with a fiery temper. In October 1884, he took a job teaching deaf- mute
children at a school in Salem, Oregon. After a year there, he moved to
Tacoma, where he became pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, joined
Tacoma’s Protestant Ministerial Union, and founded the first school for
deaf- mute children in Washington Territory.49
From the pulpit, McFarland denounced anti- Chinese rabble- rousers not
only for their immoral treatment of the Chinese but also for their insolent
attempt to violate his right to employ whomever he chose. If he had been
home, he declared, “I would have kicked them out into the street.” Many
congregation members then stood up, turned on their heels, and walked out
of the church in protest against the “pro- Chinese fanatic.” This only riled
the preacher: “Go! Go!” McFarland yelled, “I will preach on till the benches
are empty!” The next day the Tacoma Daily Ledger, a workingman’s news-
paper, commented that McFarland would be “permitted to preach to
empty benches until such time as he shall depart in peace with his yellow
brethren— say about November 1st.” Facing expulsion and death threats,
McFarland strapped two “big army revolvers” to his waist under his double-
breasted coat and “went about his pastoral duties, visiting businessmen in
their homes and taking tea with his feminine parishioners.”50
McFarland’s stance on the Chinese Question was hardly surprising. Since
the Chinese had first arrived in the U.S. West, many Protestant mission-
aries preached a decidedly unpop u lar message of egalitarianism: that the
Chinese should be brought into the folds of the nation and Christendom.
While the vast majority of western parishioners questioned whether assimi-
lation and conversion were pos si ble, Protestant preachers and missionaries
had greater confidence in the ability of American civilization to enlighten
the heathen race. While most supported Chinese migration, some Protes-
tant missionaries publicly and repeatedly maligned the Chinese race. Mis-
sionaries working in China wrote highly emotional and widely disseminated
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tracts about the barbarism they found across the Pacific, hoping to generate
support for conversion efforts. Though the intention was to support the Chi-
nese through a familiar form of paternalism, the missionaries’ repre sen ta-
tions of Chinese perversion, immorality, and exoticism also fed anti- Chinese
rhe toric.51
Amer ica’s first Chinese mission was founded in 1853 in San Francisco with
only four members. This Presbyterian mission was joined in the 1860s and
1870s by Methodist, Episcopal, Congregational, and Baptist counter parts.
Along with regular church ser vices and Sunday schools, these Chinese mis-
sions offered newly arrived Chinese mi grants lessons in reading, writing, and
arithmetic that were interlaced with religious instruction. Reverend Otis
Gibson, a widely published minister of the Methodist church, saw lofty goals
for such missionary efforts. “It has been reserved for this nineteenth century
and this Republican Government of these United States of Amer ica,” he de-
clared, “to witness the first great experiment of aggregated paganism in
actual contact with the best form of Christian civilization which the world
has ever seen.” He called for American Christians to rise to the occasion and
demonstrate the power of American society to reform the pagan Chinese.
But Christianization efforts fell short of these bold ambitions. Although
some mi grants welcomed the education that missionaries offered, many
Chinese left the schools once they had acquired basic, but highly valuable,
En glish skills. Even though most Chinese proved uninterested or resistant,
Chinese mi grants had joined eleven denominations and participated in 271
Sunday schools in thirty- one states by 1892. In addition to preaching to
Chinese in Amer i ca, Protestant missionaries crossed the Pacific Ocean to
bring the gospel to China, an effort McFarland supported through personal
donations. American Protestant missionaries imagined their conversion
proj ect on a transpacific scale.52
Facing swelling anti- Chinese vio lence in Tacoma, McFarland joined with
seven other local religious leaders to denounce anti- Chinese vio lence in a
tract entitled “Sentiments of the Ministerial Union of Tacoma Respecting the
Pres ent Anti- Chinese Question.” While ministers acknowledged that their
primary task was to “preach [our] gospel,” they argued that as religious
leaders they had a responsibility as “God’s watchmen” to weigh in on moral
questions of the day. It was their duty to explain God’s will, especially at
moments when “prejudice, self- interest or po liti cal ambition” caused a com-
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155
munity to make “wrong” and “evil” decisions. Pastor McFarland and the
Tacoma Ministerial Union saw the vio lence brewing in October 1885 as just
such a moment. “A community . . . which forcibly substitutes its own will
for the law of the land,” they warned, “covers itself with disgrace, & gives
occasion for fear & gloom in the hearts of all friends of freedom.” Vio lence
against the Chinese was a threat to American freedom.53
A week before the expulsion from Tacoma, the ministers declared that
the Chinese were already victims of “a reign of terrorism.” While govern-
ment officials and leading citizens for “law and order” described the agitation
in September and October as peaceful, the ministers stated the situation in
no uncertain terms. The explicit intimidation of the Chinese, they argued,
was a form of “impersonal vio lence,” which had already prompted men to
flee for “their lives.” Although few Chinese had been injured in Tacoma, the
ministers described an “or ga nized persecution of the Chinese” that could not
be denied. “The cry is sounded, by day & by night, ‘The Chinese Must go!’ ”
they wrote, “Stones are hurled against their houses, in many of which the
win dows are riddled as by a hailstorm. Daily, by the time the sun has fairly
set, they, with boarded win dows & barred doors, sit in silence & fear in
their houses. It is well understood that it would not be altogether safe for the
Chinese to be upon our streets in the night time.”54
The ministers advanced an uncommonly broad definition of vio lence, but
gained support from a few educated elites. Historians B. F. Alley and J. P.
Munro- Fraser, who happened to be in the territory finishing up a history of
Washington, wrote, “It does not require much ability to see, that the anti-
Chinese movement means vio lence. It is not force merely contemplated, but
force applied, whenever incendiary and seditious speeches and resolutions
are uttered.” These public intellectuals insisted that Tacoma’s November 1
deadline for the Chinese “is not leading to riot, it is riot. . . . The words used
in delivering the cowardly message may be covert but the act is overt.” Rarely
did Americans citizens so boldly condemn the anti- Chinese movement.55
Tacoma’s ministers, for th
eir part, stopped short of defending the right
of Chinese to live and work in Washington Territory. Although national
Protestant leaders preached conversion, McFarland and others sympathized
with their parishioners, openly conceding that the presence of Chinese in
the city was “undesirable.” Since expulsion seemed inevitable, the ministers
reconciled themselves to the fact that the Chinese must go, but they believed
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it was pos si ble to tamp down the vio lence. Using teachings of the “peace-
able religion of Christ,” they entreated agitators to re spect U.S. treaty obli-
gations and put aside vio lence. “ There is a worse evil than the presence of
the Chinese,” the ministers wrote, “& that is their expulsion from among
us by lawless force.” They counseled, “If the community could rid itself of
their presence by the enforcement of law, or by a refusal to avail itself of their
ser vices, no occasion for complaint would exist.” The ministers’ main con-
cern was not to save the Chinese from expulsion; it was to protect white men’s
souls, and the society they were fighting to construct, from damnation.56
Of course the vigilantes in Tacoma did not listen, massing early in the
morning of November 3, 1885. Pastor McFarland watched the spectacle in
horror with his friend Captain Albert Whyte, a recently deputized sheriff.
“My God,” McFarland said to Whyte, “is this Amer ica? Why do we stand
and do nothing?” Before McFarland could rush into the crowd, Whyte held
him back. “See that man,” cautioned Whyte, “He’s the mayor, remember?
And that, he’s a judge. And that one; he’s on the council. And that one; he’s
the sheriff. And most of the rest of them have been deputized. . . . Don’t
matter what you do, you can’t stop this thing. You can only make it worse.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” admitted McFarland, and he left the mob alone to
do as they would.57
As promised, the vigilantes drove the Chinese out of Tacoma and, it seems,
pushed McFarland out as well. After only a year in Tacoma, he left and
moved to the small town of Vancouver in southern Washington Territory.
Although Reverend McFarland acquiesced to the anti- Chinese movement,
many religious leaders on the East Coast continued to protest the treatment
of the Chinese. In Boston, for example, Methodist and Episcopal churches
held a meeting in March 1886, where they drafted resolutions to Congress
decrying “grievous outrages” against Chinese in the western states and ter-
ritories. “That the failure to keep our treaty obligations, and the inhuman
persecutions and brutal massacres which have been perpetrated upon these
strangers in our midst,” declared the petition, “have disgraced our country
in the eyes of the civilized world, and subject us to the just judgments of a
righ teous God.” Dozens of copies of the petition were circulated to eastern
churches and hundreds of parishioners signed to show their support. Reli-
gious leaders were not only worried about American souls, they were also
concerned about missionaries currently working in China. The petition re-
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157
minded Congress that “the safety of our citizens in China is imperiled by
these frequent and unredressed wrongs to Chinese subjects in the United
States.” Since the 1870 massacre of French missionaries in Tianjin, anti-
Western vio lence in China seemed an ever- present threat. Religious leaders
feared that American missionaries in China could suffer the same fate as the
Chinese in Amer ica.58
While some missionaries on the East Coast continued to support Chi-
nese migration, western religious leaders offered up an alternative in the wake
of the vio lence. If the Chinese were driven out of Amer ica, missionaries could
concentrate their conversion efforts on China. In 1886, the San Francisco Eve-
ning Post reported that notable leaders of the Presbyterian, Episcopal, and
Baptist churches had declared their support of the anti- Chinese movement.
“It was [once] thought that the pro- Chinese view was necessarily the Chris-
tian view,” wrote the Post. “Long experience has shown, however, that it is
no easier to convert the Chinaman here than on his native soil.” Since “the
presence of the Chinese means poverty, suffering and moral and religious
blight to many of our own race,”59 religious leaders increasingly turned their
attention abroad. When Reverend McFarland fled in response to the anti-
Chinese vio lence, he was not alone.60
Thomas Burke: “I Favor the American Method”
Thomas Burke seemed unlikely to decry the expulsions, given his ethnic heri-
tage and po liti cal leanings. Born in 1849 in upstate New York to Irish
farmers, Burke, no doubt, would have followed the family trade, like his four
siblings, if a childhood injury to his arm had not put manual labor out of
the question. Earning tuition by working as a clerk, Burke attended college
at Ypsilanti Seminary and read law in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Two years after
passing the bar exam, at the age of twenty- five, Burke deci ded to move to
the frontier town of Seattle to begin his career. He arrived with po liti cal am-
bitions. He made a successful bid to become probate judge of King County
and ran twice, without success, as a Demo cratic candidate for territorial del-
egate to Congress in 1882 and 1884. Though he shared immigrant roots and
Demo cratic politics with many of the vigilantes, Burke had no sympathy for
the vio lence. In November 1885, he told a mixed crowd of vigilantes and of-
ficials in Seattle exactly what he thought of the Tacoma expulsion. “200
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human beings were driven out of Tacoma like dogs, and compelled to face
a driving storm all night, during which two of their number died from ex-
posure,” he roared. “Dumb animals are deserving of better treatment than
that.” 61
Burke may have hailed from a humble immigrant family, but in Seattle
he became an elite businessman, and as his fortunes rose he developed a
transpacific vision of Amer ica’s future. He saw the Pacific Ocean as “a great
highway” and believed “nothing could be more natu ral than that a commerce
should spring between” the United States and China. In the 1870s, he worked
as a lawyer, representing railroad corporations and Chinese contractors (in-
cluding Chin Gee Hee) who supplied their labor. His investment in China
grew in the 1880s, when he became a railroad developer and began pro-
moting Seattle as a gateway to Asia.62
However, Burke’s support of Chinese labor was tenuous from the begin-
ning. Days after the Chinese were driven from Tacoma, Seattle’s mayor,
Henry Yesler, convened a public meeting that drew seven hundred people
on both sides of the issue. Haller, who knew Burke well and often dined
with him, stood in the crowd that night and recorded the event in his diary.
The Civil War col o nel noted (with approval) that many speakers urged the
crowd “to be loyal to our Government” and “use legal means to drive out
the Chinaman.” Speakers
reviewed “the whole Chinese history: how England
forced open its ports, when for ages they had been closed to Foreigners, and
Chinese prevented from going abroad. The Burlingame Treaty opened China
to our people and we allowed Chinaman to come here under our national
protection.” 63 At the end of the eve ning, Burke took the stage. According to
his biographer, he was not a commanding figure, standing “below medium
height” at a little over five feet. Burke was heavi ly invested in Chinese labor
and the China Trade, but by the time he spoke at Frye’s Opera House, he
had already reconciled himself to the vigilantes’ demands. Although he de-
cried the expulsion, Burke readily admitted to his audience that it was in
“our interest” to see the Chinese go. “ There should be no substantial differ-
ence of opinion among the people of this city on the Chinese question,” he
said, “We are all agreed that the time has come when a new treaty should be
made with China restricting Chinese immigration to this country.” 64
Still he opposed the violent, extralegal tactics of the anti- Chinese move-
ment. Acutely aware of the rampant prejudice against the Irish in Amer ica,
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159
Burke was particularly incensed that members of his ethnic community
would invite criticism by participating in lawlessness. He spoke directly to
the many workers in the audience who shared his Irish ancestry, arguing that
the Irish, of all men, should “be true to American ideals of law and order.”
Given the history of oppression of the Irish in their home country, Burke
believed they should know better than to persecute “any of God’s creatures
no matter how lowly he may be or the color of his skin.” Furthermore, the
Irishman should be especially grateful for Amer ica’s hospitality toward im-
migrants and not dare “such black ingratitude as to raise his hand in vio-
lence against the laws” of their adopted home. Participating in the nativist
anti- Chinese moment would not Americanize or whiten the Irish race, Burke
believed. It would only offer fodder to its detractors. “ Shall we act as be-
comes free, law- abiding and justice- loving Americans or as turbulent and
lawless foreigners?” Burke’s answer to this own question was clear: “I am an
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