1862 Civil War Newspaper NEGR0ES Send EMIGRATION Letter To Abraham Lincoln
Item History & Price
| Reference Number: Avaluer:5119737 |
1862 Civil War newspaper with printing of a letter sent by Free N-groes in the US to ABRAHAM LINCOLN regarding EMIGRATION of Free n-groes to Panama to set up a colony there for Blacks - inv # 4H-102SEE PHOTO----- COMPLETE, ORIGINAL Civil War NEWSPAPER, the NY Herald dated Nov 3, 1862. This newspaper contains back page "stacked" headlines and prints a letter sent by "Colored People of the District of Columbia" regarding Lincoln's pla...n to send US N-groes to CHIRAQUI Provence in Panama in an attempt to help solve the FREE NEGR0 "problem" in the US.President Abraham Lincoln had long supported colonization as a plausible solution to the problem of slavery, and pursued colonization plans throughout his presidency. In 1862, Congress approved $600, 000 to fund Lincoln's plan for colonizing Blacks "in a climate congenial to them", and granted Lincoln broad executive powers to orchestrate colonization. Lincoln immediately created an Emigration Office within the Department of the Interior and instructed the State Department to acquire suitable land. The first major plan considered would have sent employed free Blacks as coal miners in Chiriquí Province, Panama (then part of Gran Colombia). Volunteers were promised 40 acres of land and a job in the mines; Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy, whom Lincoln had appointed to oversee the plan, had also purchased mules, yokes, tools, wagons, seeds, and other supplies to support a potential colony. Pomeroy accepted 500 of the 13, 700 people who applied for the job. However, the plan was canceled by the end of the year—due perhaps to Latin American and British opposition, or to a discovery that Chiriquí's coal was of poor quality.Like Liberia, an independent Black nation, Haiti was also considered a good place to colonize freedpeople from the U.S. As the Chiriquí plan was hitting its stride in 1862, Lincoln was developing another plan to colonize the small island of Île à Vache near Haiti. Lincoln struck a deal with businessman Bernard Kock, who had obtained rights to lease the island for cultivation and wood-cutting. 453 Blacks, mostly young men from the Tidewater region around occupied Hampton, Virginia, volunteered to colonize the island. On April 14, 1863, they left Fort Monroe in the "Ocean Ranger". Kock confiscated all of the money possessed by the colonists and did not pay their wages. Initial reports suggested dire conditions, though these were later disputed. A number of colonists died in the first year. 292 survivors from the original group remained on the island and 73 had moved to Aux Cayes; most were restored to the U.S. by a mission of the Navy in February 1864. Congress rescinded Lincoln's colonization authority in July 1863.Lincoln continued to pursue colonization plans, particularly in the British West Indies, but none came to fruition. The American Colonization Society settled a few hundred people in Liberia during the war, and several thousand more in the five years following.Text of the letter:"To the President: SIR: The undersigned, on behalf of their colored brethren, and of themselves, have called upon your Excellency to learn when we can take our departure to the land promised us by yourself in the address made to us in this, your Executive mansion. We have learned from the Hon. Senator POMEROY, the Agent of Emigration, whom you appointed to conduct us to Chirlqui, that he is ready, his equipment engaged, his provisions for the voyage bought; that a suitable vessel has been found; that the consent of the Government, with its agreement to receive us as citizens with equal rights and obligations, has been obtained; that he only waits your orders to announce the day of sailing, and that he can sail in about one week if the order is given. Many of us, acting upon your promise to send us as soon as one hundred families were ready, have sold our furniture, have given up our little homes, to go in this first voyage; and now we find that there is uncertainty and delay, which is embarrassing us and reducing our scanty means, until fears are being created that these means being exhausted, poverty in a still worse form may be our winter prospect. We have seen it stated in the newspapers that you do not intend to let us depart. We are not willing to believe that your Excellency would invite us to make arrangements to go -- would tell us that we could not live prosperously here -- would create hopes and stimulate us to struggle for national independence and respectable equality, and when we had made ourselves ready for the effort, in confident belief of the integrity of the promise, that its realization will be withheld. Congress has placed the power and the means solely in the hands of your Excellency, to aid in removing us. You began the movement; you appointed Senator POMEROY, in whom not only the colored people, but the whole country have confidence, to see that justice should be done us in our removal. He has said he is ready. We therefore earnestly beg that your Excellency will now give him the explicit orders to sail, before the cold weather sets in to pinch us here; before the storms of Winter shall make our voyage a dangerous one." Very good condition. 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