Mr. Seward to Mr. Molina.
Sir: Your note of the 19th instant has been received and submitted to the President.
Congress, at its last session, passed laws which authorized the President to aid the colonization of persons of certain classes of African derivation, with their consent, in some tropical country, first obtaining the consent of the government of such country to receive such settlements and protect them in all the rights of freemen. The execution of these laws was devolved by the President upon the honorable the Secretary of the Interior. That officer is understood to have recognized the honorable Mr. Pomeroy as an agent for persons belonging to the specified classes, to aid and direct them in the choice of their locations and establishing their settlements. The general instructions which were given to him by the Secretary of the Interior expressly inhibited Mr. Pomeroy from attempting to make such location and settlement in any country whatever, without first having obtained the consent of the government of such country to protect the proposed settlement of such persons there with all the rights and privileges of freemen.
About the time when those instructions were in course of preparation, his excellency Señor Antonio Jose de Yrisarri, minister plenipotentiary of the republics of Guatemala and Salvador near the United States, gave notice to this department that those two states were averse to receiving any such settlements; and for that reason the instructions of the Secretary of the Interior to Mr. Pomeroy were modified. He was informed that the President accepted Mr. Yrisarri’s communication as a definitive declination of the two governments which he represented to receive and protect a colony of the class proposed in their respective countries. Whereupon Mr. Pomeroy was expressly directed not to proceed with such colony to any part of the territories of either of the said republics of Guatemala and Salvador.
In your note, which is now under consideration, you protest, in behalf of the republics of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Honduras, against the introduction of any colony of the kind proposed within the territory of either of those republics. You also inform this department that a portion of the region called Chi-riqui, which is claimed by Mr. Ambrose W. Thompson, and which he offers as [Page 904] a site for such a colony, lies unquestionably within the territory of Costa Rica, while another portion lies within the unquestioned territory of New Granada, and still a third part is in dispute between the government of Costa Rica and New Granada; and you extend your protest so as to make it cover not only the unquestioned territory of Costa Rica, but also that portion of Chiriqui which is claimed by Costa Rica.
I have now to inform your excellency that the acts of Congress, under which the colonization in question is proposed to be made, do not warrant the attempt to establish such a colony in any country without the previous consent of the government thereof, and that your protest is accepted by the President as a denial of such consent on the part of the three states you so worthily represent. Mr. Pomeroy will therefore be instructed that he is not to proceed with such a colony, or to land upon any part of the territories of Costa Rica or of Honduras, or any part of the admitted territory of Nicaragua, or even any part of Chiriqui, which is included within the region which, as you represent, has hitherto been, and yet remains, in dispute between the government of New Granada and the government of Costa Rica. I may, perhaps, not improperly add that it is represented by Mr. Thompson to the Secretary of the Interior that the part of Chiriqui which he proposes as a site for a colony lies altogether without the admitted territories of Costa Rica, and also without the lines which are included by the claim of New Granada, and exclusively within the admitted territory of New Granada. In order that no invasion of the region in question may be made, and even no unlawful intrusion within it may be attempted, Mr. Pomeroy has now been further instructed not to land or attempt to establish a colony in New Granada without first having obtained the consent of not only the authorities actually exercising administration within it, but also the consent of the republic of New Granada, which is represented at Washington, and with which diplomatic relations continue to be maintained.
I avail myself of this occasion to offer to you, sir, renewed assurances of my high consideration.
Senor Luis Molina, &c., &c., &c.