary to lead the effort,

00:23:05.820 a U.S. Army captain named Meriwether Lewis.

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00:24:44.400 took office in 1801 the united states was in practice a thin coastal nation most of the

00:24:50.960 population lived within 50 miles of the atlantic ocean beyond the appalachian mountains the

00:24:56.320 continent faded into rumor rivers without names mysterious native tribes animals that existed

00:25:02.560 only in travelers tales but jefferson had been thinking about that interior his entire life

00:25:09.280 in his first inaugural address the first to be delivered in washington dc at the capitol

00:25:13.920 building. He had spoken of a rising nation spread over a wide and fruitful land, advancing rapidly

00:25:21.360 to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye. Jefferson was basically a science geek and the

00:25:27.520 Louisiana Purchase doubled the scientific data set of his era. He had to know what was out there

00:25:33.640 and for that task he turned to Meriwether Lewis. Lewis had grown up in the same Virginia countryside

00:25:39.600 as Jefferson. Their families had known each other for decades, and when Jefferson became president,

00:25:44.520 he brought the young army officer into the White House as his personal secretary.

00:25:49.240 Lewis was intense, solitary, sharp, and restless. He could drink too much. He could sink into dark

00:25:55.980 moods that Jefferson called depressions of the mind. But when it came to endurance, precision,

00:26:01.320 and loyalty, Jefferson trusted him without hesitation. As his co-leader, Lewis turned to

00:26:08.560 his former commander and close friend from his army days, William Clark. Clark was 33,

00:26:15.340 four years older than Lewis, and different in temperament. He was steadier, more laid-back.

00:26:20.780 He was from Kentucky, raised on rivers and forests, and he was an exceptional mapmaker

00:26:25.540 and boatman. In the spring of 1803, Lewis went to Philadelphia to study with the leading

00:26:31.020 scientists of the day. He trained like an astronaut, preparing to go to the moon. He

00:26:36.140 studied astronomy, botany, anatomy, math, and medicine. On this mission, he would have to be

00:26:41.900 a scientist, a doctor, cartographer, journalist, and military leader. He assembled a giant inventory

00:26:48.960 of supplies and gifts for the Native Americans that they would encounter, including silver

00:26:53.320 peace medals stamped with Jefferson's profile. These were not just trinkets. For Indians,

00:26:59.820 gift exchange was a vital sign of friendship. President Jefferson's written instructions were

00:27:05.620 explicit. In all your intercourse with the natives, treat them in the most friendly and conciliatory

00:27:11.820 manner which their own conduct will admit. Make them acquainted with the position, extent, character,

00:27:18.760 peaceable and commercial dispositions of the U.S., of our wish to be neighborly, friendly and useful

00:27:25.140 to them, and of our dispositions to a commercial intercourse with them. This was an ambitious

00:27:30.880 scientific and diplomatic mission.

00:27:35.620 The Corps of Volunteers for Northwest Discovery was comprised of 45 men,

00:27:40.880 including a man named York, who was William Clark's slave.

00:27:45.240 On May 14, 1804, the expedition finally pushed off and began forcing its way up the Missouri River.

00:27:51.820 The river did not exactly cooperate.

00:27:54.880 The current was strong, the banks choked with mud and willows,

00:27:57.780 the heat was oppressive, the mosquitoes, the gnats swarmed in clouds,

00:28:02.580 The men rowed, they polled, they sailed when the wind allowed, and often hauled the heavy keelboat upstream by rope wading in waist-deep water, their boots sinking into silk with every step.

00:28:16.000 On a good day, they could travel 15 miles.

00:28:20.120 In late July, they camped near the mouth of the Platte River and held their first formal council with Native Americans, the Otto and Missouri tribes.

00:28:28.260 At every meeting with Indians on the journey, Lewis and Clark delivered a standard speech promising military protection and trade advantages in return for peace.

00:28:37.860 Just a few weeks later, tragedy struck.

00:28:40.900 22-year-old Sergeant Charles Floyd fell violently ill.

00:28:45.080 He suffered for days, likely from a ruptured appendix.

00:28:48.980 In late August 1804, he died, somehow the only member of the expedition who didn't survive the journey.

00:28:57.300 As summer faded, the world around them transformed.

00:29:00.880 Forests thinned into rolling prairie grass.

00:29:04.660 The horizon widened.

00:29:06.220 They saw prairie dogs and antelope for the very first time.

00:29:10.200 Buffalo appeared in numbers that seemed impossible.

00:29:13.900 Herds of thousands darkening the landscape.

00:29:17.520 Everywhere they went, York drew attention.

00:29:20.640 Most tribes had never seen a black man before, and they were fascinated.

00:29:25.140 Clark wrote,

00:29:26.340 The Indians are much astonished at my black servant and call him the big medicine.

00:29:31.700 York told them that before I caught him, he was wild and lived upon people,

00:29:36.860 that young children was very good eating.

00:29:39.660 All flocked around him and examined him from top to toe.

00:29:43.060 He carried on the joke and made himself more terrible than we wished him to do.

00:29:48.520 Diplomacy, however, could turn lethal in an instant.

00:29:52.460 When the Corps reached the territory of Lakota Sioux, the mood darkened.

00:29:57.620 The Lakota demanded payment for passage on the river.

00:30:01.300 Well, Lewis refused.

00:30:02.800 The situation escalated.

00:30:04.520 Sioux warriors notched arrows, and the Corps soldiers leveled their rifles.

00:30:09.100 A leader named Black Buffalo intervened, calming the moment by requesting that the women and children be allowed to see the curious items on the keelboat.

00:30:18.500 Clark was rattled and wrote in his journal that night,

00:30:20.880 Their treatment of me was very rough, and I think justified roughness on my part.

00:30:26.500 Well, the tension with the Lakota Sioux lingered on for several days, three more days to be exact. 0.55

00:30:31.920 Black Buffalo demanded tobacco for his men.

00:30:34.540 Lewis and Clark reluctantly gave in and were finally allowed to continue upriver.

00:30:39.500 By late October, the expedition reached the villages of the Mandan and Hidatsa, near present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.

00:30:46.660 These were no tiny villages. Their combined population was over 4,400, more than four times

00:30:53.280 the size of St. Louis at the time. Across the river from the Indian villages, the men built

00:30:58.420 Fort Mandon and prepared for winter. A French-Canadian fur trader named Toussaint Charbonneau,

00:31:04.940 who lived in the Indian villages, offered Louis and Clark his skills as an interpreter.

00:31:09.660 He spoke French and some Hidatsa. His 16-year-old pregnant wife spoke Hidatsa and Shoshone.

00:31:16.660 Her name was Sacajawea, which meant bird woman.

00:31:21.860 She was a Shoshone from Idaho.

00:31:24.460 She had also been taken during a raid by the Hadassah tribe when she was around 12 years old.

00:31:29.620 While living at the Knife River Indian villages, Sacajawea married Charbonneau.

00:31:34.820 She may not have had much choice in the matter.

00:31:37.300 Charbonneau may have won her in a game or even bought her from the tribe that kidnapped her.

00:31:42.120 He was at least 30 years older than her and already had another Indian wife.

00:31:48.420 Lewis wasn't really impressed with the often unpredictable and unreliable Charbonneau,

00:31:54.280 calling him a man of no particular merit.

00:31:57.820 Sacagawea's baby, named Jean Baptiste, was born on February 1805,

00:32:03.880 after a labor that Lewis described as, quote, tedious and the pain violent.

00:32:07.840 He also noted that she was given a mixture of water and pulverized rattle of a rattlesnake to help speed the delivery.

00:32:16.120 The baby was affectionately nicknamed Pompey by Clark.

00:32:22.180 For the next year and a half, Sacagawea carried Pompey tied to her back.

00:32:27.240 The expedition now had a woman and an infant among them, an unspoken signal of peace to every tribe they would meet.

00:32:35.060 Clark recorded one instance of a tribe hiding in fear of the approaching Americans.

00:32:40.400 As soon as they saw Sacajawea, they pointed to her and informed those still indoors,

00:32:45.240 who immediately all came out and appeared to assume new life.

00:32:49.060 The sight of this Indian woman confirmed those people of our friendly intentions,

00:32:53.740 as no woman ever accompanies a war party of Indians in this quarter.

00:32:58.040 When spring returned and the Missouri River was no longer choked with ice,

00:33:01.560 the Corps prepared a shipment that was to be sent back to President Jefferson.

00:33:06.620 They included maps, written reports, items made by Native Americans,

00:33:11.360 the skins and skeletons of previously unknown animals,

00:33:15.140 soil samples, mineral seeds, and cages containing a live prairie dog,

00:33:19.920 a sharp-tailed grouse, and magpies.

00:33:23.140 The large keelboat and a dozen men were dispatched downriver in April 1805.

00:33:28.620 The shipment arrived at the White House in Washington, D.C. four months later.

00:33:32.760 Jefferson was like a child on Christmas morning as he sorted through all the treasures.

00:33:37.500 The same day the shipment was sent downriver, the permanent party of the expedition left

00:33:42.660 Fort Mandon in two preogues and six new dugout canoes, each about 30 feet long and three

00:33:49.020 feet wide, carved from cottonwood logs.

00:33:52.420 The Corps of Discovery, now numbering 33, headed westward into uncharted territory.

00:33:58.540 Proceeding into present-day Montana, the explorers were amazed by the rolling, treeless grasslands of the Great Plains, the often violent weather, and the ever-present wildlife.

00:34:10.120 Lewis wrote,

00:34:11.080 We can scarcely cast our eyes in any direction without perceiving deer, elk, buffalo, or antelopes.

00:34:18.360 During this leg of the journey, the Corps never ran out of meat.

00:34:21.240 then on june 1805 in a journey where unforeseen problems were the norm they encountered perhaps

00:34:30.660 their biggest one yet in north central montana they reached a fork in the missouri river

00:34:36.780 that indians had not mentioned well which way was the real missouri lewis and clark stood on

00:34:44.420 the riverbank and stared into the branching future if they chose the wrong path they could

00:34:49.960 lose weeks or months. Winter in the mountains could mean disaster. Lewis wrote,

00:34:55.380 To ascend the wrong stream would not only lose us the whole of this season,

00:35:00.020 but would probably so dishearten the party that it might defeat the expedition altogether.

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00:36:39.220 For more of the history that inspired this podcast series,

00:36:42.440 be sure to read The American Story, The Beginnings.

00:36:46.420 by David Barton and Tim Barton, available now at wallbuilders.com.

00:36:54.900 Before Lewis and Clark decided which fork of the Missouri River to take, they did investigate.

00:37:01.320 Lewis led a party along the South Fork. Clark took the North. It took more than a week,

00:37:06.760 and it required everything they had learned so far about rivers and the landscape and geography

00:37:11.520 and land measurements to decide. When they returned, Lewis and Clark finally chose the South

00:37:16.920 Fork as the true Missouri. The rest of the men in the expedition disagreed, but they had followed

00:37:22.680 their captains for thousands of miles. They weren't going to stop now. There was no margin for error in

00:37:28.100 the wilderness. There was no backup plan. There was no rescue. Lewis and Clark stuck with their

00:37:33.740 decision to go with the South Fork. Luckily, they turned out to be right.

00:37:39.980 On June 13th, over two months since shoving off from their Fort Maiden winter camp, the

00:37:45.520 roar hit them at first. It was a thunderous growl across the plains. The Great Falls of

00:37:52.520 Missouri, a 10-mile gauntlet dropping more than 400 feet in five massive cascades. The

00:38:00.520 The Corps unloaded everything and began a brutal overland portage around the falls.

00:38:05.200 Lewis had envisioned a quicker detour, but instead that was 18 miles long and it took

00:38:10.460 nearly a month.

00:38:13.140 Storms then hammered them, rain and hail turned the ground amok, mosquitoes swarmed and grizzly

00:38:18.640 bears lurked as constant threats.

00:38:21.480 Clark later called it the most difficult stretch of the whole journey.

00:38:26.300 In late July, Sacajawea saw something on the horizon,

00:38:30.300 a rock formation that she recognized.

00:38:32.920 She told them they were nearing the home of her people,

00:38:35.720 the Shoshone.

00:38:37.300 Lewis wrote,

00:38:38.420 The Indian woman recognized the point of a high plain

00:38:41.360 to our right, which she informed us was not very distant

00:38:44.720 from the summer retreat of her nation,

00:38:46.680 on a river beyond the mountains, which runs to the west.

00:38:50.260 This hill, she says, her nation calls the beaver's head.

00:38:55.260 she assures us that we shall either find her people on this river

00:38:58.440 or on the river immediately west of its source,

00:39:02.020 which from its present size cannot be very distant. 1.00

00:39:07.460 Desperate to find the Shoshone and the horses they might be able to provide, 1.00

00:39:11.860 Lewis decided to scout ahead with three men. 1.00

00:39:15.000 On August 12th, Lewis climbed to the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass.

00:39:20.820 From the summit, he expected to see what Thomas Jefferson had dreamt of,

00:39:24.560 plains and great rivers running down towards the Pacific, proof of a water route across the

00:39:30.740 continent. But when Lewis reached the peak and looked west, he saw the truth. There was no water

00:39:36.860 highway. There were only more jagged mountains stacked to infinity. Reality crashed in. Their

00:39:44.620 journey was not going to get any easier. A few days later, Lewis encountered a Shoshone village 1.00

00:39:50.580 and tried to negotiate for the horses they needed.

00:39:53.660 Clark and the rest of the corps caught up,

00:39:55.900 and Sacajawea was brought forward to translate.

00:39:59.340 Then something remarkable happened.

00:40:02.440 She locked eyes with the chief.

00:40:05.600 The chief's name?

00:40:07.540 Kameowate.

00:40:09.260 He was her brother.

00:40:12.060 They fell into each other's arms in tears,

00:40:14.680 leaping and dancing,

00:40:16.500 overwhelmed by the most unlikely of reunions.

00:40:20.580 Sacagawea recognized others that she had grown up with and embraced them,

00:40:25.060 motioning towards the men of the Corps that this was her family.

00:40:28.580 The Shoshone provided horses, a guide, and vital information on trails and other tribes ahead.

00:40:34.900 Winter loomed with snow already dusting the mountain peaks, but Lewis and Clark 0.88

00:40:39.300 gambled on pushing through the Bitter Roots range of the Rockies.

00:40:44.820 Chief Kameoway told them of a trail used by another tribe that crossed the Bitter Roots,

00:40:49.460 But the Corps failed to locate it at first, and that was a mistake that cost them days

00:40:55.060 in the worst possible terrain.

00:40:58.440 Temperatures plunged below freezing, the snowy trail turned steep and rocky, and their food

00:41:04.260 supply dwindled.

00:41:06.140 The absence of wild game forced them to kill and eat three of their horses just to survive.

00:41:11.460 The crossing lasted 11 miserable days, the men staggering on the edge of collapse.

00:41:17.340 But once out of the bitter roots, the Corps built new canoes.

00:41:21.100 Food was still scarce, but Lewis and Clark were able to purchase roots, fish, and dogs

00:41:26.380 from the Nez Perce tribe. 0.96

00:41:27.940 That's right, they ate dogs.

00:41:30.120 It's offensive to modern sensibilities, but this was all about survival.

00:41:38.640 In 1805, they put five new canoes into the Clearwater River, and for the first time since

00:41:43.840 leaving St. Louis, they paddled downstream, down the Clearwater, down the Snake River to the

00:41:50.160 Columbia, the river they knew would reach the Pacific. By the end of October, they had made

00:41:56.880 their way around the falls of Columbia and sighted Mount Hood. In November, they finally saw the

00:42:03.000 Pacific Ocean in the distance. Clark estimated they had traveled 4,162 miles from the mouth of

00:42:11.000 Missouri River. The Corps took a vote on where to set up winter quarters. In a sign of their vital

00:42:16.360 contribution to the expedition, Sacajawea and York were allowed to vote. By Christmas, they had

00:42:22.840 nearly finished their winter quarters on the south side of the Columbia River near present-day

00:42:27.160 Astoria, Oregon. They named it Fort Clatsop, after the local tribe. The winter was cold and rainy and

00:42:35.720 miserable. They updated their journals, traded with local tribes for food, and prepared for the

00:42:40.840 return journey they built a salt works extracting salt from ocean water for flavoring and curing

00:42:47.080 meat they also hunted scoring 131 elk and 20 deer they made over 300 pair of moccasins

00:42:57.000 in late march 1806 lewis and clark presented fort clapsut to a local chief then the corps

00:43:02.600 began its trek home in june after re-crossing the bitter roots the corps split up to maximize

00:43:09.240 their discoveries. Lewis took part of the men north, while Clark led a party down the Yellowstone

00:43:14.680 River. East of present-day Billings, Montana, Clark climbed a massive gray rock and named it

00:43:21.240 Pompey's Tower, after Sacagawea's toddler. Clark carved his own name into the rock.

00:43:27.620 The etching remains there still today. Meanwhile, further north, Lewis and his men shared a campsite

00:43:33.600 with eight Blackfeet warriors that they had encountered. The night passed, peaceably enough,

00:43:38.260 But in the morning, Lewis woke to a scuffle, and one of his men shouted, 0.99

00:43:42.280 Damn you, let go of my gun! 0.99

00:43:44.520 In the melee, one of Lewis' men stabbed the Blackfoot to death. 1.00

00:43:49.000 Lewis shot another warrior in the stomach as the man tried to steal his horse.

00:43:53.180 The wounded man fired back, and Lewis wrote,

00:43:56.040 He overshot me, but being bareheaded, I felt the wind of his bullet very distinctly.

00:44:02.100 Certain they would be pursued, Lewis and his men raced southeast toward the Missouri River,

00:44:07.240 covering a hundred miles in a little over 24 hours. In August their entire expedition reunited

00:44:13.880 in North Dakota where the Yellowstone flowed in the Missouri. Now traveling with the current it

00:44:19.160 must have felt like they were flying as they were able to cover up to 70 miles every day.

00:44:24.200 Later that month they reached the Mandan villages where they had to say goodbye to Charbonneau,

00:44:28.920 Sacagawea and young Jean Baptiste who was now a year and a half old. Clark later wrote to Charbonneau

00:44:35.800 Your woman who accompanied you that long, dangerous, and fatiguing route to the Pacific Ocean and back

00:44:41.600 deserved a greater reward for her attention and services on that route

00:44:45.660 than we had in our power to give her at the Mandans.

00:44:49.300 Finally, on September 23, 1806, the Corps of Discovery reached St. Louis.

00:44:56.780 Jefferson thought they might be gone for about a year,

00:44:59.800 but it took them two years, four months, and nine days.

00:45:03.980 Jefferson had not heard from the men since their shipment of samples to him

00:45:07.420 almost a year and a half earlier.

00:45:09.920 Jefferson wrote to Lewis.

00:45:11.180 I received, my dear sir, with unspeakable joy, your letter of September 23rd,

00:45:17.440 announcing the return of yourself, Captain Clark, and your party in good health to St. Louis.

00:45:23.860 The unknown scenes in which you were engaged,

00:45:26.760 and the length of time without hearing of you, had begun to be felt awfully.

00:45:31.620 Lewis and Clark received commissions from Jefferson.

00:45:34.660 Lewis is governor of Upper Louisiana and Clark as brigadier general of the militia and Indian agent for the vast territory.

00:45:42.860 Each member of the Corps of Discovery, except York, received double pay and 320 acres of land.

00:45:50.500 York returned to slavery.

00:45:52.840 He was finally freed by Clark sometime after 1815.

00:45:56.120 Clark gave York a wagon and a team of horses, with which York created a hauling business.

00:46:03.240 Sacagawea, she died in 1812. William Clark and his wife adopted Sacagawea's son,

00:46:10.300 Jean-Baptiste, and his younger sister, Lisette. In 1809, three years after the end of the expedition,

00:46:18.140 Meriwether Lewis was on his way to Washington, D.C. when he stopped to spend a night at a tavern

00:46:23.300 in Tennessee. He was found dead the following morning, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot

00:46:29.660 wound. Some have suspected foul play in his death, but most historians think Lewis most likely

00:46:36.880 committed suicide. Lewis and Clark, their voyage of discovery, turned out to be one of Thomas

00:46:43.760 Jefferson's most enduring legacies. The discoveries made by the explorers on their 8,000-mile round

00:46:50.040 trip changed the vision of America. The West was no longer an idea. It was real.

00:46:57.360 It was an optimistic start to a new century for the young nation that had now doubled in land

00:47:02.940 size. Yet massive challenges were on the horizon, including war once again with an old mighty foe,

00:47:11.220 the British Empire.

00:47:13.160 coming up on the american story the beginnings the spark turns into an inferno

00:47:23.220 sugar fields become walls of flames night skies glow orange armed bands surge from the hills

00:47:32.760 masters are dragged from beds whole families are slaughtered over the next month 800 plantations

00:47:40.180 burn to the ground. More than a thousand French slaveholders and their families meet gruesome

00:47:46.080 ends. Hacked with machetes, impaled, sawed in half, the slaves rise up in a brutal frenzy

00:47:53.420 of retribution and blood. The most profitable colony on Earth collapses in blood and smoke.

00:48:03.560 This is the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. 0.73

00:48:07.240 It is the first and only successful slave revolt in history.

00:48:20.000 Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast

00:48:24.220 and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

00:48:33.560 A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors

00:48:46.980 making sure my car doesn't get stolen.

00:48:49.500 It means building new jails to keep criminals behind bars.

00:48:53.000 And it means there's no need to worry when I play at the park.

00:48:56.080 We're making every corner of Ontario safer to make all of Ontario safer.

00:49:01.060 That's how we protect Ontario.

00:49:02.860 For all of us.

00:49:04.860 Learn how at Ontario.ca slash Safer Ontario.

00:49:07.860 Paid for by the Government of Ontario.

The Glenn Beck Program - June 20, 2026

Mapping America’s Future： Lewis & Clark and the Louisiana Purchase ｜ The American Story ｜ Ep 11

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