1–2.
7. Andrew Wender Cohen, “Smuggling, Globalization, and Amer i ca’s
Outward State, 1870–1909,” Journal of American History 97, no. 2
(September 2010): 371–398; Annual Report of the Register of the Trea-
sury to the Secretary of the Trea sury in the Fiscal Year Ending June 30,
1885 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1885), 88.
8. Kitty Calavita, “The Paradoxes of Race, Class, Identity, and ‘Passing’:
Enforcing the Chinese Exclusion Acts, 1882–1910,” Law and Social Inquiry
25, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 1–40.
9. In 1884, Congress amended the act in order to clarify several points that
had caused enforcement prob lems. The new legislation explic itly defined
who was exempt from the law (including Chinese students, diplomats, and
merchants), officially instituted the system of “return certificates” that was
already in use, and extended restriction to people of Chinese ancestry
regardless of their country of origin. “An act to amend an act entitled ‘An
act to execute certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese,’ ” chap. 220,
23 Stat. 115 (July 5, 1884).
10. O. L. Spaul ding to Charles Folger, December 3, 1883, box 9, USCS / IE; J. B
Houston to W. T Trisdel, November 14, 1883, box 3, no. 5, USCS / IE. This
practice followed a similar system regulating Chinese women under the
Page Law; see Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese
Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong
University Press, 2013), 248–261.
11. The United States had previously issued “passports” or “passes” to regulate
internal movement of free African Americans and whites journeying into
Indian Territory. Some Eu ro pean mi grants presented travel passports to
U.S. customs officials prior to 1882, but these documents were not required
for admission; see Craig Robertson, The Passport in Amer i ca: The History of
a Document (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 14–16, 142,
171–178.
12. O. L. Spaul ding to Charles Folger, December 3, 1883, box 9, USCS / IE.
NOTES TO PAGES 58–59
283
13. H. N. Morse to Col. J. T. Evans, February 19, 1883, box 3 file 4, USCS / IE;
Simon A. Cole, Suspect Identities: A History of Fingerprinting and Criminal
Identification (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 152.
14. O. L. Spaul ding to Charles Folger, December 3, 1883, box 9, USCS / IE.
15. William Morrow, “Representative Morrow’s Letter to the Senate
Committee Showing the Inefficiency of President Cleveland’s Treaty” in
The Republican Campaign Text- Book for 1888 by George Francis Dawson
(New York, 1888), 149–150.
16. Mary Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: Henry Holt,
1909), 500; Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 49.
17. Previous historians have based their estimates for 1883 through 1888 on the
number of Chinese admitted to the United States as “immigrants”
according to the 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 example, see Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Amer i ca, 47;
Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates, 43–44; Shih- Shah Henry Tsai, The Chinese
Experience in Amer i ca (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 194.
Although historians have included returning immigrants in their estimates
of Chinese immigration in the 1890s, they have overlooked the Chinese
admitted with return certificates during Chinese restriction. In contrast, I
have derived an estimate of the total Chinese admitted by including
Chinese who were admitted to the Port of San Francisco (other ports being
unavailable) with return certificates. 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., S. Doc. No. 97 (April 12,
1890). In order to determine the effectiveness of the Restriction Act, these
return immigrants must be counted in the annual total number of Chinese
arrivals. Since the vast majority of scholars have included return
immigrants in estimates of annual Chinese migration before and after the
Restriction Period, it is clear they should also be counted between 1883 and
1889. When mea sur ing immigration of any other alien group, nineteenth-
century officials and twentieth- century scholars have traditionally lumped
together new and returning mi grants. Moreover, statistics including both
new and return mi grants more accurately reflect the actual number of
Chinese entering the United States. For the inclusion of returning Chinese
during other periods see Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Amer i ca, 48;
284
NOTES TO PAGES 59–61
Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates, 260n29. For the inclusion of returning non-
Chinese aliens, see Commissioner General of Immigration, Annual Report
of the Commissioner General of Immigration for the Fiscal Year Ended
June 30, 1903. Returning citizens and a small number of “tourist” or
“temporary” aliens were not counted in federal statistics, but other wise
officials failed to note whether Eu ro pean immigrants had been in the
United States before or not.
18. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 498; Trea sury Department, “Letter from
the Secretary of the Trea sury . . . Statement of Arrivals of Chinese at the
Port of San Francisco,” 51st Cong., S. 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, 34–37,
110–111; 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,”
52nd Cong., 3102 H.R. Doc. 6 (November 29, 1892); Trea sury Department,
“Immigration and Passenger Movement at Ports of the United States
during the Year Ending June 30, 1894,” 53rd Cong., 3317 H.R. Doc. 6
(January 2, 1895). Some contemporaries argued that the annual average of
Chinese immigrants during the period of free migration should be
calculated without including the unusual period between 1880 and 1882
when 45,952 Chinese rushed to enter Amer ica before the anticipated
Restriction Act went into place. They view this migration as more the
product of restriction than representative of free migration. Morrow,
“Representative Morrow’s Letter to the Senate,” 150.
19. Charles J. Folger, “Letter from the Secretary of the Trea sury, transmitting
in compliance with Senate resolution of the 7th instant, copies of all papers
relating to the subject of the extension of the Act of May 6, 1882, to execute
certain treaty stipulations relating to Chinese,” 48th Cong., S. Doc. No. 62
(1883) at 8.
20. Ibid., at 38.
21. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 498–500. On fraudulent entry of in- transit
Chinese, see Adam McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the
Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008) ,
143; William Morrow to Daniel Manning, March 18, 1886, box 4,
USCS / IE.
22. The Chinese Merchant’s Case, 7 Sawy. 546, 13 F. 605, 1882 U.S. App.
LEXIS 2042 (C.C.D. Cal. 1882).
NOTES TO PAGES 62–64
285
23. As quoted by Margaret Kolb Holden, “The Rise and Fall of Oregon
Pop u lism: Legal Theory, Po liti cal Culture and Public Policy 1868–1895”
(Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1993), 350–352. In the last quote, Deady
is citing the opinion by Judge Ogden Hoffman in re Low Yam Chow.
However, Deady has taken Hoffman’s quote out of context and imbued it
with new meaning, since Hoffman himself appears to support the law. The
Chinese Merchant’s Case, 7 Sawy. 546, 13 F. 605, 1882 U.S. App. LEXIS
2042 (C.C.D. Cal. 1882).
24. It is likely that many judges in the U.S. West shared Deady’s opinions.
Focusing primarily on San Francisco and federal courts, historian Charles
McClain found that between 1882 and 1885 the courts gave the legislation a
“reasonable, even liberal interpretation” that took “some of the edge off the
exclusion laws.” McClain primarily attributes these sympathetic rulings to
judges’ belief “at some level” that they needed to protect minority groups
against the excessive power of the majority. But judges were not only
concerned about protecting Chinese mi grants; they also wanted to preserve
Amer ica’s interests in China. Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The
Chinese Strug gle against Discrimination in Nineteenth- Century Amer i ca
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 171–172; Lucy E. Salyer,
Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern
Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
25. In the years 1853, 1855, 1864, 1866, 1867, and 1880; see Coo lidge, Chinese
Immigration, 498.
26. “Chinese Immigration,” 51st Cong., H.R. Rep. No. 4048 (March 2, 1891)
at 494.
27. SDC, September 25, 1885; TDL, October 3, 1885; “Chinese Immigration,” at 67. For scholarly estimates, see Ettinger, Imaginary Lines, 49; Young, Alien
Nation, 160–161; Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates, 135.
28. Sheila Mc Manus, The Line Which Separates: Race, Gender and the Making
of the Alberta- Montana Borderlands (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
2005), xii– xvi; Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, “ Toward a
Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World History 8 no. 2 (Fall
1997): 215–218.
29. A. W. Bash to Secretary of Trea sury, August 23, 1882, box 3, file 7,
USCS / IE.
30. Special Agent J. C. Horr to Secretary of the Trea sury Charles Folger,
November 4, 1882, box 3, file 6, USCS / IE; J. C. Horr to Col. J F. Evans,
May 6, 1883, box 3, file 3, USCS / IE.
286
NOTES TO PAGES 65–72
31. J. C. Horr to Col. J F. Evans, May 6, 1883, box 3, file 3, USCS / IE.
32. Ibid.; Robert J. Stevens to James D. Porter, April 28, 1885, box 2, file 5,
USCS / IE.
33. J. C. Horr to Folger, November 4, 1882, USCS / IE.
34. Ira B. Myers to A. W. Bash, July 24, 1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS. A. W.
Bash to Secretary of Trea sury, July 11, 1883, box 9, USCS / IE.
35. C. L. Hooper to Watson Squire, October 15, 1884, box 2, Watson C. Squire
Administration, Territorial Governors, Washington State Archives,
Olympia, Washington.
36. A. W. Bash to Secretary of Trea sury, July 11, 1883, USCS / IE.
37. A. W. Bash to William Windom, August 6, 1881, A. L. Blake file, Civilian
Personnel Rec ords, National Personal Rec ords Center, St. Louis, Missouri.
38. A. L. Blake, August 11, 1881, vol. 1, USCS / ALB.
39. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, May 5, 1883, box 109, file 3, USCS / SJS.
40. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, December 13, 1883, box 109, file 5, USCS / SJS.
41. A. W. Bash to Secretary of the Trea sury, October 8, 1883, USCS / CM;
A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, November 27, 1883, box 109, file 5, USCS / SJS
(emphasis in the original).
42. A. L. Blake, 25 November 1883, vol. 2, USCS / ALB; A. L. Blake to A. W.
Bash, November 27, 1883, box 109, file 5, USCS / SJS.
43. J. Melzett to A. W. Bash, October 9, 1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS.
44. Blake, June 4, 1883, vol. 1, USCS / ALB.
45. Ibid; A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, September 28, 1884, box 110, file 2,
USCS / RDC.
46. J. H. Price to A. W. Bash, July 2, 1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS.
47. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, January 4, 1883, box 111, file 3, USCS / SJS.
48. For personal and mercantile relationships between Chinese and Native
Americans, see Daniel Liestman, “Horizontal Inter- Ethnic Relations:
Chinese and American Indians in the Nineteenth- Century West,” Western
Historical Quarterly 30, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 343–348; Jordan Hua, “ ‘They
Looked Askance’: American Indians and Chinese in the Nineteenth
Century U.S. West” (honors thesis, Rutgers University, 2012), 33–37, 44–45.
49. For example, see A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, May 5, 1883, box 109, file 3,
USCS / SJS.
50. Also spelled Wah Chung or Wa Chung.
51. In pinyin, “Chen Yixi.”
52. “Guide to the Willard Jue Papers,” WJ / CGH; Kornel Chang,
“Transpacific Borderlands and Bound aries: Race, Migration and State
NOTES TO PAGES 73–76
287
Formation in the North American Pacific Rim, 1882–1917” (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Chicago, 2007), 110.
53. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, July 11, 1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS.
54. Ibid.
55. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, September 1, 1882, box 111, file 2, USCS / SJS.
56. A. L. Blake, September 20, 1884, vol. 4, USCS / ALB.
57. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, November 13, 1883, USCS / SJS.
58. A. W. Bash to A. L. Blake, December, 1883, vol. 1, USCS / CM.
59. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, December 4, 1883, box 109, file 9, USCS / SJS.
60. A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash, February 13, 1884, box 110, file 1, USCS / RDC;
A. L. Blake, April 24, 1884, vol. 4, USCS / ALB; A. A. Rod gers, Journals,
Fees and Cashbooks, Chinese Bills, series 43, vol. 51, Bureau of
Customs, Puget Sound Collection District, RG36, National Archives
Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA.
61. A. L. Blake, April 16, 1884, vol. 4, USCS / ALB; A. L. Blake to A. W. Bash,
November 28, 1883, box 109, file 5, USCS / SJS; Robert E. Ficken and
Charles P. LeWarne, Washington: A Centennial History (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1988), 191. Similar forms of community involvement in
border control continued in Washington into the beginning of the twentieth
century. Chang, “Transpacific Borderlands and Bound aries,” 125, 201.
62. Americans sometimes referred to China as the “Celestial Empire” and
Chinese as “Celestials.” J. C. Horr to Chas. J. Folger, November 24, 1883,
box 3, file 1, USCS / IE; A. W. Bash to Charles J. Folger, January 11, 1884,
Letters Sent to the Department of Trea sury, box 37, file 2, Customs
Ser vice, Puget Sound Collection District Letters, RG36, National Archives
Pacifi
c Alaska Region, Seattle, WA; C. B. Bash to A. W. Bash, August 9,
1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS; A. W. Bash to Charles J. Folger,
January 11, 1884, Letters Sent to the Department of Trea sury, box 37, file 2,
Customs Ser vice, Puget Sound Collection District Letters, RG36, National
Archives Pacific Alaska Region, Seattle, WA.
63. J. H. Price to A. W. Bash, August 1, 1883, box 109, file 4, USCS / SJS; A. L.
Blake to A. W. Bash, 7 May 1884, box 110, file 2, USCS / RDC.
64. As David Gutiérrez found in the Mexican American community in the
twentieth century, legal residents could see newcomers as threatening to
their livelihoods and their fragile attempts to be accepted in the white
community. David Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans,
Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995), 4, 151, 154.
288
NOTES TO PAGES 77–80
65. “More about the Chinese,” July 9, 1883, Olympia Courier, box 4, file 9
(unnumbered), USCS / IE; A. W. Bash to C. F. Clapp, July 7, 1883, vol. 1,
USCS / CM.
66. U.S. v. The Steamer Eliza Anderson , case file no. 4691 (King County, 1885),
WSA / TDC.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Chang, Pacific Connections, 3, 148; Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates, 175. Examining a later period, David C. Atkinson also finds this characterization overstates
the cooperation; see David C. Atkinson, The Burden of White Supremacy:
Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 2.
71. Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and
Chinese and Japa nese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (British Columbia: University
of British Columbia Press, 1990), 3, 4–8, 48. For the history of Chinese
mi grants in Canada, see Lisa Rose Mar, Brokering Belonging: Chinese in
Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010);
Harry Con and Edgar Wickberg, From China to Canada: A History of the
Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982);
Henry Yu, “Global Mi grants and the New Pacific Canada,” International
Journal 64, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 1011–1026; Henry Yu, “The Intermittent
Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific,” in Connecting Seas and Connected
The Chinese Must Go Page 41