Summary: "Lincoln blames the Free Blacks for the war," Holzer explains. "[He] says, if it wasn't for your presence here this wouldn't be happening. Go where the ban is not upon you, he tells them. Go to the Caribbean, go to Africa." Watch the Video On Aug. 14 1862, Abraham Lincoln hosted a “Deputation of Free Negroes” at the White House, led by the Rev. Joseph Mitchell, commissioner of emigration for the Interior Department. It was the first time African Americans had been invited to the White House on a policy matter. The five men were there to discuss a scheme that even a contemporary described as a “simply absurd” piece of “charlatanism”: resettling emancipated slaves on a 10,000-acre parcel of land in present-day Panama. Edward M. Thomas, John F. Cook, Cornelius C. Clark, John T. Costin, and Benjamin McCoy—met with Lincoln in August 1862 to debate his proposal for a black colony in Central America Cook, Costin, and Clark were members of the Social Civil and Statistical Association, A black city-based organization. The SCSA had sought to "banish several emigration promoters from Washington" weeks before the delegation met with Lincoln. Many of the SCSA's members were connected with the prestigious Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church.
