This is a rare group of four original Carte de Visite photographs showing the Santo Domingo Governmental Commission on Slavery during their historic visit with Abraham Lincoln in the year 1863. They arrived in America by invitation in order to hear the proposal by Lincoln of having black slaves from America form a free colony in Santo Domingo. In the Overland Monthly and Out West magazine/Volume 9, Issue 52, San Francisco, 1887, pp. 540, 541 - "An Episode of the Civil War," John T. Doyle he writes At another time, Mr. Lincoln publicly recommended Central America to a delegation of blacks who waited on him, as a suited by climate and culture for colonization by their people. In the fall of 1862 there appeared in New York a certain Mr. Koch, with a queer story and a queer project...he had conceived the project of taking to Santo Domingo a colony of blacks from the United States, procuring a great of land, and settling them on it, to raise cotton.

These inscribed images show the delegation as they were photographed by Charles Fredericks during the Civil War.