Abraham Lincoln quarterly. [Vol. 6, no. 3]

172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN QUARTERLY
wrote the president urging colonization at Chiriqui, and
pointing out that a contract with a private company would
provide the easiest and quickest means of beginning such a
project because no treaty or additional legislation of any kind
would be necessary.33
On May 15, 1862, the Reverend James Mitchell of Indiana., later appointed Commissioner of Emigration, presented
Lincoln with additional reasons why the Negroes should be
colonized. Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people, he declared; as long as the Negroes continued to live with the whites they would constitute a threat
to the national life. Family life might also collapse and the
increase of "the mixed breed bastards," might some day challenge the supremacy of the white man. Mitchell recommended the gradual colonization of the Negroes in Central
America and Mexico. That region had once known a great
empire and could become one again. This continent could
then be divided between a race of mixed bloods and the
Anglo-American.34
The colonization issue was permitted to lapse until July
when Lincoln, seeking to ease the pressure for outright emancipation, appealed to the border state congressmen to agree
to a scheme of compensated emancipation. He pointed out
that it offered a chance to sell slaves to the government and
not run the risk of losing their full value later. In order to
quiet the fear of too many freedmen in their midst, Lincoln
again urged colonization as the solution. "Room in South
America for colonization can be obtained cheaply, and in
abundance; and when numbers shall be large enough to be
company and encouragement for one another, the freed people will not be so reluctant to go." 35
13 Caleb B. Smith to Abraham Lincoln, May 16, 1862. Ibid., pp. 10- 11.
"~James Mitchell to Abraham Lincoln, May 18, 1862. Lincoln Papers. Vol. 76,
f. 16044.
35 Abraham Lincoln to Congress, July 12, 1862. Ibid.., Vol. 8o, f. 17004-17009.