After a two-year absence, the Corps of Discovery returned to their "Elk sign" campsite on September 3, 1806, where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark found it occupied by Scottish fur trader James Aird. Eager for news from the United States, they learned from Aird that President Jefferson had been reelected in November 1804 and that former Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had been killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr. The expedition had received no news from the United States for more than two years after its last communique to Jefferson was sent back with the returning keelboat from Fort Mandan in the spring of 1805, and with only one dispatch received, Jefferson had feared the explorers had died en route or been captured by Spanish military forces. On the morning of September 4, 1806, the expedition headed downriver with fresh stocks of flour and tobacco, reached Floyd's Bluff within three hours to pay respects to Sergeant Charles Floyd, its only casualty, and twenty-three days later arrived back in Saint Louis, completing its adventurous twenty-eight-month journey.