Americans on the Chiriquí Strip, located on the Isthmus of Panama, which was then part of New Granada (now Colombia). The colonists would support themselves by mining the supposedly rich coal deposits located there. Welles resisted the scheme, despite the interest Lincoln took in it and the energetic support it received from Secretary of the Interior Smith.
September 26, 1862: At several [cabinet] meetings of late the subject of deporting the colored race has been discussed. Indeed for months, almost from the commencement of this administration, it has been at times considered. More than a year ago it was thrust on me by Thompson and others in connection with the Chiriquí Grant. Speculators used it as a means of disposing of that grant to our Government. The President, encouraged by Blair and Smith, was disposed to favor it. Blair is honest and disinterested; perhaps Smith is so, yet I have not been favorably impressed with his zeal in behalf of the Chiriquí Association. As early as May, 1861, a great pressure was made upon me to enter into a coal contract with this company. The President was earnest in the matter. Smith, with the Thompsons [Ambrose and his son], urged and stimulated him, and they were as importunate with me as the President. I spent two or three hours on different days looking over the papers – titles, maps, reports, and evidence – and came to the conclusion that there was fraud and cheat in the affair. It appeared to be a swindling speculation. Told the President I had no confidence in it, and asked to be excused from its further consideration. The papers were then referred to Smith to investigate and report. After a month or two he reported strongly in favor of the scheme, and advised that the Navy Department should make an immediate contract for the coal before foreign governments got hold of it…. The President was quite earnest in its favor, but I objected and desired to be excused from any participation in it. Two or three times it has been revived, but I have crowded off action. Chase gave me assistance on one occasion, and the scheme was dropped until this question of deporting colored persons came up, when Smith again brought forward Thompson’s Chiriquí Grant. He made a skillful and taking report, embracing both coal and negroes. Each was to assist the other. The negroes were to be transported to Chiriquí to mine coal for the Navy, and the Secretary of the Navy was to make an immediate advance of $50,000 for coal not yet mined – nor laborers obtained to mine it, nor any satisfactory information or proof that there was decent coal to be mined.11 I respectfully declined adopting his views. Chase and Stanton sustained me, and Mr. Bates to an extent. Blair, who first favored it, cooled off, as the question was discussed, but the President and Smith were persistent.
It came out that the governments and rival parties in Central America denied the legality of the Chiriquí Grant – declared it was a bogus sale. The President concluded he ought to be better satisfied on this point, and would send out [an] agent. At this stage of the case Senator [Samuel C.] Pomeroy [a Kansas Republican] appeared and took upon himself a negro emigrating colonization scheme. Would himself go out and take with him a cargo of negroes, and hunt up a place for them – all professedly in the cause of humanity.
On Tuesday last the President brought forward the subject and desired the members of the Cabinet to each take it into serious consideration. He thought a treaty could be made to advantage, and territory secured to which the negroes could be sent. Several governments had signified their willingness to receive them. Mr. Seward said some were willing to take them without expense to us.
Mr. Blair made a long argumentative statement in favor of deportation. It would be necessary to rid the country of its black population, and some place must be found for them. He is strongly for deportation, has given the subject much thought, but yet seems to have no matured system which he can recommend. Mr. Bates was for compulsory deportation. The negro would not go voluntarily, had great local attachments and no enterprise. The President objected unequivocally to compulsion. Their emigration must be voluntary and without expense to themselves. Great Britain, Denmark, and perhaps other powers would take them [in their western hemisphere colonies]. I remarked there was no necessity for a treaty. Any person who desired to leave the country could do so now, whether white or black, and it was best to leave it so – a voluntary system; the emigrant who chose to leave our shores could and would go where there were the best inducements.
These remarks seemed to strike Seward, who, I perceive, has been in consultation with the President and some of the foreign ministers, and on his motion the subject was postponed, with an understanding it would be taken up to-day. Mr. Bates had a very well prepared paper which he read, expressing his views. Little was said by any one else except Seward, who followed up my suggestions. But the President is not satisfied; says he wants a treaty. Smith says the Senate would never ratify a treaty conferring any power, and advised that Seward should make a contract.
October 7, 1862: There was an indisposition to press the subject of negro emigration to Chiriquí at the meeting of the Cabinet, against the wishes and remonstrances of the States of Central America.
Thus ended the Chiriquí colonization scheme. It did not, however, end Lincoln’s interest in colonization, although Welles does not mention it in his diary. On December 31, 1862 (the day before the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued), he contracted with another promoter, Bernard Kock, to colonize up to 5,000 African Americans on the Île á Vache, a small island off the coast of Haiti. Using funds provided by two New York investors, Kock in April 1863 transported some 450 black men, women, and children to the island, where they supposedly would raise Sea Island cotton. Conditions on the island were wretched, however, and within a few months many of the colonists had died of deprivation or disease, and some others had fled to the Haitian mainland. In February 1864, the administration sent a ship to return the surviving colonists to the United States.12
In the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln, invoking discretionary authority Congress had given him in July 1862, announced that blacks would henceforth be enlisted as soldiers. About 180,000 of them served in the army – nine percent of all Union enlisted men. In contrast, as early as October 1861, Welles, with Lincoln’s tacit approval, was authorizing some naval officers to enlist African American sailors. Ultimately, they accounted for about 15 percent of all the enlisted men who served in the navy during the war. 13
January 10, 1863: The President sent for Stanton and myself; wished us to consult and do what we could for the employment of the contrabands, and as the Rebels threatened to kill all caught with arms in their hands, to employ them where they would not be liable to be captured. On the ships he thought they were well cared for, and suggested to Stanton that they could perform garrison duty at Memphis, Columbus [Kentucky], and other places and let the [white] soldiers go on more active service.
May 26, 1863: There was a sharp controversy between Chase and Blair on the subject of the Fugitive Slave Law, as attempted to be executed on one Hall here in the district. Both were earnest, Blair for executing the law, Chase for permitting the man to enter the service of the United States instead of being remanded into slavery. The President said this was one of those questions that always embarrassed him. It reminded him of a man in Illinois who was in debt and terribly annoyed by a pressing creditor, until finally the debtor assumed [i.e., pretended] to be crazy whenever the creditor broached the subject. “I,” said the President, “have on more than one occasion, in this room, when beset by extremists on this question, been compelled to appear to be very mad. I think,” he continued, “none of you will ever dispose of this subject without getting mad.”
June 6, 1863: The Irish element is dissatisfied with the service, and there is an unconquerable prejudice on the part of many whites against black soldiers. But all our increased military strength now comes from the negroes.14
August 13, 1863: [In a conversation with Chase] I said that no slave who had left his Rebel master could be restored, but that an immediate, universal, unconditional sweep, were the Rebellion crushed, might be injurious to both the slave and his owner, involving industrial and social difficulties and disturbances and that these embarrassments required deliberate, wise thought and consideration. The Proclamation of