In spite of the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln did not change his position that colonization of Negroes was the only solution to get rid of blacks. Addressing a Negro delegation in 1862, the president stressed the physical incompatibility of the two races and the fact that ‘on this broad continent, not a single man of your race is made the equal of a single man of ours.’ Inasmuch as Americans did not desire the further presence of the Negro population, Lincoln urged black men to look elsewhere: to Liberia, which had had a limited success, or preferably to Central America, where location, natural resources, and climate offered splendid opportunities. To follow through on his plan, Lincoln signed an agreement with Bernard Kock, a charlatan adventurer on 31 December 1862, providing for the settling of five thousand American Negroes on Cow Island at a cost to the government of $50 a head. Kock raised capital in New York for over four hundred Negroes to be shipped to Cow Island, where they were abandoned because of the greed and corruption of Kock and the Haitian officials. When reports of the fiasco filtered back to Washington, Lincoln issued a proclamation on 16 April 1863, canceling his contract with Kock.
