e colored persons with their
own consent at some place without the United States. The President
continues: "I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I
strongly favor colonization and yet I wish to say there is an
objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country,
which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious. It is insisted
that their presence would injure and displace white labor and white
laborers. Is it true then that colored people can displace any more
white labor by being free than by remaining slaves? If they stay in
their old places they jostle no white laborers; if they leave their
old places they leave them open to white laborers. Logically then
there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation even without
deportation would probably enhance the wages of white labor and very
surely would not reduce them. Reduce the supply of black labor by
colonizing the black laborer out of the country and by precisely so
much you increase the demand for and wages of white labor."[17]

Pursuant to the power given the President, negotiations were begun
with the foreign powers having territory or colonies within the
tropics, through the Secretary of State, W. H. Seward, mainly to
ascertain if there was any desire on the part of these governments for
entering into negotiation on the subject of colonization. Negotiations
were to be begun only with those powers which might desire the benefit
of such emigration. It was suggested that a ten years' treaty should
be signed between the United States and the countries desiring
immigration. The latter were required to give specific guarantees for
"the perpetual freedom, protection and equal rights of the colonies
and their descendants." Before and after the transmission of the
proposals to foreign countries, propositions came from the Danish
Island of St. Croix in the West Indies, the Netherland Colony of St.
Swinam, the British Colony of Guiana, the British Colony of Honduras,
the Republic of Hayti, the Republic of Liberia, New Granada and
Ecuador. The Republics of Central America, Guatemala, Salvador, Costa
Rica, and Nicaragua, objected to such emigration as undesirable.[20]

Great Britain rejected the proposal as a governmental proposition on
the ground that it might involve the government in some difficulty
with the United States government because of fugitives, and therefore
expressed her disagreement with such a convention. Seward had as