No Walt. I have an historical letter from Lincoln's attorney general responding to his request to keep Mitchell for pursuing colonization.
It's just as easy to infer that he was providing a sinecure for Mitchell. One letter is simply not enough to hang an interpretation on.
Walt
No it isn't. Bates explicitly said it was to continue work on colonization. The fact that you do not like that will not make it go away any more than your willful ignorance of Butler's documented meeting with Lincoln on April 11th.