Black History is Every Month: An enslaved man was crucial to the Lewis and Clark expedition’s success. Clark refused to free him afterward; Virginia governor asks legislature to remove traitor's statue from U.S. Capitol; “If You’re in the Song, Keep
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"Frustrated, York asked if he could at least move to Louisville to join his enslaved wife, who belonged to another man. He offered to hire himself out and send the money he earned to Clark. It was a far cry from freedom — but at least York would live with his love.
Again, Clark refused.
“[I will] permit him to Stay a fiew weeks with his wife ... [but] he is Serviceable to me at this place, and I am determined not ... to gratify him, and have directed him to return,” Clark (whose spelling was abysmal) wrote in an 1808 letter to his brother. “If any attempt is made by York to run off, or refuse to proform his duty as a Slave, I wish him Sent to New Orleands and sold, or hired out to Some Sevare Master until he thinks better of Such Conduct.”
York did not “run off,” Clark’s will prevailed and the unhappy man returned to his master’s home in St. Louis, Mo., in May 1809. Doubtless pining for his wife, York was “of very little Service to me, insolent and sukly,” Clark wrote to his brother. But Clark had a solution: “I gave him a Severe trouncing the other Day and he has much mended.”
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