The Chinese Must Go

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by Beth Lew-Williams


  3,768

  1903

  1,523

  1,459

  2,982

  1904

  1,284

  1,392

  2,676

  For the period of restriction, these totals include Chinese “immigrants” from all ports and

  “return” immigrants from San Francisco only, so this is an undercount. During all periods,

  admission numbers include Chinese who entered the United States multiple times and do not

  include Chinese who immigrated undetected across the U.S.- Canadian or U.S.- Mexican borders

  or those who entered while “in transit” elsewhere. For all years where there are inconsistent federal and state statistics, I have used the largest numbers reported. Chinese immigrated to the United States before 1850, but only in small numbers. Annual totals were counted in June of each year, with the exception of 1882 when totals were tabulated on August 4 as the Restriction Act went into effect. The year 1889 has been included in the Restriction Period because the vast majority of immigrants that year arrived before the 1888 Exclusion Act went into effect. From 1883 to 1904, totals do not include “in transit” Chinese.

  Compiled by the author from the following sources: For the years from 1851 to 1882, see Mary

  Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 498. For the years from 1883 to 1891, see Trea sury Department, “Letter from the Secretary of the Trea sury . . . statement of arrivals of Chinese at the port of San Francisco,” 51st Cong., 1st sess., Ex. Doc. 97 (April 12, 1890) and Commissioner- General of Immigration, Annual Report of the Commissioner- General of

  Immigration for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 1903 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1903), 34–37, 110–111. For 1892, see Bureau of Statistics, Annual Report and Statements of the Chief of the Bureau of Statistics on the Foreign Commerce, Navigation, Immigration and Tonnage of the U.S. for the year ending June 30, 1892, 52d Cong., 2d Sess., 3102 Ex. Doc. 6 (November 29, 1892). For 1893, see Trea sury Department, Immigration and Passenger Movement at Ports of the United States during the year ending June 30, 1894, 53rd Cong., 3rd Sess., 3317 H.R. Ex. Doc. 6

  (January 2, 1895). For the years from 1894 to 1904, see William Williams, Annual Report of the Commissioner- General of Immigration, 58th Cong., 3rd sess., H.R. Doc. No. 404 (1904), Chart 2.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  NEWSPAPERS

  DAC

  Daily Alta California

  LAH

  Los Angeles Herald

  LAT

  Los Angeles Times

  MDA

  Marysville Daily Appeal

  NYT

  New York Times

  SDC

  Seattle Daily Call

  SDRU

  Sacramento Daily Record- Union

  SFCA

  San Francisco Daily Call

  SFCH

  San Francisco Chronicle

  SPI

  Seattle Post- Intelligencer

  TDL

  Tacoma Daily Ledger

  TR

  Truckee Republican

  GOVERNMENT REC ORDS

  ARCGI

  Annual Report of the Commissioner General of Immigration,

  58th Cong., 2d Sess., Doc. No. 758 (1903)

  RGWT

  Watson C. Squire, “Report of the Governor of Washington

  Territory, made to the Secretary of the Interior”

  (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1886)

  RJSCCI

  Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese

  Immigration. February 28, 1877 (New York: Arno, 1978)

  USC / CA

  United States Census, California

  USC / WA

  United States Census, Washington State

  255

  256 ABBREVIATIONS

  USC / WT

  United States Census, Washington Territory

  USCS / ALB

  A. L. Blake Diaries, Rec ords of the U.S. Customs Ser vice,

  RG36, National Archives and Rec ords Administration,

  Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA

  USCS / CM

  Re: Chinese Matters, Rec ords of the U.S. Customs Ser vice,

  RG36, National Archives and Rec ords Administration,

  Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA

  USCS / IE

  Immigration Entry 134 transferred from the U.S. Customs

  Ser vice, RG85, National Archives and Rec ords Administra-

  tion, Washington, DC

  USCS / RDC

  Reports of Deputy Collectors and Inspectors, Osooyos, Fort

  Colville, Sehome and Seattle, 1882–1885, Rec ords of the U.S.

  Customs Ser vice, RG36, National Archives and Rec ords

  Administration, Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA

  USCS / SJS

  San Juan Islands Subport, Rec ords of the U.S. Customs

  Ser vice, RG36, National Archives and Rec ords Administra-

  tion, Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA

  USDS / DCO

  Despatches from U.S. Consular Offices, Canton, China,

  1790–1906, M101, General Rec ords of the Department of

  State, RG59, National Archives and Rec ords Administration,

  Washington, DC

  USDS / DDO

  Despatches from Diplomatic Offices, China, 1789–1906,

  M92, General Rec ords of the Department of State, RG59,

  National Archives and Rec ords Administration, Wash-

  ington, DC

  USDS / ML

  Miscellaneous Letters of the Department of State, 1789–

  1906, M179, roll 707, General Rec ords of the Department of

  State, RG59, National Archives and Rec ords Administration,

  Washington, DC

  WSA / TDC

  Territorial District Court, Washington State Archives, Puget

  Sound Regional Branch, Bellevue, WA

  INSTITUTIONAL AND PERSONAL PAPERS

  SCP

  Sucheng Chan Papers, Immigration History Research Center

  Archives, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

  ABBREVIATIONS

  257

  SRR

  Survey of Race Relations, Hoover Institute, Stanford

  University, CA

  TB

  Thomas Burke Papers, Special Collections, University of

  Washington, Seattle

  WCS

  Watson C. Squire Papers, Special Collections, University of

  Washington, Seattle

  WJ / CGH

  Willard Jue Papers, Chin Gee Hee Subgroup, Special

  Collections, University of Washington Libraries, Seattle

  ZS

  Zhu Shijia, Meiguo pohai hua gong shiliao [Historical

  Materials Concerning Amer ica’s Persecution of Chinese

  Laborers] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1958)

  NOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  Throughout the book, I use romanized versions of Chinese names as they

  appear in the original sources. Since nineteenth- century romanization was

  haphazard, con temporary spellings of the same name can vary considerably.

  When this occurs, I use the most common version. Typically, Chinese surnames

  precede proper names. When it is difficult to determine a Chinese surname, I

  employ the name in its entirety throughout the text. To this general rule I

  make one exception. When writing about prominent individuals or place

  names, I use the more recent and standardized Pinyin romanization system. In

  these instances, I note the nineteenth- century romanization at first mention in

  the text.

  1. Tak [Tuck] Nam, “Affidavit in the Matter of the Expulsion of the Chinese

  from Tacoma,” Watson Squire to Thomas Bayard and Secretary of the

  Interior (and enclosed documents), July
17, 1886, USDS / ML. [Comma

  inserted by the author for clarity.]

  2. This count refers to the number of sites of anti- Chinese vio lence, not

  the number of individual incidents. Most locations experienced multiple

  incidents. This list, which is not exhaustive, was compiled based on

  “Newspaper Clippings,” box 7 and 8, SCP; Liping Zhu, A Chinaman’s

  Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier (Boulder:

  University of Colorado Press, 1997), 171; Jean Pfaelzer, Driven Out: The

  Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (New York: Random House,

  2007), 256–290; Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History

  (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 51; NYT, March 1, 1886; John Wunder, “Anti-

  Chinese Vio lence in the American West, 1850–1910,” in Law for the

  Elephant, Law for the Beaver: Essays in the Legal History of the North

  American West, ed. John McLaren, Hamar Foster, and Chet Orloff

  259

  260

  NOTES TO PAGES 1–3

  (Pasadena, CA: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1992), 214–231; Patrick

  Joseph Healy and Poon Chew Ng, A Statement for Non- Exclusion (San

  Francisco, 1905), 224–244: Bennet Bronson and Chuimei Ho, Coming

  Home in Gold Brocade: Chinese in Early Northwest Amer i ca (Seattle, WA:

  Chinese in Northwest Amer ica Research Committee, 2015); and digital

  searches of the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald,

  Marysville Daily Appeal, Daily Alta California, San Francisco Chronicle, and

  San Francisco Call.

  3. Jonathon Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and

  Vio lence in Colonial Zanzibar (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press,

  2011); Andrew Bell- Fialkoff, Ethnic Cleansing (New York: St. Martin’s,

  1996); Donald L. Horo witz, The Deadly Ethnic Riot (Berkeley: University

  of California Press, 2003).

  4. Richard Maxwell Brown, Strain of Vio lence: Historical Studies of American

  Vio lence and Vigilantism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975);

  Christopher Waldrep, The Many Faces of Judge Lynch: Extralegal Vio lence

  and Punishment in Amer i ca (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002);

  Michael J. Pfeifer, Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874–1947

  (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004); Benjamin Madley, An

  American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe

  (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016); Karl Jacoby, Shadows at

  Dawn: An Apache Massacre and the Vio lence of History (New York: Penguin

  Books, 2008).

  5. For the treatment of Asian American history in U.S. textbooks, see

  Okiyoshi Takeda, “A Forgotten Minority? A Content Analy sis of Asian

  Pacific Americans in Introductory American Government Textbooks,”

  Ps- Political Science & Politics 48, no. 3 (2015): 430–439. On the “forgotten”

  anti- Chinese vio lence, see Pfaelzer, Driven Out, xxiv– xxix. Anti- Mexican

  and anti- Mormon vio lence in the United States is also often overlooked;

  see William D. Carrigan and Clive Webb, Forgotten Dead: Mob Vio lence

  against Mexicans in the United States, 1848–1928 (Oxford: Oxford

  University Press, 2013) and Patrick Q. Mason, The Mormon Menace:

  Vio lence and Anti- Mormonism in the Postbellum South (Oxford: Oxford

  University Press, 2011).

  6. For the Chinese population, see Mary Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese

  Immigration (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 498–504. Mary Gaylord,

  Eastern Washington’s Past: Chinese and Other Pioneers 1860–1910

  ([Washington, D.C.]: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1993), 66, 84–85; R.

  NOTES TO PAGES 3–6

  261

  Gregory Nokes, Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon (Corvallis:

  Oregon State University Press, 2009); NYT, September 23, 1885; Daily

  Miner, April 17, 1885; Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1886; Stewart E. Tolnay

  and E. M. Beck, A Festival of Vio lence: An Analy sis of Southern Lynchings,

  1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 48–50, 269; Madley,

  An American Genocide, 375–480; John Mack Faragher, Eternity Street:

  Vio lence and Justice in Frontier Los Angeles (New York: W. W. Norton,

  2016), 463–480; LAT, July 12, 1887; Richard Steven Street, Beasts of the

  Field: A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769–1913 (Stanford,

  CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 358.

  7. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 500; USC / WT 1885, 1887; DAC,

  February 13, 1886; Larry Hosley, interview with the author, February 22,

  2009, Tacoma, WA.

  8. The only federal restrictions on immigration before 1875 were the Alien

  Enemies and Alien Friends Acts of 1789; an 1803 act prohibiting the

  importation into select states of “any negro, mulatto, or other person of

  colour, not being a native, a citizen, or registered seaman, of the United

  States, or seamen, natives of countries beyond the Cape of Good Hope” and

  vari ous regulations of the slave trade. “An Act respecting alien enemies,”

  (Alien Enemies Act) chap. 66, 1 Stat. 570 (July 6, 1798); “An Act concerning

  aliens,” (Alien Friends Act), chap. 58, 1 Stat. 577 (June 25, 1798); “An Act to

  prevent the importation of certain persons into certain states, where, by the

  laws thereof, their admission is prohibited,” chap. 10, 2 Stat. 205

  (February 28, 1803); “An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves,” chap. 22,

  2 Stat. 426 (March 2, 1807). Hidetaka Hirota, Expelling the Poor: Atlantic

  Seaboard States and the 19th- Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

  (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Brendan P. O’Malley,

  “Protecting the Stranger: The Origins of U.S. Immigration Regulation in

  Nineteenth- Century New York” (Ph.D. diss., City University of New York,

  2015); Kunal M. Parker, Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law

  in Amer i ca, 1600–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015); David

  Scott FitzGerald and David Cook- Martin, Cul ing the Masses: The Demo-

  cratic Origins of Racist Immigration Policy in the Amer i cas (Cambridge, MA:

  Harvard University Press, 2014); Aristide R. Zolberg, A Nation by Design:

  Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of Amer i ca (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

  University Press, 2008), 168–175.

  9. James Wickersham to Herbert Hunt, April 21, 1916, folder 6, Wickersham

  Collection, Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma.

  262

  NOTES TO PAGES 6–7

  10. Elliott West, “Reconstructing Race,” Western Historical Quarterly 34, no. 1

  (Spring 2003): 7–26; Najia Aarim- Heriot, Chinese Immigrants, African

  Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848–82 (Urbana:

  University of Illinois Press, 2006); Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal

  Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Richard White, “Race

  Relations in the American West,” American Quarterly 38, no. 3 (1986):

  396–416; Desmond S. King and Rogers M. Smith, “Racial Orders in

  American Po liti cal Development,” American Po liti cal Science Review 99,

  no. 1 (February 2005): 75–92; D. Michael Bottoms, An Aristocracy of

  Color: Race and Reconstruction in California
and the West, 1850–1890

  (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013); Joshua Paddison, American

  Heathens: Religion, Race and Reconstruction in California (Berkeley:

  University of California Press, 2012); Edlie L. Wong, Racial Reconstruction:

  Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion, and the Fictions of Citizenship (New

  York: New York University Press, 2015); Natalia Molina, How Race Is Made

  in Amer i ca: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial

  Scripts (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

  11. Gordon H. Chang, “China and the Pursuit of Amer ica’s Destiny:

  Nineteenth- Century Imaginings and Why Immigration Restriction Took

  So Long,” Journal of Asian American Studies 15, no. 2 (June 2012): 145–169.

  12. For this purpose, the U.S. West includes California, Oregon, Washington

  Territory, Idaho Territory, Nevada, Utah Territory, Arizona Territory, New

  Mexico Territory, Colorado, Wyoming Territory, and Montana Territory.

  California, Oregon, and Washington had the largest number of Chinese,

  a combined 83 percent of the Chinese population. Coo lidge, Chinese

  Immigration, 501.

  13. Tak [Tuck] Nam, “Affidavit,” in Watson Squire to Thomas Bayard (and

  enclosed documents), July 17, 1886, USDS / ML.

  14. On vio lence in politics, see Steven Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black

  Po liti cal Strug gles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration

  (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), 266;

  Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur, eds. The World the Civil War Made

  (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 1–17. On territorial

  status, see Jack Ericson Eblen, The First and Second United States Empires,

  1784–1912 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1968); Earl S.

  Pomeroy, The Territories and the United States, 1861–1890: Studies in Colonial

  Administration (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1947).

  NOTES TO PAGE 8

  263

  15. “Alien, adj. and n. ” OED Online, accessed March 2017, http:// www.oed

  . com / view / Entry / 4988 ? rskey=hGViDP&result=1&isAdvanced=false.

  Historians have been more attentive to the formal and social status of

  citizens than to noncitizens. For the U.S. citizen, see James H. Kettner, The

  Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: University of

  North Carolina Press, 1978); Rogers M. Smith, Civil Ideals: Conflicting

 

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