President Lincoln’s Plan to Save Freed Slaves? Exile Them in Central America

December 8, 2022
by Larry Waight +

If you were curious enough to have watched the History Channel’s recent homage to President Abraham Lincoln, you know that the broadcast offered viewers more than 7 hours of riveting docudrama that told the story of this iconic man’s rise to power as the 16th president of the U.S.

You’re not alone if you were impressed by the actors and noted historians contributing to this series. Based on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book “Leadership: In Turbulent Times,” this documentary took viewers through time, relying upon commentators like President Barack Obama, General Stanley McCrystal, and academic historians to reveal little-known details about Lincoln’s attitude toward slavery. What you may not know is what part Belize played in events that shaped his term in office.

What to do with emancipated slaves?

High-level discussions between Lincoln, his lawmakers, and generals led to a decision to send freed slaves abroad, but no specific country was named during those lengthy negotiations. According to Abraham Lincoln Historical Society scholars, President Lincoln’s first choice was to return freed slaves to their original homeland in Liberia, despite the fact that slaves had been captured from other African nations as well.

Initial attempts to fund and carry out deportation on a grand scale originated with the newly formed American Colonialization Society in 1816, supported by the likes of Henry Clay, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Daniel Webster, Francis Scott Key, and Bushrod Washington, but this effort proved to be harder than anyone imagined.

Choosing an alternative to Africa

The first Society-backed repatriation efforts dragged on. Only 13,000 freed slaves were sent to Liberia in 25 years. Ultimately, the cost, logistics, and backlash associated with this effort proved too laborious to sustain, despite Congressional backing. Proponents of this movement needed a closer geographic location and identified Central America as the ideal destination.

With that decision made, said members of the Colonization Society, President Lincoln authorized expenditures that would be used for transportation, colonization, and settlement “in some tropical country beyond the limits of the United States, of such persons of the African race.” But where?

A never-ending migration

A determination was made by the government to resettle freed slaves in Panama. But Central American governments rose to protest of the establishment of a colony in Panama’s Chiquiri Province. To make certain no Central American country would ever again be chosen as an alternative, Central American lawmakers drafted the 1850 Clayton Bulwer Treaty prohibiting the U.S. and UK from establishing Central American colonies.

But this did not end efforts. Lincoln was facing elections at this point and badly needed another region willing to resettle freed slaves. After numerous political machinations, it was decided that Haiti would suffice and just before Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation, 5,000 African Americans were sent to Ile de Vache.

But initial attempts to set up a colony in Haiti proved devastating as deportees began to die off due to illnesses for which they had no natural immunity. The colonization effort seemed doomed to failure until 1863 when Lincoln signed an agreement with the British to send free slaves to Belize. This third attempt proved just as untenable as the last two.

A colonization plan that never destined to be

One major effort was made to bolster this decision: African Americans John Willis Menard and the legendary Frederick Douglass made several “scouting trips” to Belize, returning to North America to report on this last-ditch effort. In the end, the recruitment of freed slaves to fight for the union plus failed experiments in Panama, Haiti, and finally Belize put an end to this scheme once and for all.

To seal the fate of this notion, the British decided at the last minute to declare neutrality, pulling out of the agreement with the U.S. to relocate slaves to Belize by saying that England had no desire to take sides in the Civil War. Aided and abetted by rampant mismanagement, corruption, and administrative hurdles too daunting to overcome within Lincoln’s administration, the idea was completely abandoned in 1864.

Lessons to be learned from a failed idea

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All documents associated with these failed attempts to relocate freed slaves to Central America have disappeared, never again to be found within U.S. archives. Historians say that the only reason we know anything about these attempts to set up Central American colonies came to light via letters sent back and forth between British and Union officials that were saved and ultimately safeguarded within U.K. archives.

What can be learned from these attempts, even when driven by what Lincoln and like-minded people called logical motives? Sending freed slaves to yet another foreign nation when they have already been exiled from one homeland seemed unnecessarily cruel and destined to backfire. In the end, even the smallest Caribbean countries stood up to two powerhouses – The U.S. and Great Britain.

As Spanish philosopher George Santayana once noted, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” This adage could as easily have been uttered by Lincoln and other parties who devised this blatantly unrealistic plan in which Belize became an unwitting partner in U.S. efforts to relocate U.S. citizens simply because of the color of their skin.