Abraham Lincoln's Program of Black Resettlement Part 10

This is a series of posts from the cited paper, I will try to divide it into many parts, put titles, and some illustration to fit in blogger and this Blog.

                      From The Journal of Historical Review, Sept.-Oct. 1993 (Vol. 13, No. 5), pages 4-25.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    By Robert Morgan 

Impact of the Proclamation

While abolitionists predictably hailed the final Proclamation, sentiment among northern whites was generally unfavorable. The edict cost the President considerable support, and undoubtedly was a factor in Republican party setbacks in the Congressional elections of 1862. In the army, hardly one Union soldier in ten approved of emancipation, and some officers resigned in protest.

As a work of propaganda, the Proclamation proved effective. To encourage discontent among slaves in the Confederacy, a million copies were distributed in the Union-occupied South and, as hoped, news of it spread rapidly by word of mouth among the Confederacy's slaves, arousing hopes of freedom and encouraging many to escape. The Proclamation "had the desired effect of creating confusion in the South and depriving the Confederacy of much of its valuable laboring force," affirms historian John Hope Franklin.

Finally, in the eyes of many people -- particularly in Europe -- Lincoln's edict made the Union army a liberating force: all slaves in areas henceforward coming under federal control would automatically be free.

Crusade for freedom and democracy: 

The Proclamation greatly strengthened support for the Union cause abroad, especially in Britain and France, where anti-slavery sentiment was strong. In Europe, the edict transformed the conflict into a Union crusade for freedom, and contributed greatly to dashing the Confederacy's remaining hopes of formal diplomatic recognition from Britain and France. "The Emancipation Proclamation," reported Henry Adams from London, "has done more for us [the Union] here than all our former victories and all our diplomacy. It is creating an almost convulsive reaction in our favor all over this country."

End of the Resettlement Efforts

Lincoln continued to press ahead with his plan to resettle blacks in Central America, in spite of opposition from all but one member of his own Cabinet, and the conclusion of a scientific report that Chiriqui coal was "worthless."

Mounting opposition to any resettlement plan also came from abolitionists, who insisted that blacks had a right to remain in the land of their birth. In addition, some Republican party leaders opposed resettlement because they were counting on black political support, which would be particularly important in controlling a defeated South, where most whites would be barred from voting. Others agreed with Republican Senator Charles Sumner, who argued that black laborers were an important part of the national economy, and any attempt to export them "would be fatal to the prosperity of the country." In the (Northern) election campaign of November 1862, emancipation figured as a major issue. Violent mobs of abolitionists opposed those who spoke out in favor of resettlement.

What proved decisive in bringing an end to the Chiriqui project, though, were emphatic protests by the republics that would be directly effected by large-scale resettlement. In Central America, the prospect that millions of blacks would soon be arriving provoked alarm. A sense of panic prevailed in Nicaragua and Honduras, the American consul reported, because of fears of "a dreadful deluge of negro emigration ... from the United States." In August and September, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica protested officially to the American government about the resettlement venture. (Objection from Costa Rica was particularly worrisome because that country claimed part of the Chiriqui territory controlled by Thompson.)

Worthless kind of people

On September 19, envoy Luis Molina, a diplomat who represented the three Central American states, formally explained to American officials the objections of the three countries against the resettlement plan. This venture, he protested, was an attempt to use Central America as a depository for "a plague of which the United States desired to rid themselves." Molina also reminded Seward that, for the USA to remain faithful to its own Monroe Doctrine, it could no more assume that there were lands available in Latin America for colonization than could a European power. The envoy concluded his strong protest by hinting that the republics he represented were prepared to use force to repel what they interpreted as an invasion. Learning later that the resettlement project was still underway, Molina delivered a second formal protest on September 29.

Secretary of State Seward was not able to ignore such protests. After all, why should Central Americans be happy to welcome people of a race that was so despised in the United States? 

Accordingly, on October 7, 1862, Seward prevailed on the President to call a "temporary" halt to the Chiriqui project.

Thus, the emphatic unwillingness of the Central American republics to accept black migrants dealt the decisive blow to the Chiriqui project. At a time when the Union cause was still precarious, Secretary of State Steward was obliged to show special concern for US relations with Latin America.

Lincoln Proposes a Constitutional Amendment

In spite of such obstacles, Lincoln re-affirmed his strong support for gradual emancipation coupled with resettlement in his second annual message to Congress of December 1, 1862. On this occasion he used the word deportation. So serious was he about his plan that he proposed a draft Constitutional Amendment to give it the greatest legal sanction possible. Lincoln told Congress:

I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.

In this view, I recommend the adoption of the following resolution and articles amendatory to the Constitution of the United States ... "Congress may appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons, with their consent, at any place or places without the United States."

Applications have been made to me by many free Americans of African descent to favor their emigration, with a view to such colonization as was contemplated in recent acts of Congress ... Several of the Spanish American republics have protested against the sending of such colonies [settlers] to their respective territories ... Liberia and Haiti are, as yet, the only countries to which colonists of African descent from here could go with certainty of being received and adopted as citizens ...

Their old masters will gladly give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freedmen, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves ...

The President's December 1862 proposal had five basic elements:

1. Because slavery was a "domestic institution," and thus the concern of the states alone, they -- and not the federal government -- were to voluntarily emancipate the slaves.
2. Slave-holders would be fully compensated for their loss.
3. The federal government would assist the states, with bonds as grants in aid, in meeting the financial burden of compensation.
4. Emancipation would be carried out gradually: the states would have until the year 1900 to free their slaves.
5. The freed blacks would be resettled outside the United States.