In 1836, Governor Clay signed a legislative act which chartered the third oldest Jesuit college in the United States, Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, and gave it "full power to grant or confer such degree or degrees in the arts and sciences, or in any art or science as are usually granted or conferred by other seminaries of learning in the United States."
In Canada, Thompson was assisted by ClementC. Clay, formerly a U.S. senator from Alabama and a senator in the Confederate congress.
Thompson met with Clement L. Vallandigham, the notorious Copperhead and leader of the Sons of Liberty, and with George N. Sanders, a Confederate agent with a background of collaboration with European radicals.
Clay was paroled in April 1866, after a year spent in solitary confinement, and finally pardoned by Congress in 1880.