Settling Black Americans somewhere outside the United States was a respectable proposal for most of the nineteenth century, entertained by presidents from Jefferson onward and resting on the assumption that Black people could never take an equal place in a white society. Lincoln inherited the idea and acted on it.

Lockett reconstructs what happened when it was tried. Bernard Kock, a promoter from Charleston, talked Geffrard's government into a long lease on Île à Vache, then talked Washington into sending settlers there on the strength of glowing descriptions. Roughly 450 formerly enslaved people sailed on the Ocean Ranger in April 1863.

The island was not what Kock had advertised. Agents sent to inspect the colony reported people still in the Union uniforms they had arrived in, saying they had been deceived and asking to be taken home. By January 1864 conditions were declared a disaster, the managers had abandoned the place, and the survivors were brought back.