Tacoma longshore casual draw 2018

THE

Chinese Must Go

THE

Chinese Must Go VIO LENCE, EXCLUSION, AND THE MAKING OF THE ALIEN IN AMER I CA

Beth Lew- Williams

Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts · London, England 2018

Copyright © 2018 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca

First printing

Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data

Names: Lew- Williams, Beth, author. Title: The Chinese must go : vio lence, exclusion, and the making of the

alien in Amer i ca / Beth Lew- Williams. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press,

2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017032640 | ISBN 9780674976016 (cloth) Subjects: LCSH: Chinese— United States— History—19th century. |

Chinese— Vio lence against— United States. | Border security— United States— History—19th century. | Race discrimination— United States— History—19th century. | Emigration and immigration law— United States— History—19th century. | Aliens— United States— History—19th century. | Citizens—United States— History—19th century. | United States— Race relations— History—19th century.

Classification: LCC E184.C5 L564 2018 | DDC 305.895 / 1073— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn.loc . gov / 2017032640

Cover photo courtesy of the Oregon Historical Society, image number 28159

Cover design by Jill Breitbarth

https://lccn.loc.gov/2017032640
In memory of Lew Din Wing

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Vio lence of Exclusion 1

PART 1 • Restriction

1. The Chinese Question 17 2. Experiments in Restriction 53

PART 2 • Vio lence

3. The Banished 91 4. The People 113 5. The Loyal 137

PART 3 • Exclusion

6 . The Exclusion Consensus 169 7. Afterlives under Exclusion 194

EPILOGUE

The Modern American Alien 235

APPENDIX A

Sites of Anti- Chinese Expulsions and Attempted Expulsions, 1885–1887 247

APPENDIX B

Chinese Immigration to the United States, 1850–1904 253

ABBREVIATIONS 255 NOTES 259 ACKNOWL EDGMENTS 337 INDEX 341

THE

Chinese Must Go

1

INTRODUCTION

The Vio lence of Exclusion

THEY LEFT IN driving rain. Three hundred Chinese mi grants trudged down the center of the street, their heads bowed to the ele ments and the crowd. They were led, followed, and surrounded by dozens of white men armed with clubs, pistols, and rifles. As if part of a grim parade, they were encircled by spectators who packed the muddy sidewalks, peered from narrow doorways, and leaned out from second- story win dows for a better view. One of the Chinese, Tak Nam, tried to protest, but later he remembered the mob answering in a single voice: “All the Chinese, you must go. Every one.”1

The date was November 3, 1885, and the place was Tacoma, Washington Territory. But that hardly mattered. In 1885 and 1886, at least 168 commu- nities across the U.S. West drove out their Chinese residents.2

At times, these purges involved racial vio lence in its most brazen and basic form: physical force motivated by racial prejudice and intended to cause bodily harm.3 The vigilantes targeted all Chinese people— young and old, male and female, rich and poor— planting bombs beneath businesses, shooting blindly through cloth tents, and setting homes ablaze. Once physical vio lence had become a very real threat, the vigilantes also drove them out using subtler forces of coercion, harassment, and intimidation. They posted deadlines for the Chinese to vacate town, leaving unspoken the conse- quences of noncompliance. They locked up leaders of the Chinese commu- nity and watched as the rest fled. They called for boycotts of Chinese workers and waited for starvation to set in. This too was racial vio lence.

While historians often claim that racial vio lence is fundamental to the making of the United States, rarely are they referring to the Chinese in the

Sites of Anti- Chinese Expulsions, 1885–1886. Vigilantes drove out Chinese residents through harassment, intimidation, arson, bombing, assault, and murder. Map based on data collected by the author (see Appendix A).

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Alaska Territory

Wyoming Territory

New Mexico Territory

Arizona Territory

INTRODUCTION 3

U.S. West. Instead, they are thinking of moments when racial prejudice fu- eled the vio lence of colonization, enslavement, and segregation.4 It has long been recognized that these transformative acts of racial vio lence anchor not only the history of Native Americans and African Americans, but also the history of the entire nation. Anti- Chinese vio lence, however, is routinely left out of the national narrative.5

It is easy to see this omission as simply due to the relative numbers. There were comparatively few Chinese in nineteenth- century Amer i ca, and fewer still who lost their lives to racial vio lence, making casualty counts from anti- Chinese vio lence appear inconsequential. The 1880 census recorded 105,465 Chinese in the United States; at least eighty- five perished during the peak of anti- Chinese vio lence in the mid-1880s. However, these numbers do not capture the full extent of the vio lence, since some of the most egregious in- cidents occurred before or after this period. In 1871, for example, a mob in Los Angeles lynched seventeen “Chinamen” in Negro Alley in front of dozens of witnesses and, in 1887, the “citizens of Colusa” (California) took a com- memorative photo graph after the lynching of sixteen- year- old Hong Di. Events like these have drawn attention for their exceptional brutality, but often anti- Chinese vio lence was not fatal or recorded. By relying on the metric of known fatalities, historians have often viewed anti- Chinese vio- lence as a faint echo of the staggeringly lethal vio lence unleashed against Native Americans and African Americans.6 When we use black oppression and Indian extermination to define racial vio lence in nineteenth- century Amer i ca, Chinese expulsions seem insignificant. Or, even more inaccurately, they appear not to be violent at all.

The omission of this history can also be explained by the vio lence itself. Chinese migration to the U.S. West began in the 1850s, when thousands of Chinese joined the rush for gold in California. While other newcomers claimed a place in Amer i ca and American history, however, vio lence pushed the Chinese to the outer recesses of the nation and national memory. In Ta- coma, there were no Chinese after 1885 and, thanks to arsonists, there are no physical remnants of what once had been. Indeed, the city of Tacoma, in a present- day effort at “reconciliation,” spent over a de cade searching for de- scendants of the Tacoma Chinese, but has yet to find any.7 Successful ex- pulsions left little behind, even in the way of memories.

Above all, this history has been neglected because it has been misunder- stood. The violent anti- Chinese movement was not a weak imitation of

It was rare for Chinese mi grants to be lynched, and rarer still for a lynching to be photographed. Hong Di was a convicted murderer sentenced to life in prison, but unnamed “citizens” removed him from jail and hanged him on a railroad turnstile. “Hong Di, Lynched by the citizens of Colusa, July 11, 1887 at 1:15 a.m.,” BANC PIC 2003.165. Courtesy of the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

racial vio lence elsewhere. It was a distinct phenomenon that must be con- sidered on its own terms. Even without lethal force, anti- Chinese vio lence had profound and lasting consequences, although not the ones we might expect.

What made anti- Chinese vio lence distinct was its principal intent, together with its method and result.

The intent was exclusion. At the local level, anti- Chinese advocates fought to prohibit Chinese from entering spaces and working in occupations deemed the sole entitlement of white citizens. At the national level, they fought to bar Chinese mi grants from entering the United States and to deny citizen- ship to those already in the country. At the international level, they fought to exclude China from the conversation about immigration, hoping to turn a bilateral policy into a unilateral one. Though scholars sometimes separate these demands into disparate strains of racism, nativism, and imperialism, respectively, anti- Chinese advocates rarely drew these distinctions. In their minds, the threat of Chinese immigration demanded exclusion across mul- tiple spheres.

At the time, national exclusion was a particularly radical objective. Al- though border control may seem natu ral and inevitable today, the United States began with a policy of open migration for all. In the early nineteenth century, the federal government was more concerned with attracting “desir- able” immigrants than prohibiting “undesirable” ones. Though individual states sometimes regulated immigrants they deemed criminal, poverty- stricken, or diseased, the federal government was not in the business of border control.8 This meant that there was no need for passports, no concept of an “illegal alien,” and no consensus that the United States should determine the makeup of its citizenry by closing its gates.

Anti- Chinese advocates demanded that the federal government change all this. Chinese exclusion warranted extreme mea sures, they argued, because the Chinese posed a peculiar racial threat to nineteenth- century Amer i ca. Popu lar thought of the day held that the Chinese race was inferior to the white race in most ways, but not all. The Chinese were heathen and servile, but also dangerously industrious, cunning, and resilient. Chinese mi grants hailed from an ancient and populous nation, which Americans granted had

INTRODUCTION 5

6 THE CHINESE MUST GO

once been home to an advanced civilization. Assumed to be permanently loyal to China, the Chinese appeared racially incapable of becoming American. While white citizens worried that Native Americans and African Americans would contaminate the nation, they feared the Chinese might conquer it. One anti- Chinese leader in Tacoma, for example, openly wor- ried that if “millions of industrious hard- working sons and daughters of Confucius” were “given an equal chance with our people,” they “would outdo them in the strug gle for life and gain possession of the Pacific coast of Amer i ca.”9 Therefore, as Americans turned to dispossession, subordination, and assimilation of Indians and blacks in the late nineteenth century, they ad- vocated exclusion for the Chinese. Behind these divergent racial scripts lay callous calculations. White Americans coveted Indian lands and required black labor, but many saw no reason to tolerate the Chinese.10

Not all white Americans agreed, however. In the mid- nineteenth century, many U.S. traders, cap i tal ists, and missionaries saw Chinese migration as key to American profits and power. Businessmen eyed luxurious Chinese products and vast Chinese markets, while Protestant missionaries saw an op- portunity to convert “heathens” on both sides of the Pacific. In the minds of cosmopolitan expansionists, American people and goods crossing the Pacific would extend U.S. power abroad, while the reverse movement of Chinese mi grants would accelerate the development of the West and strengthen U.S. claims on China.11 Envisioning Amer i ca’s future beyond the Pacific Ocean and the rewards they personally would reap, these influ- ential elites strongly opposed the movement for exclusion. This re sis tance, however, only emboldened the movement’s advocates and drove them to more dramatic tactics later in the nineteenth century.

The principal method of anti- Chinese vio lence became expulsion. Since their arrival in the 1850s Chinese mi grants had been popu lar targets for harassment and assault, but systematic expulsion became the method of choice by the 1880s. In western states and territories (where 99 percent of Chinese resided), vigilantes used boycotts, arsons, and assaults to swiftly remove the Chinese from their towns and prevent their return.12 And while the campaigns to drive out the Chinese sometimes produced casual- ties, these were rarely by design. Two men died on the forced march from Tacoma, but according to Tak Nam, the deaths did not directly result from physical assault. At a redress hearing following the expulsion, he described

how the crowd used clubs, poles, and pistols “to shove[] us down” and “drive us like so many hogs.” It was in this context that, after an eight- mile forced march and a night “in the drenching rain,” “two Chinamen died from exposure.”13

Though the vigilantes set their sights on ridding themselves of Chinese neighbors, the expulsions were not simply local means directed toward local ends. Using sweeping rhe toric and direct petitioning, vigilantes translated their vio lence into a broader cry for exclusion. Anti- Chinese vio lence, in other words, was a form of po liti cal action or, more specifically, what could be termed “violent racial politics.” By directing racial vio lence against local targets, vigilantes asserted a national po liti cal agenda. These vigilantes, of course, lacked the power to determine U.S. law or diplomacy; a host of po- liti cal forces and contingent events created the ultimate policy of exclusion. But the vigilantes made Chinese exclusion pos si ble, even probable, when their violent protests drew the national spotlight. The federal policy of Chi- nese exclusion, touted as a solution to Chinese migration, was also designed to combat the more immediate threat of white vio lence.

That vio lence held power over U.S. politics in the nineteenth century should not come as a surprise. Transformative moments of state vio lence— including the Mexican- American War (1846–1848), the Civil War (1861– 1865), and the Indian Wars— clearly mediated politics through force, but so too did a host of extralegal battles. Violent racial politics swelled in popu- larity in the Reconstruction South and in western territories where white citizens lacked more recognized forms of po liti cal power. This racial vio lence terrorized local populations, shaped local politics, and, at times, advanced a national agenda. In the mid- nineteenth century, po liti cal vio lence, and the rhe toric that accompanied it, challenged the federal government’s reserva- tion of Indian lands, enfranchisement of African Americans, and toleration of Chinese migration. By the century’s end, the federal government had ac- quiesced to violent demands for Indian dispossession, black oppression, and Chinese exclusion.14

The principal result of anti- Chinese vio lence was the modern American alien. The term “alien” has long referred to foreigners, strangers, and out- siders, and in U.S. law has come to define foreign- born persons on American soil who have not been naturalized. Admittedly, “alien” has become un- pleasant or even offensive to our modern ears, and recently scholars and

INTRODUCTION 7

journalists have begun to replace it with “noncitizen.” This more neutral alternative, however, is too imprecise for the subject at hand. In the nine- teenth century, the term “noncitizen” would have encompassed a large and diverse group, including, at vari ous times, slaves, free blacks, Native Ameri- cans, and colonial subjects.15 We cannot simply do away with the word “alien,” therefore, since it offers historical accuracy and specificity. In this book, the term is used cautiously to describe a par tic u lar legal and social status, not an intrinsic trait. The Chinese entered Amer i ca as mi grants and were made into aliens, in law and society. Through a halting pro cess of ex- clusion at the local, national, and international levels, the Chinese mi grant became the quin tes sen tial alien in Amer i ca by the turn of the twentieth century.16

At the local level, vio lence hardened the racial bound aries of the U.S. West. Men like Tak Nam had established themselves in polyglot communi- ties, living and working alongside white and Native Americans. He had resided in Tacoma for nine years before his expulsion, and in the country for thirty- three. Then vio lence made neighbors into strangers, figuratively and literally, as vigilantes disavowed any connection to the Chinese and drove them into unfamiliar surroundings. In addition to killing scores in the mid- 1880s, the vio lence displaced more than 20,000. In the pro cess, it acceler- ated Chinese segregation in the U.S. West, spurred a great migration to the East, and hastened return migration to China.17

As violent racial politics removed Chinese from local communities, it proved similarly effective at excluding them from the nation. Before the out- break of vio lence in 1885 and 1886, Congress attempted to balance com- peting demands to close Amer i ca’s gates and open the door to China. In 1882, American leaders created a temporary bilateral compromise: a law known as the Chinese Restriction Act. Only after the law’s public failure and the ensuing vio lence did Congress turn to a long- term policy of unilat- eral “Chinese exclusion” in 1888. The change in nomenclature signaled a major shift in law, enforcement, and intent, as Congress narrowed the ave- nues for Chinese migration, dedicated more resources to enforcement, and expanded U.S. imperialism in Asia. Historians, with their eyes trained on what Chinese exclusion would become, have overlooked the distinction between the Restriction Period (1882–1888) and Exclusion Period (1888–1943). To understand the radicalism of Chinese exclusion and the contingent

8 THE CHINESE MUST GO

history of its rise, we must recognize the period of restriction, experimenta- tion, and contestation that preceded it.18

Together, the restriction and exclusion laws dissuaded untold thousands of Chinese mi grants from settling in the United States and, by separating men from women, stunted the growth of an American- born Chinese popu- lation. With time, Chinese exclusion became Asian exclusion as policies first practiced on the Chinese provided a blueprint for laws targeting Japa nese, Korean, South Asian, and Filipino mi grants in the early twentieth century.19 As a consequence, in 1950 these groups made up only 0.2 percent of the U.S. population; even in the twenty- first century, only a small fraction of Asian Americans can trace their American roots back more than one generation.20 We can appreciate the significance of exclusion if we imagine what could have been.

To describe this history, scholars have relied on meta phors, resorting to towering walls, global borders, and closed gates. Despite their power, these meta phors can be misleading. They suggest that Chinese exclusion success- fully excluded the Chinese, but it did not. Though the laws slowed Chinese migration, historians have estimated that there were more than three hun- dred thousand successful Chinese arrivals between 1882 and 1943.21 These meta phors also imply that exclusion’s power was specific to a par tic u lar place and time, that is, the territorial boundary and the moment of entry. In fact, long after they walked through Amer i ca’s gates, Chinese mi grants continued to carry their alienage with them in their daily lives, along with its legal and social disadvantages. Moreover, these meta phors, by orienting our gaze toward the edges of the nation, can inadvertently make Chinese exclusion appear marginal to histories of Reconstruction, Indian dispossession, and Jim Crow.

Though Chinese migration was a transnational phenomenon that spanned much of the Pacific World, the making of the alien in Amer i ca must be un- derstood within a national context. It was not coincidental that Chinese became aliens at a time when the federal government was dramatically re- making the concept of the citizen. After the Civil War, Congress constructed a new form of national citizenship with the Fourteenth Amendment, explic- itly granting citizens certain rights and immunities, and extending formal citizenship to broader numbers of African Americans and Native Americans. At this critical moment, the social and legal meaning of alienage was also

INTRODUCTION 9

transformed. During a period known for the invention of the modern American citizen, the forces of local expulsion, national exclusion, and overseas imperialism produced the modern American alien and an illegal counterpart.22

Traditionally, assumptions of scale and field have divided Chinese American history into disparate stories of local expulsion, national exclusion, and in- ternational imperialism.23 It would be straightforward to synthesize these stories, to take these three narrative strands and weave them together to make a strong, tidy braid. This would be a multiscalar approach. But the intent here is not to combine the strands, but rather to break them down into their constituent fibers and to begin again. Only in starting afresh is it pos si ble to see how lines of causation cross traditional scales of analy sis. This approach is better understood as “transcalar.”

This transcalar history takes a single phenomenon in a specific place, namely the anti- Chinese vio lence of the U.S. West, and shifts across tradi- tional scales of analy sis to unearth its interlocking roots and sprawling ramifications. This retelling recognizes that federal failures created local prob- lems, and local crises had national and international consequences. Seeking to reveal the entanglements between local and global pro cesses, it empha- sizes that history is multilayered. Each layer must be seen as distinct— with diff er ent forces at work, state logics in play, and constraints on human agency— but linked by ideas, structures, and networks. This transcalar his- tory keeps these multiple layers si mul ta neously in view, with an eye for conflicts and connections. In doing so, it reveals how Tak Nam could be defenseless on the streets of Tacoma but could still influence diplomatic rela- tions through his demands for redress.24

Central to this transcalar history is the recognition that scale itself is con- structed, first by the historical actors and again by the historians who tell their tales. In the nineteenth century, people defined the local, national, and global (to the extent they existed) through loose and shifting networks, institutions, ideologies, and flows of capital. These nested levels of human activity and the terms used to describe them were born of practice and belief. Historians also construct scales, name them, give them bounds, and imbue them with meaning.25

10 THE CHINESE MUST GO

Once formed, scales have the power to shape the thoughts and actions of historical actors and the scholars who study them. Instead of naturalizing the effects of scale, this book seeks to expose them. Part I, “Restriction,” traces the contested politics and geopolitics that gave rise to the Chinese Restriction Act and then considers how uneasy compromises at the national level affected immigration enforcement at the local level. These chapters con- tend that Americans’ views on Chinese migration were determined, in large part, by the scale in which they viewed their world. Part II, “Vio lence,” ex- amines the outbreak of anti- Chinese vio lence that followed the public failure of restriction. Whether enacting vio lence or resisting it, Chinese mi grants, anti- Chinese vigilantes, and white elites made bids for po liti cal power across multiple scales and through vari ous means. Part III, “Exclu- sion,” explains how local racial vio lence became an international crisis and spurred a new federal immigration policy. By the turn of the century, the confluence of local vio lence, national exclusion, and imperial expansion shifted the nature of U.S. border control, extending it deep within the do- mestic interior and across the Pacific.

In addition to moving across scales, this book uses multiple perspectives. Its three central chapters, which make up Part II, tell the history of expul- sion from three distinct viewpoints. These narratives capture the triangular conflict between the banished Chinese, anti- Chinese vigilantes, and cosmo- politan elites who fought to end the vio lence. The intent of these chapters is not to suggest moral equivalence between diff er ent viewpoints, nor to recon- cile conflicting perspectives. Instead, it is to make these viewpoints, with all their apparent contradictions, si mul ta neously intelligible.26

Seeing this conflict from three distinct perspectives risks erasing the di- versity within each group while naturalizing the divisions between them. In fact, “the Chinese,” “anti- Chinese,” and “pro- Chinese” factions were all rife with internal divisions. Before they arrived in Amer i ca, few mi grants from China would have seen nationality as a central marker of their iden- tity. Trade, clan, guild, dialect, and native place divided the so- called Chinamen, and it was these forms of social membership that defined their community and sense of self.27 Similarly, the men and women who spear- headed the anti- Chinese movement differed by class, national origin, lan- guage, religion, and citizenship status. Though the vast majority proudly claimed whiteness, their ranks occasionally included African Americans and

INTRODUCTION 11

Native Americans, who were hardly unified themselves. Fi nally, cosmopol- itan expansionists who opposed the vio lence, while united by their class status, conservative politics, and stance on Chinese migration, shared little else. Even so, the rifts that divided the three groups ran deeper than the fis- sures within each group during the mid- nineteenth century. For a time, these three constructed identities played an outsized role in determining an in- dividual’s loyalties, actions, and memories. This book’s thrice- told tale bares the depth and complexity of this conflict, its shifting terrain, and human toll.

While previous histories sought to cata logue numerous anti- Chinese in- cidents, this book dives into a carefully selected case study to capture these multiple perspectives. Along the way, we meet a Chinese woman who was driven insane by expulsion, a white vigilante who offered a “good cussing” to anyone too cowardly to join him, and a gun- toting preacher who declared he would defend his Chinese servant. The three chapters of Part II focus on expulsions in Washington Territory as examples of anti- Chinese vio lence in the mid-1880s. The vio lence there was disproportionately significant and em- blematic of the larger phenomenon. This was made clear by media reports that quickly declared the Tacoma expulsion to be an “ideal model.” “Now that the example of lawlessness triumphant has been set and copied,” opined the Los Angeles Times, “we may expect it to find ready advocates in every town on the coast.”28 This prediction proved prescient as the vio lence spread across the U.S. West. Earlier acts of historical recovery make pos si ble this case study of the Pacific Northwest and its interpretation of the vio lence at large.

The Pacific Northwest has received only limited attention in the history of Asian Amer i ca, and yet it boasts a more complete archive of the lived experience of anti- Chinese vio lence than all other regions. This is due, in part, to the federal government’s involvement in Washington Territory, which resulted in more extensive rec ord keeping. It is also due to the destruction of many California rec ords in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.29 Even in Washington Territory, however, the historical rec ord is incomplete. Not surprisingly, educated white men produced vastly more rec ords than anyone else. In the archives it is especially difficult to hear voices of the working- class Chinese, whose illiteracy and transiency make them particu- larly elusive. These archival silences represent a central prob lem for the his- tory of the Chinese in Amer i ca. With few first- person accounts, historians

12 THE CHINESE MUST GO

risk depicting the Chinese in simplistic terms, either as hapless victims of events beyond their control or as valorous heroes resisting the mob at every turn. Through a cautious reading of imperfect sources, this book strives to be faithful to the uneven nature of the mi grants’ knowledge, power, and suffering.

Near where Chinese homes once lined the Tacoma harbor, Reconciliation Park now stands. It is built in the style of a Chinese garden of no par tic u lar provenance. Down a winding path of crushed rock, across the “string of pearls bridge,” there is a “dragon mound,” a series of historically sensitive plac- ards, and a red pavilion that can be booked for weddings. This is Tacoma’s bold attempt to remember the vio lence against the Chinese long after most of Amer i ca has forgotten.30

Yet it is an odd sight, out of place and from another time. Chinese mi- grants like Tak Nam lived near here, alongside a spur line of the Northern Pacific Railroad and among buildings of the Hatch Lumber Mill in make- shift wooden shacks on stilts.31 But there is nothing from that unkempt world in this manicured space. Standing in the elegant waterfront park, separated from Tacoma by a bustling highway, it is impossible to get to know the Chi- nese residents of 1885, to imagine how they lived, and to tell what Chinese Americans have become in the 130 years since.

Like many Chinese gardens in the United States, the park seeks authen- ticity that proves unobtainable.32 It offers an image of China reflected through American eyes, rather than a memory of the Chinese in Amer i ca. Even within this laudable act of public remembrance, the Chinese remain elusive, alien to their surroundings.

Perhaps it is only fitting. Tacoma, after all, helped to make them so.

INTRODUCTION 13

Part 1

Restriction

17

1

The Chinese Question

WHEN CHINESE MI GRANTS arrived in the U.S. West in the 1850s, they were met with vio lence. They dodged rocks thrown by children as they labored in Sacramento, guarded against armed prospectors as they mined the rivers of Placer County, and fled angry mobs in the streets of Los Angeles.1 And while this vio lence did not arise every day or affect every one, it was common enough to loom large over every encounter across the color line. The traces of this white- on- Chinese vio lence are at once ubiquitous and hidden in the historical rec ord, overwhelming in their abundance and yet difficult to see. Even when rec ords exist for a given incident, the par tic u lar nature of the vio lence is often obscured. Then, as now, it was hard to distinguish be- tween interpersonal vio lence, which had little to do with color or creed, and po liti cal vio lence, which articulated vicious messages about race and nation.

Take, for example, the death of Hing Kee. On December 16, 1877, the Chinese laborer was murdered in his bed in the com pany town of Port Mad- ison, Washington Territory. It was not a clean death. He was found with cuts to the fin gers (suggesting a strug gle), two cuts on the side of the head (deep enough to penetrate the skull), and a slit throat (inflicted by an “ax or cleaver”). The vio lence against Chinese workers in Port Madison did not end with this grisly killing; it was quickly followed by expulsion and arson. Within days, Hing Kee’s countrymen were driven out of town and the housing they had once shared was burned to the ground. In flight, these two- dozen Chinese workers left behind their homes and livelihoods. But they carried with them, no doubt, the haunting image of Hing Kee’s body and the terror that they would be next.2

18 RESTRICTION

From this incident of vio lence and so many others, the only surviving ac- count is a few paragraphs in the pages of a local English- language news- paper. But the Seattle Post- Intelligencer, even as it reported the crime, helped erase it from our historical memory of racial vio lence. Despite the brutality of the killing, the newspaper dismissed the crime as an act of larceny, em- phasizing that the deceased was known to have been in possession of “a gold watch and some money.” To local white journalists, this was just another unfortunate act of personal vio lence in a society all too familiar with foul play. A brief investigation turned up nothing, so local authorities, along with the newspaper, declared the crime to have been committed by a “person or persons unknown.” When the remaining Chinese were “ordered to leave” Port Madison only days later, the newspaper did not report the expulsion as an act of vio lence, or even as a crime. Instead, it was “a solution” to the prob lem of Chinese labor, one tacitly endorsed by the editors.3

Curiously, on Christmas Day, the paper issued a correction and apology. It had failed to note that the superintendent of the mill com pany had ordered the Chinese to leave and the housing “pulled down, and the material afterwards burned.” 4 Who this retraction was intended to appease is un- clear. Perhaps the correction was meant to insist to readers, especially those who read between the lines of print an untold tale of vio lence, that nothing nefarious had happened. After all, it was a com pany town so the com pany could do as it pleased. Or perhaps the paper simply wanted to give credit where credit was due. Either way, the effect was the same: this moment of racial vio lence was buried under layers of justification, obfuscation, and euphemism.

And then there was the anti- Chinese vio lence that never made it to print: vio lence that occurred behind closed doors, as mistresses beat on house boys and johns assaulted prostitutes. There was vio lence that happened outside the bounds of white society, in the backcountry of the lumbering industry, along isolated railroad lines, or within the recesses of Indian reservations. But there was also plenty of vio lence in plain sight of authorities and news- papermen, who simply chose to turn away. To white observers, the value of Chinese lives was so little, and the vio lence against them so abundant, that most forms of harassment seemed unremarkable.

For the Chinese, these incidents were, of course, far from banal. No one cared to rec ord the mi grants’ experiences at the time, but de cades later a team

THE CHINESE QUESTION 19

of academics visited el derly Chinese who remembered the U.S. West in the 1860s and 1870s. Read together, the old- timers’ testaments of fear and abuse are relentlessly repetitive. “When I first came,” Andrew Kan remembered, “Chinese treated worse than dog. Oh, it was terrible, terrible. At the time all Chinese have queue and dress same as in China. The hoodlums, rough- necks and young boys pull your queue, slap your face, [throw] all kind of old vegetables and rotten eggs at you. All you could do was to run and get out of the way.” “O, I awful scared. I think we gonna get killed,” Law Yow recalled, “they stand on side throw rock, club, say God Damn Chinaman.” The slurs that most stayed with Daisy Yow were those of the white school children who called her “Chink,” “yellow face,” and “cheater.” As the white Americans lobbed objects and insults, the Chinese feared worse was to come. “Two or three times,” Andrew Kan testified, “I remember Chinese killed by mob in San Francisco.” In his memoir, Huie Kin wrote, “We were simply terrified; we kept indoors after dark for fear of being shot in the back. Children spit upon us as we passed by and called us rats.” “This make me very mad but what can I do[?]” Chin Chueng testified, “I can’t do anything.” From the abuse and their own feelings of helpless anger, the Chinese learned harsh lessons about a new country and their place within it. As Daisy Yow put it, “I think they feel that we are a very inferior race of people.”5

The mid- nineteenth- century U.S. West saw the rise of anti- Chinese vio lence and an anti- Chinese movement, but they were not one and the same. A wide range of people, many of whom had personal rather than po liti cal aims, par- ticipated in scattered incidents of harassment and assault. In attempting to prohibit Chinese labor migration, a loosely or ga nized po liti cal movement sometimes turned to vio lence but also relied on po liti cal lobbying, sandlot demonstrations, journalistic exposés, congressional petitions, third- party candidates, and union strikes. From the 1850s to the 1870s, anti- Chinese vio lence and anti- Chinese politics overlapped, fed off each other, and must have seemed indistinguishable to Chinese mi grants. But in retrospect it is clear that racial vio lence, though ubiquitous, was not yet the mainstay of the anti- Chinese movement.

It was in these first three de cades after their arrival that Chinese mi grants, anti- Chinese advocates, and cosmopolitan elites established the terms of a

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debate that would continue into the next century. Though the anti- Chinese movement began almost as soon as the Chinese arrived, the campaign for Chinese exclusion did not find immediate success because its radical aim to halt Chinese migration had many detractors. While white Americans la- mented the “Indian Prob lem” in the West and the “Negro Prob lem” in the South, they continued to be at odds over the “Chinese Question.” At the time, Native American and African American inferiority was considered a known prob lem in need of a solution, but Chinese migration represented uncharted territory. What did the arrival of Chinese mi grants mean for Amer i ca? And what should the federal government do about it? The Chi- nese Question proved difficult to answer, because it arose out of a funda- mental conflict between distinct visions of Amer i ca’s imperial future.6

In the nineteenth century, the United States expanded dramatically, extending its territory across the continent and its commercial interests across the Pacific. As Americans conquered and settled lands that would become the western states of the Union, they relied on capital expansion and diplo- matic coercion to gain nonreciprocal access to Chinese territory, ports, and markets.7 While in many ways these were twin proj ects of American impe- rialism, the fraught issue of Chinese migration revealed the under lying tension between domestic and overseas expansion. Elite cosmopolitan ex- pansionists saw Chinese mi grants as integral to American penetration of Chinese markets, whereas working- class colonial settlers of the U.S. West saw the Chinese as an existential threat to their imagined free white republic.

Thus, the Chinese Question was not simply a question about race. The vast majority of Americans agreed that the Chinese were a distinct and inferior race, although they continued to quibble over the details. More fun- damentally, it was a question about the nature of the American empire. Though they shared a similar belief in white supremacy, those who dreamed of overseas expansion saw its fruition in opening China for exploitation, while others invested in white settler colonialism saw its culmination in Chinese exclusion. How white Americans viewed Chinese migration depended, in part, on the scale they used to imagine their world. Comprehending these divergent worldviews, then, requires us to shift between scales.

There were times that this growing conflict became violent, but more often it remained in the realms of rhe toric and politics, as people on all sides voiced divergent dreams for Amer i ca. The arrival of tens of thousands of

THE CHINESE QUESTION 21

Chinese mi grants at mid- century thrust this seemingly intractable debate onto the national stage.

A Mi grant’s Journey from China to California

One of those mi grants was Huie Kin, the third of five children born in a tiny, two- room farm house in a small village in the Taishan District of Guang- dong (Canton) Province, China. His family had lived in the village for two hundred years, and Kin might have lived and died there if not for rumors of gold. In the 1860s a cousin returned from California, known locally as “Jin- shan” or “Gold Mountain,” and recounted “strange tales of men becoming tremendously rich overnight by finding gold in river beds.” News of a gold strike at Sutter’s Mill in California quickly traveled to China in 1848. Within a year, 325 Chinese joined the gold rush, followed by 450 in 1850, 2,176 in 1851, and, suddenly, 20,026 in 1852.8

The talk of gold held power. Even as a child, Kin wrote many years later, he “knew what poverty meant. To toil and sweat year in and year out, as our parents did, and get nowhere.” He dreamed of crossing the “ great sea to that magic land where gold was to be had for free.” At age fourteen, he sum- moned the courage to ask his father for permission to go, and for money to cover the cost. To Kin’s surprise, his father readily borrowed the price of the ticket, thirty U.S. dollars, from a wealthy neighbor, with his farm as security. “Prob ably [my father] had also dreamed of going abroad,” Kin hypothesized in his memoir, “but he was married and had a family on his hands. His son was plucky to want to go, and he might be equally lucky as the other cousins; then they would not have to toil and strug gle any more.” If Kin struck it rich, the United States could mean salvation for the entire family.

Kin followed the same path that thousands of Chinese mi grants took be- fore and after him. In 1868, he traveled in a small boat or “junk” over the waterways of the Pearl River Delta, first to Guangzhou (Canton) and then to Hong Kong, carry ing with him only a roll of bedding and a bamboo basket containing clothes and provisions. When he reached Hong Kong, he found a bed in the home of a friend or relative. There he awaited the arrival of an international steamship bound for Amer i ca.9 When Kin left his vil- lage, he was part of a wave of predominately young, male, lower- middle- class

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mi grants venturing out of Guangdong Province in search of opportunity. For generations, this same demographic group had left home to seek work in neighboring towns, provinces, or nations. Now with the help of new trans- portation lines, they crossed the Pacific. Except for a few merchants’ wives, servant girls, and prostitutes, Chinese women did not follow. Most men planned a temporary journey, to leave China only long enough to earn seed money to support their family in the future. This “sojourner’s mentality” arose from Chinese cultural traditions and religious beliefs that emphasized filial duties, but was reinforced by the conditions they found in Amer i ca.10

When the day for departure arrived, Kin boarded a large sailing ship, powered by giant billowing white sails. He lined up on deck in front of the white captain for inspection and descended to his quarters below. Foreign vessels, mostly owned by American or British companies, first traveled north along the Chinese coast through the Formosa Strait and then took the west- erlies across the Pacific. Most emigrants could not afford the thirty- to fifty- dollar one- way ticket to the United States, so they borrowed the money (as Kin did) or used the credit- ticket system, signing contracts with Chinese brokers promising to repay the price of their ticket through their future earnings.11

Kin spent most of his journey on the lower deck, in the dark and crowded space between the top deck and cargo hold. There, Kin and his countrymen passed two months sleeping, gambling, smoking opium, and talking of the land they had left behind. Disease killed several passengers, including Kin’s eldest cousin who traveled with him. Their bodies were lowered overboard into a “watery grave” far from the land of their ancestors.12

When Kin fi nally disembarked in San Francisco, California, in 1868, he was tremendously relieved and excited. He remembered: “On a clear, crisp, September morning . . . the mists lifted, and we sighted land for the first time since we had left the shores of [Guangdong] over sixty days before. To be actually at the ‘Golden Gate’ of the land of our dreams! The feeling that welled up was indescribable. . . . We rolled up our bedding, packed our bas- kets, straightened our clothes, and waited.”13 When Kin arrived in the port of San Francisco, his appearance was as foreign as his language. He wore his hair in a long, braided queue and dressed in a loose shirt, wide- legged trousers, a broad- brimmed straw hat, and a pair of wooden shoes. As their ship docked, Kin and the other Chinese mi grants entered a scene of loud

THE CHINESE QUESTION 23

confusion. Boatmen, merchants, draymen, customs officials, and spectators crowded onto piers strewn with baskets, matting, hats, bamboo poles, and other cargo. Kin remembered, “Out of the general babble someone called out in our local dialect and like sheep recognizing the voice only, we blindly followed and soon were piling into one of the waiting wagons.” Other Chinese mi grants followed Chinese labor brokers on foot, walking single file with bamboo poles slung across their shoulders, to the Chinese quarter of the city. By the time Kin arrived in 1868, there were approximately 57,142 Chinese on the Pacific Coast.14

Kin remembered, “The wagon made its way heavi ly over the cobblestones, turned some corners, ascended a steep climb, and stopped at a kind of club- house, where we spent the night.” The Chinese Six Companies, a mutual benefit organ ization established by community leaders in the United States, had dormitories where they housed newly arrived mi grants until they found labor contracts or a relative came to pay their bill. Despite being an ocean away from home, the Chinese enclave had a familiar feel to the newcomers. Kin recalled, “In the [eigh teen] sixties, San Francisco’s Chinatown was made up of stores catering to the Chinese only. . . . Our people were all in their native costume, with queues down their backs, and kept their stores just as they would do in China, with the entire street front open and groceries and vegetables overflowing on the sidewalks.”15 Kin had found a piece of home in this distant and exciting new land.

Kin may have dreamed of gold when he left China, but the Gold Rush was long over by the time he arrived in 1868, and he needed to find wage labor. First he acquired a job as the domestic servant of a white American family in Oakland, California. Even as a servant, Kin could make a wage that was unimaginable in China. He earned about thirty dollars a month, rather than the two to ten dollars he could have expected as a domestic in Guangdong. (In his home village, working as an agricultural laborer, he could have earned eight to ten dollars a year in wages.) Even after room and board in Amer i ca, Kin could afford to send thirty dollars or more in annual remittances, a sum that was enough to purchase rice to sustain a small family for a year. Eventually, he could hope to earn enough wages and re spect from his betters to buy into a Chinese restaurant, laundry, or store in Amer i ca. The ultimate dream was to become a wealthy elder, the sort of man who would loan money to the next generation of emigrants.16

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To Kin, this was a personal journey with personal stakes. His success would mean rescuing himself and his family from poverty; failure could dev- astate them all. But in truth, Kin’s individual choices, and his eventual fate, were mediated and enabled by larger transformations in the Pacific world.17 Kin moved through a growing transpacific network of communication, trade, and diplomacy as he listened to his cousin’s stories, embarked on an American ship, and entered a Chinatown filled with people and goods. He traveled through a rapidly changing Pacific world and arrived in the United States during a long conversation on the meaning of his migration.

An Expansionist’s Dream for China and the Chinese

For William H. Seward, Kin’s journey was an inevitable product of Amer i- ca’s nascent imperial proj ect in China. Seward, an antislavery Whig turned Republican, had an illustrious po liti cal career as governor of New York, a senator representing the same, and in 1860, a favorite for the Republican ticket (before he lost to Abraham Lincoln at the Republican convention on the third ballot). From 1861 to 1869, Seward served as secretary of state in the Lincoln and Andrew Johnson administrations. From his perch near the top of the federal government, Seward imagined Amer i ca’s future on the largest scale, envisioning the young nation as the conduit between Western and Eastern civilizations.

For “near four hundred years,” Seward told the Senate in 1852, “merchants and princes have been seeking how they could reach, cheaply and expedi- tiously, ‘Cathay,’ ‘China,’ ‘the East,’ that intercourse and commerce might be established between its ancient nations and the newer ones of the West.” The discovery of Amer i ca, he continued, was “ancillary to the more sublime result, now in the act of consummation— the reunion of the two civiliza- tions.”18 Seward was one of a polyglot group of cosmopolitan expansionists: diplomats, traders, investors, and missionaries who believed that Amer i ca’s destiny lay across the Pacific.

American dreams of the China Trade were as old as the nation itself. At the close of the Revolutionary War, U.S. merchants swiftly repurposed the privateer Empress of China into a trading vessel. These traders, and the many who followed, hoped to sell U.S. products to China’s vast population and buy valuable Chinese exports such as tea, silk, and porcelain. But U.S. traders

THE CHINESE QUESTION 25

could only gain limited access to Chinese markets. In 1757, the Qing (Ch’ing) Court had designated Guangzhou the only port through which West- erners could trade and severely curtailed business there. Even with these restrictions, Guangzhou and the southeastern province of Guangdong became the gateway through which Western influence began to penetrate China. Western imperialism sped the development of a market- oriented economy in the Pearl River Delta, as farmers grew more profitable crops such as oranges, sugar cane, and tobacco for trade, instead of local staples like rice.19

American and other Western merchants easily found domestic markets for goods imported from China but had trou ble finding items of equal value to export to China. This trade imbalance continued until the British dis- covered that the Chinese would buy opium for recreational use and began transporting it in large quantities from India to China. American merchants, also eager to profit from drug trafficking, managed to control about 10 percent of the opium trade in the early nineteenth century. Fearing the spread of addiction, a special commissioner in Guangzhou in 1839 confiscated and burned approximately 3 million pounds of opium owned by British and U.S. traders. In response, Britain declared war on China. In the first Opium War (1839–1842), Britain fought both to legalize the opium trade and open China to Western influence. Capitulating, China surrendered the island of Hong Kong to Britain, along with access to other Chinese ports, and extraterrito- riality for British subjects. Since China was eager to avoid conflict with an- other Western power, U.S. diplomats negotiated similar trade concessions from China.20 Through a series of unequal treaties signed over the next de- cades, and their enforcement by Western militaries, China continued to lose power over its territory, economy, military, government, and society.21

Western commercialism and vio lence opened China but also set off mass Chinese emigration at mid- century. In the wake of the war, Guangdong Province was shaken by competition from foreign goods, poor agricultural harvests, the devastating Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), and the subsequent rise of violent interethnic feuds. Guangzhou remained a busy and prosperous metropolis, but the surrounding districts and their workers benefited un- evenly.22 As Western influence grew in China, the people of Guangdong began, like Kin, to hear more of the “Country of the Flowery- Flag.” American traders opened agencies in Guangzhou to coordinate their commerce, and through these local bases, interacted daily with Chinese laborers, interpreters,

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and merchants. American missionaries arrived on the traders’ heels, ac- quired at least a rudimentary knowledge of Cantonese, and began prosely- tizing to locals. Starting in 1862, Congress promoted these transpacific connections to Guangdong through a half- million- dollar annual contract with the Pacific Mail Steamship Com pany.23

Amid growing connections between Guangdong and the United States, news of the discovery of gold in California in 1848 quickly made its way to Guangzhou and rural regions surrounding the bustling port. Soon, Chinese men arranged passage to join other “forty- niners” in the mines.24 After the California gold fields ran dry in the 1870s, Chinese workers continued to journey to Amer i ca. They fueled the rapid development of the Pacific Coast, performing the arduous labor necessary for an economy based on the extraction of natu ral resources: felling trees to build American railroads, clearing fields for white agriculturalists, and peddling vegetables to white miners.25 By 1880, the U.S. census counted 105,465 Chinese in the United States, 99 percent of whom lived in the West.26

To Seward and his allies, the arrival of tens of thousands of Chinese on Amer i ca’s shores was unavoidable and perhaps beneficial. “The free migra- tion of the Chinese to the American and other foreign continents will tend to increase the wealth and strength of all Western nations,” argued Seward, “while at the same time, the removal of the surplus of population of China will tend much to take away the obstructions which now impede the intro- duction into China of art, science, morality, and religion.”27 For the most part, cosmopolitan expansionists’ support for Chinese migration was not based on radical ideas of racial equality.28 Most white elites shared with white workingmen assumptions that the Chinese race was “inassimilable” and innately “servile.” Indeed, the very same racial traits that white workers loathed were prized by white elites. As traders and cap i tal ists, they saw an abundant need for unskilled labor to extract natu ral resources and serve the leading house holds of the U.S. West. They assumed that the white working classes, as well as their own elite ranks, would benefit from this rapid devel- opment. As Senator Oliver P. Morton of Indiana explained, “Chinese labor has opened up many ave nues and new industries for white labor, made many kinds of business pos si ble, and laid the foundations of manufacturing inter- ests that bid fair to rise to enormous proportions.”29 By taking the lowest-

THE CHINESE QUESTION 27

paid jobs, in Morton’s estimation, Chinese workers raised the status of white laborers and helped to bring prosperity to the U.S. West.

Viewing the Chinese as reserve armies of cheap and expendable labor, Seward optimistically claimed that the migration would only continue as long as recruitment did. “If . . . the people of the Pacific States need Chinese labor, they may safely encourage immigration,” wrote Seward, “when they cease to need it, the Chinese will cease to come to their shores.”30 Cosmo- politan expansionists saw a place for the Chinese in Amer i ca as long as the mi grants were temporary, subordinated, or (on occasion) assimilated.31

Protestant missionaries, adamant that the Chinese had the capacity to be saved, advanced the most inclusive vision for Chinese mi grants. They argued that Chinese migration, and the racial uplift that would result, could speed their conversion efforts on both sides of the Pacific. In this fantasy, the “heathen Chinese” presented an unparalleled opportunity to fulfill the des- tiny of Christian Amer i ca. Huie Kin had the fortune to cross paths with one such missionary, Reverend James Eells, who “loved the Chinese people and . . . believed that the best way to reach the Chinese people was through the Chinese themselves.” Reverend Eells tutored Kin in En glish, arranged his baptism, and guided Kin toward becoming a minister who could con- vert and Westernize his countrymen. Protestant missionaries held men like Kin up as proof that the Chinese could become American, but other cos- mopolitan elites were not so sure.32

As American territorial expansion reached the Pacific and industrial ex- pansion increased in the 1860s, U.S. leaders felt pressure to secure a new treaty with China that contained a clearer expression of its rights and privi- leges, which could expand the market for American goods.33 After de cades spent reaping concessions won by the British navy and securing unequal trea- ties based on British models, U.S. diplomats like Seward questioned whether the United States could ever get ahead in the China Trade by simply following Britain’s lead. Seward secretly drafted a treaty based on a new vision of a cooperative open door in China. Instead of winning concessions and territory from China by force, as Britain had done, the United States would support Chinese territorial sovereignty in return for China’s commit- ment to allow all Western powers equal access to its markets. If Chinese markets were open to all, Seward believed that the Western power with the

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most commercial muscle and substantial friendship would pull ahead in the race for China.34

In 1867, the Chinese Imperial Court, in an unusual move, appointed Seward’s good friend and fellow U.S. diplomat Anson Burlingame to repre- sent their interests. Having served as the U.S. minister to China, Burlin- game now became the Chinese minister to the United States. China placed high trust in Burlingame and thought him better suited to navigate the in- tricacies of U.S. diplomacy than a Chinese courtier. The following year, Bur- lingame accompanied Chinese officials on a tour of the United States and adopted Seward’s treaty proposal. Seward and Burlingame agreed that the United States needed to “substitute fair diplomatic action in China for force” and use “sincere” “co- operation” with China “to win . . . re spect and confidence.”35 Despite American misgivings about China’s “uncivilized” status, in 1868 the United States agreed to Seward’s treaty, which recognized China as “a most favored nation” and agreed to “ free migration and emigra- tion” between the two countries.36 Expansionists believed this new approach would open China to U.S. influence, expand missionary efforts to spread Chris tian ity, and spur commercial efforts to Westernize China. The so- called Burlingame Treaty, and its premise of a cooperative open door, was unani- mously ratified by Congress and hailed in the press as a triumph. So began a “special relationship” between the United States and China, born of Amer i ca’s imperial vision but seeking Chinese goodwill.37

A Settler’s Nightmare of a Chinese Invasion

California writer Pierton W. Dooner drew wildly diff er ent conclusions as he watched the arrival of Huie Kin and others like him. It was the beginning of the end of Amer i ca. In the futuristic novel Last Days of the Republic (1880), he told a fictionalized history of Chinese migration to the West Coast, con- juring a dystopian future. Chinese differed from white Americans, according to Dooner, in “manners, dress, habits of life, religion and education,” but more impor tant, “they were also incapable of assimilation, or of social intercom- munication” and remain a “race alien alike to every sentiment and associa- tion of American life.” This rejection of American culture, in Dooner’s account, is intentional. Chinese mi grants are harbingers of a planned invasion,

THE CHINESE QUESTION 29

or ga nized by the Six Companies, with the aim of conquering the United States. Expansionists like Seward, who “never suspected the treachery that lay hidden,” are duped into advancing the Chinese cause through treaty negotiations.38

In his dark narrative, the white workingmen of California are the first to discover the surreptitious Chinese invasion of Amer i ca. “Without stopping to consider treaty stipulations, or the rights of foreigners in our country,” he writes, “the whole of the citizen producing- class at once declared that the Chinese must go!”39 Although California workingmen beseech the govern- ment to protect the country, they cannot convince elites. The U.S. govern- ment allows the Chinese to naturalize, and with their citizenship comes Amer i ca’s destruction.40 Soon, a quarter- million Chinese are enfranchised, and they elect their own countrymen to lead the nation. The white working class is driven into destitution and the institution of marriage crumbles, yet cosmopolitan expansionists will still not listen. When Chinese armies ar- rive in South Carolina, it is too late to save the union. By the end of the race war, “the very name of the United States of Amer i ca [is] blotted from the rec ord of nations and peoples” in favor of an “alien crown.” 41

Fantastical as Last Days of the Republic may seem, Dooner echoed racial ideology that was commonplace in the nineteenth- century U.S. West.42 An ethnically diverse group of American citizens (and aspiring citizens)— including unskilled and skilled workers, homemakers, and small businessmen— viewed the Chinese as an existential threat to their vision of a free white republic. While cosmopolitan expansionists were preoccupied by hopes of an American commercial empire stretching across the Pacific, these men and women focused on a smaller scale: Amer i ca’s settler colonial proj ect in the western states and territories. A representative of their ranks, Cameron King of San Francisco, explained to a congressional commission that it was “a selfish and short- sighted policy to allow this coast to be occu- pied by the Chinese” to advance the China Trade. “Our broad territory will in the future be demanded as a home of our own people,” he continued, “and should be preserved as the heritage of the generations to come after us.” Describing the Chinese as “filthy, vicious, ignorant, depraved, and criminal,” he maintained that they were “a standing menace to our free institutions, and an ever- threatening danger to our republican form of government.” King did

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not simply dislike the Chinese race; like Dooner, he believed that Chinese mi grants endangered Amer i ca’s westward expansion and, ultimately, the na- tion itself.43

The Chinese arrived at a critical moment in Amer i ca’s lengthy, tangled conversation about race, labor, and citizenship. It was a time of war— the Mexican- American War (1846–1848), the Civil War (1861–1865), and a series of wars with Native American tribes— and a period of reconstruction—as the federal government remade the South and West in the years that fol- lowed.44 During these battles and attempts at peace, the United States saw western expansion, a crisis over black slavery, and the ascent of racial sci- ence. Beneath this turmoil lay central questions for American democracy: Who could claim U.S. citizenship? What power came with that privilege?

The U.S. constitution offered no definitive answers. Since the found ers had not created a singular form of national citizenship, the states reserved the rights to grant citizenship and its privileges in the antebellum period. This resulted in the fragmentation of citizenship, as states granted disparate civil rights based on distinct criteria. Though natural- born citizens fell under the purview of the states, the federal government handled the naturaliza- tion of the foreign- born. In 1790, Congress reserved the privilege of natu- ralization for “ free white person(s)” “of good moral character.” Whether granted by the state or the federal government, citizenship status still car- ried only limited social and formal meaning. Other forms of social mem- bership, including sex, race, freedom, property, and marital status, were more likely to determine an individual’s status and rights. Aliens could not vote in many states, for example, but neither could women or free blacks. And in New York and Mas sa chu setts, where state- based immigration control tar- geted Irish paupers, U.S. citizenship was not enough to shield against de- portation. At a time rife with social divisions, the line between citizen and alien was not particularly salient.45

It was not until after the Civil War that the federal government created a singular form of national citizenship. Through the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress began to enumerate the rights and privileges of citizenry, extending its ranks to include African Ameri- cans and many Native Americans. Congress foresaw a future in which these new citizens would become incorporated into the nation through Christianization, economic integration, and education.46 This vision arose

THE CHINESE QUESTION 31

in part from radical ideas of racial inclusion, but also rested on more prag- matic grounds. The pro cess of assimilation would help dismantle the Con- federacy, guarantee the availability of black labor, and facilitate the acquisition of Indian land. In this arrangement, blacks and Native Americans never achieved the full benefits of citizenship, since discriminatory laws and prac- tices guaranteed that race would continue to determine an individual’s power. Still, in the postwar era African Americans and many assimilated Native Americans found a place within the citizenry, albeit a subjugated and often compulsory one. In contrast, the status of the Chinese in Amer- i ca remained unclear.

During the racial and legal transformation of U.S. citizenship, rapid industrialization and incorporation also gave rise to new concepts of eco- nomic citizenship. Amer i ca’s found ers envisioned the ideal citizen as a prop- ertied producer. Through financial in de pen dence, the property- owning man could claim the moral self- sufficiency required to sustain a participa- tory democracy. But by the end of the Civil War, wageworkers outnumbered self- employed men by 2.5 to 1, as in de pen dent producers found it difficult to compete with corporations producing cheap goods. Late nineteenth- century Amer i ca faced repeated recessions, a growing income gap, and expanding rolls of wage laborers. This new financial real ity challenged old notions of the ideal citizen and raised pressing questions. How could white wageworkers maintain their freedom while under the thumb of their employer? And, if a white wageworker could be a self- governing citizen, then what about the Chinese?47

Anti- Chinese advocates like Dooner sought to draw a hard line between white citizens and Chinese aliens. Though anti- Chinese forces lodged many complaints against the Chinese, their two- pronged trope of the “heathen coolie” became the primary rationale for exclusion. The term “heathen” was both a racial and religious marker, connoting the pagan, wild, uncivilized, and savage. Similarly, “coolie” was both a racial and economic formation, signifying cheap, slavish, and alien laborers.48 Together, these repre sen ta tions provided the scaffolding on which the anti- Chinese movement would be built.49

Fears of the “coolie” arose in the context of a regime of racial slavery in the U.S. South, and only grew in the wake of black emancipation. Starting in the 1840s, plantation owners in Cuba began importing Chinese indentured

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laborers to supplement enslaved Africans. The American public, reading frightening accounts of trafficked Chinese and indentured labor, began to imagine Chinese mi grants as unfree workers. (In his novel, Dooner states this as simple fact: “Asiatic coolieism is a form of human slavery.”) As Union armies fought to end black slavery during the Civil War, Congress also passed its first law to regulate the “coolie trade” in the Ca rib bean. The 1862 law expressly allowed Chinese “voluntary emigration,” but suggested that the trafficking of Chinese workers in Cuba was anything but. As Chinese mi- grants arrived in California, so did their reputations as unfree laborers.50