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]
Coming in February 2026: Unable to Escape This Toil
Available now – Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
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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.
The dean of all Abraham Lincoln scholars passed away on March 31, 2025. He was 101. Wayne Calhoun Temple, known to everyone as “Doc,” celebrated his 101st birthday on February 5th.
Abraham Lincoln stood at the podium in the U.S. House of Representative chambers on July 27, 1848. His topic – the presidential question. Notwithstanding the negative reaction to his previous “spot resolutions” speech, Lincoln was still considered an effective speaker and thus was called upon to help convince people that Zachary Taylor was the correct choice as the Whig nominee for president. Lincoln had strongly supported the nomination of Taylor over the aging Henry Clay, previously Lincoln’s beau ideal of a statesman. He even spoke at the nominating convention in favor of Taylor.
Join me and author Michael Vorenberg on Thursday, March 13, 2025, for the White House Historical Association’s History Happy Hour. The program is free and begins at 6 pm ET. 
The Annual Abraham Lincoln Institute (ALI) Symposium is set for March 22, 2025, at historic Ford’s Theatre in downtown Washington, DC. The full day program starts at 9 am and runs to 5 pm.
In February 1860, the western-bred Abraham Lincoln must have been astonished by the hustle and bustle around lower New York City. Having crossed the Hudson River from Jersey City to Manhattan, Lincoln made his way to the Astor House, one of most luxurious hotels in New York City, conveniently located near City Hall and Publishers Row (aka, Newspaper Row or Printing House Square) housing the city’s most important newspapers. New York City had grown by over fifty percent just in the last decade, many of whom were immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and other European nations. If Lincoln’s room was on the ground floor of the Astor House, he would have looked out on St. Paul’s Chapel, built in 1766 and where George Washington attended services immediately after taking the oath of office as the first president of the United States. No doubt Lincoln would have looked into the chapel. Today, from a vantage point on Broadway, you can see the new One World Trade Center looming behind the Chapel’s historic spire. From the other side, standing in the burying ground facing the skyscraper, is a “Bell of Hope” rung every year on September 11 to reflect both the mourning of that day and the Chapel’s role as a refuge during that warm, clear cataclysmic day in 2001.
While Abraham Lincoln had a well-deserved reputation as a soft touch during the Civil War, readily finding excuses to offer mercy to Union soldiers who had fallen asleep or abandoned their posts, he also approved the hanging of the only slave trader ever to be executed by the United States. Captain Nathaniel Gordon was a repeat offender, caught with nearly 900 enslaved men, women, and children crammed into the tiny space below decks off the coast of Congo. But Gordon wasn’t particularly worried. For the first 40+ years of the law that made international slave trading illegal and punishable by death, no man was ever executed. Why now? And why by Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln was a steady proponent of Internal Improvements projects in Illinois. That said, there were problems. The few projects initiated randomly to encourage widespread district support resulted in a hodgepodge of disconnected rail lines, many of which ran only a few miles to nowhere in particular. Most projects simply disappeared.
