In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

73 If historians have tended to underestimate the complexity of Lincoln’s abstract beliefs on colonization, there has been a danger, too, of oversimplifying the more down-to-earth questions of preference and timing which surround the emigration projects. In the conventional narrative, Chiriquí comes across as rejected outright, then superseded by the signing of the Île à Vache contract, and that shortly before colonization falls into oblivion—whether consciously allowed by politicians or otherwise. In fact, the administration never formally abandoned the Chiriquí project but rather put it on ice for what it could not have been sure would be an indefinite term, while the president was still negotiating with the British even as the Île à Vache settlers put to sea. This was the natural extension and stated intent of Lincoln’s offer to “the several States situated within the Tropics” after regional opposition complicated the Chiriquí contract in late 1862. Given the ever-practical Lincoln’s willingness to experiment, it should come as no surprise that he had several pots on the boil at once. One astonishingly overlooked part of Civil War colonization history is the negotiations that the State Department undertook with the Netherlands for the better part of 1863, as another European empire responded positively to Seward’s September 30, 1862, circular. The Dutch effort ran concurrent with the British schemes and, if anything, makes for an easier project to follow, limited strictly to State Department channels but leaving not even a ghost in the relevant Interior Department records. As such it escaped the associated baggage of interdepartment political maneuvering that constantly imperiled the projects in British Honduras and neighboring Guiana. Robert F. Durden accorded the Dutch effort generous coverage in his study of the U.S. wartime minister to The Hague (and longtime NewYork Tribune columnist), James Shepherd Pike. As long ago as 1957, he rightly identified that “[t]his was much later than the foreign negotiations Chapter 7 Secretary Seward and the Dutch Treaty 74 Colonization after Emancipation are generally believed to have lasted, and the project reached a surprisingly advanced stage.”1 As with the plans for British Honduras and Guiana, the Dutch negotiations effectively died by early 1864 without concrete results and are actually harder to “read” than the others for insights into internal politics behind them. They left little beyond what exists in accompanying diplomatic records, since they apparently involved no more than normal, backroom ministerial negotiations, not involving a Hodge-like figure reporting from Washington or otherwise shedding light on Lincoln’s personal stance and actions.2 Nevertheless, the Dutch proposition was quite analogous to the president’s intentions for the British tropical possessions—the colony in question was Dutch Guiana, or Surinam—and its significance really lies in the very fact of its happening, complementing as it does the authors’ main focus on British Guiana and Honduras. The Netherlands minister to the United States, Roest Van Limburg, had in fact asked Seward as early as July 1862 if the administration would consider an emigration scheme, suggesting a term of five years for laborers and indicating that it was The Hague which had directed him to look into the matter.3 The secretary of state, true to form, expressed doubts over the prospects of success, since “it [was] believed the demand for laborers in that class in the military and naval service of the United States alone is sufficient to outweigh any inducement to their emigration abroad likely to be offered.” He added, however, that the Dutch government could submit an application to the Department of the Interior if it wished to proceed.4 Unsurprisingly, The Hague was therefore delighted at Seward’s more formal suggestion in the September circular, but negotiations would not get under way in earnest until mid-1863, at which point the Dutch foreign minister admitted to Pike that the matter “would not have remained so long unanswered if the Government of the King had been able to make that reply definitive, which it was impossible to do before the arrangements relative to the emigration of free laborers to Surinam could be determined.”5 Specifically, the Netherlands had, much like the British colonies, felt it necessary to pass new legislation to better meet the requirements of an influx of American contrabands, with William III decreeing two tailor-made ordinances in March 1863. This delay might account for why scholars looking for a more immediate response in the diplomatic dispatches have concluded that early Dutch interest went nowhere...

Share