Lincoln Almost Sent the Freed Slaves to Colonize British Honduras

An Interesting Bit of History

Welcome back all, and thanks for reading. Today’s article is a guest article provided by Samuel Kimzey (@SamuelMKimzey on X), a grad student at Hillsdale, and is a fascinating bit of history about which I knew next to nothing before reading this article. Written as a review of a book called Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement, written by Phillip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, it’s about a terrifically interesting subject that is interesting both as a “what if” though experiment and just as a historical novelty: the idea of sending freed slaves to colonize South American countries, amongst elswhere, and Lincoln’s involvement in the project after the beginning of the war. I’m no fan of Lincoln, but I found this subject to be wonderfully interesting and well worth reading, so I wanted to share it with you, and Mr. Kimzey agreed to provide an article on it. Enjoy! And, as always, please tap the heart to “like” this article if you get something out of it, as that is how Substack knows to promote it!

Listen to the audio version of this article here:

[Audio] Lincoln Wanted to Send the Freed Slaves to Honduras

Historians do not dispute Abraham Lincoln’s support for the prominent American antebellum movement for gradual emancipation and the colonization of freed blacks. In Colonization After Emancipation, however, historians Phillip Magness and Sebastian Page offer a vital contribution to historical and political scholarship by evaluating whether Lincoln ever truly abandoned his interest in the colonization of freed blacks.

Doing so, the authors identify two standard interpretations espoused by historians to explain Lincoln’s statements and actions regarding colonization from the Emancipation Proclamation to the end of his life.

The first is the “lullaby” or “sugar coat” thesis. It is the idea that, from 1862 onward, despite his public mentions in 1862 of attempting colonization, Lincoln “never really intended to carry [colonization] through, but its suggestion lulled the public’s anxiety about emancipation and bought time to prepare them for a more egalitarian racial future”.¹ This view is recognizable in historians such as George Fredrickson, James McPherson, and Gabor Boritt.

The second interpretation is the “change of heart” thesis, which espouses that Lincoln originally held racial views standard in his day (on the inferiority of blacks and the incompatibility of whites and blacks living together in society), but liberalized his perspective on race toward the end of his life.² This view is recognizable in Fredrickson, as well as in Eric Foner.

However, the authors consider both of these theses to be too simplistic and insufficient given the historical record of Lincoln’s actions regarding colonization, even after the Emancipation Proclamation, a premise they support with thorough research and analysis of hitherto neglected documents in the British and American National Archives, focusing on the period between 1863–1865. Particularly, they analyze the negotiations occurring at Lincoln’s request between the British government (Foreign and Colonial Offices) and representatives from his own administration (particularly the Emigration Office).

From their examination of the neglected historical record of events and documents, Magness and Page reach a modest contention in Colonization After Emancipation: “most historians have been far too quick to assign closure to Lincoln’s colonization program … The upshot of the evidence is that colonization remained on the table well beyond the Emancipation Proclamation, and its persistence until the end of Lincoln’s presidency ought not to be readily dismissed”.³ Such is interesting because, though historians have long acknowledged Lincoln’s support for colonization projects prior to his Emancipation Proclamation, Magness and Page focus on the underrecognized “second wave of colonization programs after January 1, 1863, among them the highly developed British Honduras Project”, which, despite their being overlooked, are “also a part of Lincoln’s legacy”.⁴

Colonization in Latin America

Most of Colonization After Emancipation chronicles the detailed and intricate history of the Caribbean and Latin American colonization projects Lincoln pursued between 1863 and 1865.

The story begins in 1862, when Congress appropriated $600,000 for colonization efforts. Though it would eventually rescind this funding in the summer of 1864,⁵ President Lincoln established an Emigration Office within the Department of the Interior to oversee the colonization projects. To lead the effort, he placed in charge of the Emigration Office James Mitchell, an Irish clergyman who was simultaneously staunchly anti-slavery and pro-colonization.⁶

The colonization projects considered by Mitchell’s Emigration Office included potential colony sites in the Chiriquí region of Panama, Îl à Vache off the coast of Haiti, British Honduras and Guiana, and Dutch Surinam. The undertaking which came closest to success, and the one focused on in the greatest detail by Magness and Page, was the scheme to colonize British Honduras (i.e., present-day Belize in Latin America).

In fact, of all the projects considered, the British Honduras scheme was the most developed and closest to actual enactment. To a great extent, this was because it made some sense and solved multiple problems: the British Honduras Company, which had a near-monopolistic power over the British colonization efforts in the steamy Latin American land, sought cheap, agricultural labor to fuel its settlement and economy-building efforts. Such could be provided by freed American blacks, who would thus not have to remain in America—satisfying the aims of the pro-colonization lobby.

Further, the BHC was enthusiastic enough about the venture that it agreed to finance the venture itself, so the U.S. government would not have to financially extend itself yet further in a period of immensely expensive war by providing direct funding for the speculative project. Instead, it would merely need to grant permission for free blacks to emigrate to British Honduras and Guiana.⁷ Moreover, the BHC was prepared, in 1863, to address the problem of settlement of the freed slaves by proclaiming three American ports as ports of emigration from which free blacks might emigrate to British Honduras to settle there.⁸

Lincoln favored this partnership with the British Empire to colonize Honduras not only because of those material and practical advantages, but because he wanted to send the black colonists to a place where they would have the greatest possible security of rights and safety.⁹ Further, he considered a similar plan to colonize British Guiana in South America with freed slaves.¹⁰

Why Colonization Failed

Why then did these colonization projects fail, particularly the well-developed project to colonize British Honduras? Magness and Page offer several reasons.

For one, while the British Honduras Company favored black emigration to the colonies, the British government became reticent to engage in such an endeavor due to the potential political repercussions of accepting contrabands – slaves emancipated by the war from Southern masters. This was politically volatile because it could threaten British neutrality in the war and suggest to the Confederacy that the British were taking the Union side.¹¹ Given the reliance of British textile manufacturers on Southern cotton, other British commercial relationships with the South, and Britain’s tepidly pro-Confederate stance in the first years of the war, a policy so likely to alienate the South was deemed inexpedient.

But the fault for failure was not wholly British, as project-wrecking political complications also emerged within the U.S. government.

Lincoln knew that foreign treaties to effect colonization via settling freed slaves in colonial lands were unlikely to be successfully ratified by the Senate – hence why he favored the British Honduras scheme; the private funding from the BHC that stood at the core of it meant no formal treaty would be necessary, and thus no approval from the Senate.¹² That was important, as Senate approval would likely have been nonforthcoming. For example, Lincoln sought to negotiate a treaty with the Dutch that would allow the U.S. to send freed blacks to labor as colonists in Dutch Surinam, but this project died when Secretary of State William Seward accurately judged that the Senate would not ratify such a treaty.¹³

Another issue for the colonization push is that President Lincoln faced significant internal resistance to it from within his own cabinet. Namely, the War Department, headed by Edwin Stanton, opposed the colonization projects following the Emancipation Proclamation because Stanton wanted to recruit the free blacks and contrabands to fight as soldiers for the Union cause,¹⁴ a pressing necessity as volunteers ran out and conscription started to cause draft riots. Similarly, Secretary of State Seward was a longtime abolitionist and not an avid supporter of colonization, much like the Radical Republicans in Congress.¹⁵

On that same point, Magness and Page recount a feud within the Department of the Interior between Secretary of the Interior John Usher and James Mitchell, head of the Emigration Office, that led to the shutdown of the Emigration Office. Throughout 1864, Mitchell tried to build support in Congress for the colonization projects, but Usher steadfastly opposed him and his project while trying to get rid of him, despite Lincoln remaining “sympathetic to Mitchell”.¹⁶ With Mitchell unable to build support, Congress rescinded the colonization fund in the summer of 1864. Attorney General James Speed then judged that the revocation of the colonization account meant that the Emigration Office must be shuttered and Mitchell’s position dissolved.¹⁷

Overall, even before the office was shuttered and his position dissolved, internal resistance to the colonization plans from the Radical Republican side reached such a great and debilitating extent that James Mitchell, Lincoln’s ardently pro-colonization man in the Emigration Office, complained of the “‘inequitable and unreasonable’ New England faction [demanding] ‘entire control of the Negro Question’”.¹⁸

But the story doesn’t end there, as Magness and Page trace a number of other interesting threads in the book, such as the fact that the British Honduras Company ended up recruiting a number of white Southerners fleeing the lost cause of the Confederacy as colonist-settlers.¹⁹ On the other side, a number of prominent free blacks, such as Charles Babcock and J. Willis Menard, registered their support for these voluntary colonization projects, and the BHC was able to leverage the black abolitionist movement into support for the colonization project amongst the free black population of the U.S.²⁰ Menard, who worked as Mitchell’s clerk in the Emigration Office and in 1868 became the first black elected to Congress, continued to advocate for colonization late into the 1870s.²¹

Lincoln’s View on Colonization and Race

In attempting to answer the enduring perplexity of assessing what were Lincoln’s “final” views on colonization – and hence on race – Magness and Page do not overstate their case, instead simply arguing for a more mixed portrait than is often presented by historians.

This is particularly true of their focus on the British Honduras project, through which they demonstrate how Lincoln “was a principal driving force behind the British project, and he sustained it through 1863, by personal intervention when necessary. If Lincoln contributed to the scheme’s demise it was only by abstention”.²² Similarly, though Lincoln did sign the 1864 Congressional budget and thus rescinded the colonization fund, that is not definitive proof of anything.²³ Political complexities always surround budget debates, especially in the political tension of the dismal wartime environment and the political election of 1864.

Perhaps the strongest evidence of Lincoln’s views comes from James Mitchell; he remained a staunch believer in Lincoln’s support for the project, and told people to the end of his life that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was “strictly a colonization document”.²⁴ On a similar note, Union General Benjamin Butler recounted a conversation with Lincoln in April 1865, just days before Lincoln’s death, in which Lincoln supposedly asked him about colonization; Butler supposedly suggested the proposal of free black colonists digging a Panama Canal. Many historians have been skeptical of Butler’s account, but Magness and Page argue that the substance (if not the exact details) of the story and Lincoln’s seeming support for such a project is more likely than not.²⁵

Overall, Lincoln’s views on slavery, race, and colonization were quite nuanced and complex, defying modern attempts at simplistic and moralistic classification, with Magness and Page agreeing with historian Henry Louis Gates that Lincoln’s views on the issues “were often three separate issues”.²⁶ If Lincoln continued to support racial separation and colonization to the end of his life, that puts him at variance with the currently prevalent progressive sentiments of racial egalitarianism. But is that at all relevant for the serious student of history and politics? Lincoln believed support for colonization was benevolent, given he “continuously offered his schemes as a response to the oppression of free blacks and slaves”.²⁷

Even Lincoln’s “real but somewhat noncommittal interest in black enfranchisement” is not necessarily at odds with his attempts to support colonization,²⁸ for the two policies weren’t necessarily exclusive, nor was the American political future at all certain during his presidency. Even at the war’s end, colonization “arguably still held some appeal for political moderates and in regions where it had always been more popular”, proved for instance by the fact that Republican governor Jacob Dolson Cox got elected in Ohio with plans for “mass racial separation” within the U.S.²⁹

A Brief Review of Colonization After Emancipation

Colonization after Emancipation by Magness and Page renders a valuable contribution to Lincoln scholarship, as it adds critical color to his views on colonization as a solution to slavery’s aftermath.

However, the book is minutely detailed and painstaking, and the prose is neither particularly smooth nor engaging. Together, that renders the book, though it is short, into one that is not necessarily easy to read. Further, it is very narrowly focused on the matter of colonization, specifically the select events related to British Honduras and like projects within the final few years of Lincoln’s administration, which gives it little appeal to those outside the field or uninterested in the specific question of Lincoln’s views on colonization.

However, there are good qualities of this little book too. The best is that it explores the complexity of Lincoln’s views while eschewing simplistic categorizations. Lincoln’s own record of public speeches, such as his 1854 Peoria Speech and his 1857 Springfield speech on the Dred Scott decision, openly acknowledge his perplexity with regard to solving the problem of American slavery and the problem of a large population of freed blacks if slavery were to be successfully eliminated.

1857 finds Lincoln lamenting that “no political party, as such, is now doing anything directly for colonization … Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and, at the same time, favorable to, or, at least, not against, our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime, and we shall find a way to do it, however great the task may be.”³⁰ Magness and Page record how Lincoln sought to undertake this great task, and how Lincoln’s efforts ran into the very obstacles of political unfeasibility that he himself anticipated and lamented in 1857.

Many historians have seen Lincoln’s support for colonization as a stain or contradiction on his record, yet his own statements and the historical record detailed by these authors suggest that Lincoln approached colonization primarily as a statesman: “Ever the experimenter and always the problem solver, Lincoln likely saw colonization as one of many avenues to approach an anguishing difficulty that had no simple resolution”.³¹

In hindsight, present readers may judge that colonization was always an impossibility – perhaps morally questionable – but Lincoln seriously pursued it as a possibility, and his untimely assassination kept us from knowing what he might have done had he lived longer. Postbellum colonization would not have been an easy or smooth path, but Reconstruction and integration were hardly smooth or successful either.

Samuel Kimzey is a doctoral student in the Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College. He holds a B.A. In History and Christian Studies from Bluefield College, an M.A. in Humanities from the University of Dallas, and previously taught at Valley Classical School in Blacksburg, Virginia. His writing has been featured in The American Mind, American Reformer, The Federalist, New Guard Press, The Roanoke Times, and at The Beza Institute for Reformed Classical Education, where he is a contributing editor.

If you found value in this article, please consider liking it using the button below, and upgrading to become a paid subscriber. That subscriber revenue supports the project and aids my attempts to share these important stories, and what they mean for you

1. Pgs. 8; 118

2. Pg. 9

3. Pgs. 124-5

4. Pg. 118

5. Pgs. 1, 93 – 95

6. Pg. 13

7. Pgs. 15 – 20, 26, 35 – 38

8. Pgs. 23, 52

9. Pg 15

10. Pgs. 55 – 62

11. Pgs. 17, 21 – 22

12. Pgs. 26, 36 – 38

13. Pgs. 73 – 81

14. Pgs. 33 – 34

15. Pgs. 41, 50 – 52, 78, 106 – 108

16. Pgs. 92 – 95, 98

17. Pg 99

18. Pg. 102

19. Pg. 53

20. Pgs. 29 – 33, 43 – 48

21. Pgs. 100 – 101

22. Pg. 123

23. Pg. 94

24. Pg. 104

25. Pgs. 109 – 116

26. Pg. 121

27. Pg. 125

28. Pg. 127

29. Pg. 116

30. You can read the speech here: https://msa.maryland.gov/megafile/msa/speccol/sc5300/sc5339/000091/000000/000004/restricted/dred_scott/lincoln.htm

31. Pg. 126