FREDERICK DOUGLASS TO SAMUEL CLARKE POMEROY¹Samuel Clarke Pomeroy (1816-91) was born in Southampton, Massachusetts, and was educated at Amherst College. He became active in the Free Soil party and emigrated to Kansas in 1854 to fight the establishment of slavery there. Kansas Republicans elected him to two terms in the U.S. Senate (1861-73) where he was best known as an advocate of subsidies to western development. Unsubstantiated charges of bribing state legislators caused his defeat for reelection, after which Pomeroy moved to Washington, D.C. He and Douglass remained friends throughout his life. Douglass to Samuel C. Pomeroy, 12 November 1874, Samuel C. Pomeroy to Douglass, 14 June 1883, General Correspondence File, reel 2, frames 761-62, reel 3, frames 731-32, FD Papers, DLC; Wilder, , 241, 457, 521, 570; , 5:60; , 12:69-70; , 15:54-55.

Rochester, [N.Y.] 27 Aug[ust] 1862.
HON. S. S. POMEROY—

MY DEAR SIR:

I assent to neither the justice nor the wisdom of colonizing the free col-
ored people in Central America,²The final push for black colonization was put in motion after the passage of the Second Confiscation Act in July 1862. Under the act, $500,000 was allocated for the colonization of recent freedmen. The site chosen for black colonization was the Chiriquí Province of Panama in Central America, then part of Colombia. The American commissioners chose the site on the Pacific Coast on account of its purported abundance of coal deposits. Senator Pomeroy started a recruitment drive for the settlement, tentatively named Lincolnia, in the summer of 1862 at the behest of the president. The plan ran into problems after the coal deposits were found to be of an inferior grade and few free blacks signed on to lead the effort. Lincoln finally abandoned the plan in response to diplomatic protests from several Central American nations. Michael Vorenberg, “Abraham Lincoln and the Politics of Black Colonization,” , 14:1-45 (Summer 1993).
or elsewhere out of the United States.
The American government could far better employ the energies of this
people by stimulating their friendship for the country, and giving them
an opportunity, in common with others, to protect and defend its institu-
tions. But I am not now to discuss with you the policy of this colonization
scheme. The power and responsibility for the measure belong alike to
the government. Option is yours—necessity ours. It is a hard alternative.
To see my children usefully and happily settled in this, the land of their
birth and ancestors, has been the hope and ambition of my manhood; but
events stronger than any power I can oppose to them, have convinced my
son³Lewis H. Douglass. that the chances here are all against him, and he desires to join your
colony,⁴In the fall of 1862, Lewis Douglass was one of 500 free African Americans who signed up to go to Central America as part of a colonization scheme supported by the U.S. government. Before the chartered ship could sail, however, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A month later, instead of leaving the country, Lewis enlisted in the U.S. Army. Bell, , 129-30; Sterling, , 298. and perhaps a younger brother also. * * * * I have never ceased to
remember you, and to observe with pleasure and gratitude your fidelity to
liberty and humanity in the high position you now occupy. I shall be glad