The Chinese Must Go

by Beth Lew-Williams

  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 ica, 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 ica.

  The ultimate dream was to become a wealthy elder, the sort of man who

  would loan money to the next generation of emigrants.16

  24 RESTRICTION

  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 ica’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 ica, 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 ica’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,

  26 RESTRICTION

  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 ica. 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 ica’s shores was unavoid
able 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 ital 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 ica 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 ica. 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

  28 RESTRICTION

  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 ica’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 ica. 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 ica. “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 ica’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 ica [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 ica’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

  30 RESTRICTION

  not simply dislike the Chinese race; like Dooner, he believed that Chinese

  mi grants endangered Amer ica’s westward expansion and, ultimately, the na-

  tion itself.43

  The Chinese arrived at a critical moment in Amer ica’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