To William H. Seward1Jump to section
The Secretary of State is directed not to countersign the within contract, or to affix the seal of the United States thereto, but to retain the instrument under advisement. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Annotation
[1] DS, DNA FS RG 59, Miscellaneous Letters. The accompanying contract between Bernard Kock ``formerly of New Orleans'' and the U.S. government, December 31, 1862, called for transporting and colonizing five thousand Negroes on Vache Island, a dependency of Haiti. Seward wrote Lincoln on January