Chiriqui Colonization Project Collection

The Chiriqui Colonization Project was an initiative proposed by President Abraham Lincoln and Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy to resettle formerly enslaved African Americans from the United States to “Linconia,” a new colony in the Chiriqui province of Panama. The proposed project hoped to resettle 13,000 formerly enslaved persons from Washington, D.C. to Panama with the promise of immediate jobs in coal mines.

President Lincoln began early campaigning for the colonization project in 1861 in his annual message to Congress. As emancipation became a more pressing political question, Lincoln pursued colonization projects simultaneously, possibly to appease conservative critics of emancipation. During a July 21, 1862 cabinet meeting he proposed enlisting Black troops and using them as laborers to colonize in Central America. He then held a delegation meeting on August 14, 1862 with prominent Black leaders to discuss the Chiriqui project plan. Black abolitionists criticized the idea immediately; Frederick Douglass declared that Lincoln’s plan sounded like a desire to expel Black people from the United States.

Despite opposition, Lincoln pushed on with the project, ordering coal deposits tested in Chiriqui, signing contracts with Ambrose W. Thompson, and appointing Senator Samuel Pomeroy as an agent in the colonization project. The president’s actions were called into question, first by Joseph Henry, a scientist assigned to testing the deposits, who found the coal of the lowest quality, and later by members of the American Colonization Society, who had heard of improper dealings by both Thompson and Pomeroy. In addition, when Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation in September of 1862, Central American countries objected to the Chiriqui project. The project was officially rejected by a cabinet reversal in September of 1862 because of the diplomatic conflict the project incurred and it was suspended shortly after the Proclamation was issued in 1863.