On April 10, 1861, two days before the Confederacy opened fire on Fort Sumter, Ambrose W. Thompson met with Lincoln to gain support for a coal mining project in the Chiriqui region of the Granadian Confederation (now Panama near the border with Costa Rica). Thompson headed a corporation that had been created to provide coal to the U.S. Navy. Lincoln again relied on Smithsonian Secretary Joseph Henry for scientific advice. Henry wrote to John Peter Lesley, one of the leading geologists in the United States and an expert on coal. In his confidential letter he said he was writing on behalf of President Lincoln and Secretary of State Seward to get Lesley’s opinion on the value of the coal deposit in the Chiriqui district. Interest in the coal was two-fold. It was needed for coal-fired boilers for steam ships and railroad locomotives, but it also offered itself as a possible solution to the likely emancipation of enslaved people. Lincoln and others had hoped that freed slaves (and other free blacks) could be relocated to avoid the problems of a racially mixed society. Should the Chiriqui coal be viable, it could serve as an economic basis for such a colony. Henry asked Lesley to give him “in addition to your opinion derived from general scientific principles any reliable information you may possess relative to this matter.”
In his reply, Lesley gave the worst possible news to Henry and Lincoln’s ears. The coal was tertiary coal, also known as lignite or brown coal (as opposed to bituminous black coal) consisting of only thirty to sixty percent carbon (anthracite hard coal is eighty to ninety percent carbon). Thus, Lesley noted, the Chiriqui coal was “as nearly worthless as any ‘fuel’ can be.” He further opined that “the property will always be of little or no value to its owners” and warned that the government would likely regret any plan to enter into contract for the land. “If I have any influence on the government,” Lesley wrote to Henry, “I should decidedly use it to dissuade from touching Chiriqui coal.”
Lincoln was not immediately convinced by Lesley’s report as he was still looking for a solution to the problem that would be created by the end of slavery. On August 14, 1862 (after he had already drafted but not yet released the Emancipation Proclamation), Lincoln met with a delegation of freemen and advocated for the establishment of a black colony in Central America, most likely Chiriqui. According to a report in the National Intelligencer (August 16, 1862), Lincoln stated that he found the physical differences between the two races “a great disadvantage to us both, as I think. Your race suffers very greatly, many of them, by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence.” He admitted that slavery was, in his judgment, “the greatest wrong inflicted on any people,” but did not see how even freedom from slavery would improve their lot “on a continent [where] not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.”
While Lincoln had wanted to pursue Chiriqui further, the Central American nations of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica all made it clear they were opposed to any such colony. Eventually, Lincoln dropped the idea on Seward’s recommendation. Whether it was because the coal was of no value or the local opposition of the project is uncertain. Later Lincoln dropped the misconceived idea of colonization altogether.
[Photo credit: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons]
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
