TED C. HINCKLEY
The Politics of Sinophobia: Garfield,
the Morey Letter, and the Presidential
Election of 1880
Looking backward from the 1890s and
ruminating on the almost
dozen presidential contests with which
he had been familiar, Charles
Francis Adams, Jr., reflected, "So
far as the country as a whole is
concerned, the grand result would in
the long run have been about
the same whether at any particular
election"-with the exception of
1864-"the party I sympathized with
had won the day or whether
the other party had won it."
Brother Henry was even more cynical
of Gilded Age government. "The
political dilemma was as clear in
1870 as it was likely to be in 1970 ....
Nine-tenths of men's
political energies must henceforth be
wasted on expedients to piece
out-to patch-or, in vulgar language, to
tinker-the political
machine as often as it broke
down."1
While the Adamses compared their age's
politicos with the sages
of George Washington's era, our
generation is inclined to recall a
less Olympian leadership. And when we
soberly consider how our
future increasingly rests on decisions
made in Teheran and Riyadh,
invidious phrases like "piece
out," "patch," and "tinker" may not
seem so unreasonable.
Philosopher-presidents charted inspirational
voyages for early America's
"chosen people"; henceforth simply
keeping the Republic's ship of state
afloat could be triumph enough.
Possibly this explains why historians
now seem less inclined to
ridicule as "ineffectual"
America's 1865 to 1901 presidents.2 A cen-
Professor Ted C. Hinckley teaches
history at San Jose State University and is
now on the State Historic Resources
Commission of the California Department of
Parks and Recreation.
1. Edward Chase Kirkland, Charles
Francis Adams, Jr. 1835-1915: The Patrician at
Bay (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 169; Henry Adams, The
Education of Henry Adams: An
Autobiography (Boston, 1961), 280-81.
2. As Robert Kelley notes, "The
politics of the Gilded Age, like that of every other
period, have their own inner validity
and reality." The Shaping of the American Past
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978), 442. H.
Wayne Morgan admonishes scholars to take the
382 OHIO HISTORY
tury ago, as today, distinctions between
the two major parties were
frequently blurred. For all the
widespread alarm awakened by riot-
gutted Pittsburghs and Haymarket Square
blood-lettings,
Democrats and Republicans alike eschewed
ideological panaceas.
The root problems of America's booming
industrialization were on-
ly vaguely perceived by the electorate;
simple solutions were rarely,
if ever, possible. Not until near the
century's turn would a genuinely
national political perspective really
challenge the Jacksonian con-
fidence in self-help, small
institutions, and regionalism.3
Because third parties did signal a
number of the Gilded Age's
socioeconomic discontents while the two
major parties wobbled
across each other in the middle of the
road, there is the assumption
that the Republican and Democratic
election contests really served
little purpose, or as the Adams brothers
would have insisted, there
was a wasteful dissipation of political
energies.
This essay suggests that those
quadrennial presidential cam-
paigns were in and of themselves an
efficient means of venting
public tensions and articulating public
issues, two elements which
are indispensable for maintaining a
democratic society. And fur-
thermore, notwithstanding all the
torchlight hoopla, these
rhetorical battles did influence
subsequent legislation. Certainly the
magnification of America's anti-Chinese
labor feelings during the
1880s presidential struggle demonstrated
this. It served as a
catharsis for America's sinophobia, and
accelerated Congressional
passage of the historic, if misguided,
1882 Chinese exclusion.4
Historian Leonard Dinnerstein believes
the 1880s contest was
"one of the most insignificant in
United States History"; for New
Yorker Thomas Collier Platt, it was
"a sullen campaign."5 The
Democratic and Republican differences
more seriously. Indeed, the Preface and
Bibliography to his distinguished From
Hayes to McKinley: National Party Politics,
1877-1896 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1969) is required reading for the
historian of these years.
Examples of the traditional
interpretation are Samuel Eliot Morison, et al, A Concise
History of the American Republic (New York, 1977), II, Chap. 23, "The Politics of
Dead
Center 1877-1890"; and Vincent P. DeSantis, The
Shaping of Modern America:
1877-1916 (Boston, 1973), Chap. 3, also, "The Politics of
Dead Center." Suggestive of
where fresh thinking can lead is Geoffrey Blodgett,
"A New Look at the American
Gilded Age," Historical
Reflections, I (Winter 1974) 231-44.
3. For a recent and impressive analysis
of this thesis, see Morton Keller, Affairs of
State: Public Life in Late Nineteenth
Century America (Cambridge, Mass.,
1977).
Two other germane studies are Howard Mumford Jones, The
Age of Energy ... (New
York, 1971) and Robert H. Wiebe, The
Search for Order (New York, 1967).
4. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, A
History of the United States Since the Civil War
(New York, 1931), IV, 297 ff; John A.
Garraty, The New Commonwealth, 1877-1890
(New York, 1968), 208.
5. Leonard Dinnerstein, "Election
of 1880," in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., History
of American Presidential Elections,
1789-1963 (New York, 1971), II, 149;
hereafter
cited as HAPE; Thomas C. Pratt, Autobiography
(New York, 1910), 134.
Politics of Sinophobia 383
Southern question has gone into eclipse,
and the nation was enjoy-
ing relative prosperity. As the
platforms of the two major parties
tended to merge, politicians frequently
resorted to hyperbole and
personal vituperation. Not until the
next decade's depression and
the farmers' revolt would fresh policies
match dramatic politicos.
While the wafer-thin presidential
victories of the 1880, 1884, and
1888 campaigns reflected "an era of
the closest balance of party
strength in American history," it
is a mistake to extrapolate from
this tacit public consensus that the
age's respective Republican and
Democratic platforms lacked substance.6
They might equivocate, or
remain silent, on what we now regard as
the critical issues of the
day, but their campaign documents did
not merely repeat "tradi-
tional platitudes." Presidential
aspirants and their lieutenants cor-
rectly discerned the implicit warnings
in their narrow mandates: to
struggle against the popular tide could
prove fatal. In truth,
America's cruel Civil War, followed by
the rancorous Bloody Shirt
campaigns of the seventies, left many
Americans feeling that they
had "had a surfeit of political
conflict."7
In his classic The American
Commonwealth, published during the
1880s, James Bryce reported the decade
as "comparatively quiet."
Bryce estimated that nineteen out of
twenty citizens "had no
special interest in politics."8 But
if, as Bryce reported, America's
electorate was unwilling to come to
grips with new, enormously
complex economic questions, certain
segments of the body politic
eagerly unfettered their frustrations
with "strikes, riots, vigilan-
tism, and lynching."9 Big
business and the railroads were prime
6. Svend Petersen, A Statistical
History of the American Presidential Elections
(New York, 1963), 48-56 ff; Alfred E.
Binkley, American Political Parties: Their
Natural History (New York, 1962), 309.
7. HAPE, 1504. David J. Rothman, Politics
and Power: The United States Senate
1869-1901 (New York, 1969), 263; DeSantis, The Shaping, 37.
Richard Hofstadter, "The
Development of Politicial Parties"
in John A. Garraty, Interpreting American History
... (London, 1957), I, 157.
8. James Bryce, The American
Commonwealth (New York, 1959), edited by Louis
M. Hacker, I, 273, 285. Just how far
this spirit of accomodation had gone was the
U.S. Supreme Court's 1883 declaration
that the adjustment of social relations of in-
dividuals was beyond the power of
Congress, and the Court's destruction of the
1875 Civil Rights Act. James M.
McPherson, The Abolitionist Legacy
...
(Princeton, 1975), 22.
9. Keller, Affairs, 486.
10. Roger Daniels, "Westerners from
the East: Oriental Immigrants Reappraised,"
Pacific Historical Review, XXXV (November, 1966), 373-83 ; and his "American
Historians and East Asian
Immigrants," Pacific Historical Review, XLIII
(November, 1974) 449-72. Equally
indispensable is John Higham, Strangers in the
Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (New York, 1969). Illustrating the
range of reinterpretation are David J.
Langum, "Californios and the Image of In-
dolence," Western Historical
Quarterly, IX (April, 1978), 181-96; and Luther W.
384 OHIO HISTORY
targets for the wrath of those whose
autonomy was being eroded by
mass mechanization and the corporate
society. A more immediate
scapegoat, particularly for Westerners,
was the Asian stereotype,
"John Chinaman."
Historian Roger Daniels has reminded us
that there never oc-
curred the flood of Chinese immigrants
pictured in racist
mythology. The Chinese were but one
among many minority groups
who were victimized by American
xenophobia. Today social scien-
tists have amassed a considerable body
of scholarship on the
diverse ramifications of nativism.10
Individuals who persist in see-
ing the matter simply as white man vs.
Black, white man vs. Asian,
et cetera, play the fool; xenophobia was
and is virtually universal.
Certainly nineteenth century America's
sinophobia, like its
negrophobia, was a grim and important
historic reality.11
Chinese had visited the United States
since the beginning of the
century; however, it was shock waves
from Mother Lode diggings
that really alerted them to American
opportunities. Fewer than 400
immigrants in 1849, by 1852 their number
had grown to 25,000. The
passage in 1868 of the Burlingame
Treaty, which permitted the
Chinese unrestricted immigration into
the United States, helped
sustain this trans-Pacific movement.
Desperate conditions within
China propelled tens of thousands of
them to emigrate to scattered
points all about the Pacific Basin and
beyond. Thousands who were
at first welcomed in Peru and Cuba found
themselves "so badly
treated as to give rise to international
scandals" between Lima and
Peking, while in Spanish Cuba some
actually joined the island's
revolutionary movement.12 America's
welcome also turned sour. It
is easy enough to understand why
Massachusetts employers' use of
Spoehr, "Sambo and the Heathen
Chinee: California's Racial Stereotypes in the
Late 1870s," Pacific Historical
Review, XLII (May, 1923), 185-204.
11. Among the numerous studies featuring
America's anti-Chinese activities are
Stuart Creighton Miller, The
Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the
Chinese, 1785-1882 (Berkeley, 1969); and Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The
Anti-Chinese
Movement in California (Urbana, Ill., 1939). The impact of status anxieties
has been
probed by Alexander Saxton, The
Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-
Chinese Movement in California (Berkeley, 1971). To gain a multi-ethnic com-
parative view, see Robert F. Heizer and
Alan J. Almquist, The Other Californians:
Prejudice and Discrimination Under
Spain, Mexico and the United States to 1920
(Berkeley, 1970).
12. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A Short
History of the Far East (New York, 1957),
378 ff; Gunther Barth, Bitter
Strength (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). H. Brett Melendy,
The Oriental Americans (New York, 1972) provides a splendid review of all the
major
East Asian immigrant groups. Also see,
Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United
States of America (Hong Kong, 1960), 9; Magnus Morner, Race Mixture in
the
History of Latin America (Boston, 1967), 131.
Politics of Sinophobia 385
Chinese as strike breakers angered white
workers, but it is difficult
to comprehend western Americans' fierce
antipathy, at times an
almost pathological fear of what a
swelling number discerned as
"degenerate Chinese." Daniels
believes that as early as 1870, "when
Chinese formed about 10 percent of the
state's population, the anti-
Chinese issue had become perhaps the
most important" in Califor-
nia.13
Certainly America's protracted
depression of the 1870s helped
fuel California's combustible
sinophobia. An 1876 Congressional
Joint Committee's western tour angered
Western exclusionists.
Ironically the Committee's anti-Chinese
report, authored by Califor-
nia's Senator Aaron A. Sargent, aroused
nativists elsewhere in the
United States. A Southern congressman
actually advocated that
"the subjects of China"
presently within America be colonized on
"a tract of land in one of the
Territories of the United States, as
remote as possible from white
settlements." As the seventies ended,
the quantity of sinophobia printed in
the nation's newspapers, and
spreading across the country in pamphlet
form, had reached serious
proportions.14 Within the
Golden State it had become
unques-
tionably the premier political issue.
It was probably in California's mining
camps during the fifties
that sinophobia and the "enduring
theme of [Chinese] cultural in-
feriority was launched." After the
Civil War, California's prejudice
against non-whites proved so strong that
the state refused to ratify
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments,
fearing the Chinese
would thus acquire equal civil rights.15
In 1868, California's
Democratic gubernatorial candidate
attacked any extension of the
suffrage to "inferior races"
such as Negroes and Chinese. The
13. Lucile Eaves, A History of
California Labor Legislation ... (Berkeley, 1910).
II, 138. Although dated in her analysis
of anti-Orientalism, Mary Roberts
Coalidge's Chinese Immigration (New
York, 1909) also includes much valuable
material on this topic. Also see, Roger
Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice ... (New
York, 1968), 16.
14. S.C. Miller, The Unwelcome, 186
ff; M.B. Starr, The Coming Struggle; Or
What the People on the Pacific Coast
Think of the Coolie Invasion (San
Francisco,
1873); Raphael Pumpelly; "Our
Impending Chinese Problem," Galaxy, (January,
1869), 22-23; Sandmeyer, The
Anti-Chinese, 81-82; Aaron A. Sargent, Immigration
of Chinese [Senate Speech, May 2,
1876] (Wash., D.C., 1876). Also see,
Starr, The
Coming Struggle; Henry J. West, comp., The Chinese Invasion (San
Francisco,
1873); Robert McClellan, The Heathen
Chinee: A Study of American Attitudes
Toward China, 1890-1905 (Columbus, Ohio, 1971), carries the controversy all the
way
up to 1904 when Chinese exclusion had
become virtually permanent.
15. Rodman, W. Paul, "The Origins
of the Chinese Issue in California," Mississip-
pi Valley Historical Review, XXV (September, 1938), 181-96; Leonard Pitt, "The
Beginnings of Nativism in
California," Pacific Historical Review, XXX (September,
1961), 23-38; Melendy, The Oriental, 30-39;
Sandmeyer The Anti-Chinese, 46-47.
386 OHIO HISTORY
Republican leadership, on the other
hand, apparently
underestimated the swelling current of
sinophobia, for it endorsed
the recently concluded Burlingame
Treaty. Mob violence
throughout the seventies provided ample
evidence of the growing
anti-Chinese sentiment. In 1871, a
roaring Los Angeles crowd
dispatched eighteen or nineteen
"Celestials heavenward."16
Murderous outbreaks against Chinese at
Antioch, Truckee, Gilroy,
and San Diego seared the mid-seventies.
As the sounds of gunfire
and burning buildings mingled with the
incendiary polemics of
Pacific Slope sinophobes, leading
Chinese-Americans countered by
memorializing the President of the
United States to weigh "the
other side of the Chinese
question." The ineffectualness of their
pleas was manifest when both the
Democratic and Republican plat-
forms of 1876 included anti-Chinese
immigration planks. Both of
these documents declared against Chinese
and/or imported labor un-
til the century's end.17 Far
West sinophobes doubtless applauded
California's Democratic Governor William
Irwin's racist rallying
cry: "An irrepressible conflict
between the Chinese and ourselves-
between their civilization and
ours-" had begun. By 1879, this
groundswell of nativism combined with
sufficient other national
pressures to place a Chinese exclusion
bill on President Rutherford
B. Hayes' desk. Hayes vetoed it.18
For Californians, 1879 had been a year
of decision. The menace of
San Francisco's Chinese-hating demagogue
Denis Kearney and his
Workingmen's Party had peaked.
Nevertheless, California's new
state constitution-written during that
feverish year-denied the
suffrage to all Chinese and prohibited
them from employment on
16. Melendy, The Oriental, 32;
Keller, Affairs of State, 57; Walton Bean, Califor-
nia: An Interpretative History (New York, 1968), 235-36. Richard H. Dillon dates
August 4, 1863, as San Francisco's first
anti-Chinese riot. The Hatchet Men ...
(New York, 1962), 62.
17. Salinas City Index, March 22,
1877; John Walton Caughey, California
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1953), 385-87;
Melendy, The Oriental, 37-38; Representative
Chinamen in America, Facts Upon the
Other Side of the Chinese Question: With a
Memorial to the President of the
United States (San Francisco, 1876).
See also,
Memorial of Six Chinese Companies to
the Senate and the House of Representatives
of the United States (San Francisco, 1877). Nor were the Chinese without old
friends
among the Anglos. See, for example,
William Speer, A Humble Plea... (San Fran-
cisco, 1856); Lee, The Chinese, 12;
Kirk B. Porter and Donald B. Johnson, National
Party Platforms: 1840-1964 (Urbana, Ill., 1966), 49-118.
18. Daniels, The Politics of
Prejudice, 16-17; Keller, Affairs of State, 157. Thomas
A. Bailey briefly examines the why of
Hayes' veto in his A Diplomatic History of the
American People (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974), 393-95; for fresh
digging, see, Gary
Pennanen, "Public Opinion and the
Chinese Question 1876-1879," Ohio History, 77
(Winter, 1968), 144 ff.
Politics of Sinophobia 387 |
public works. Further discriminatory measures would follow; predictably, these excesses would result in numerous court challenges.19 For the moment, however, attention would be focused on the Chinese issue and America's 1880 presidential battle. In the 1880 campaign the platforms of both major parties, as well
19. Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California, 1850-1880: An Economic Study (Madison, Wisc., 1967), 138; Ralph J. Roske, Everyman's Eden: A History of Califor- nia (New York, 1968), 385-88. The standard work on the 1879 constitution is Carl B. |
388 OHIO HISTORY
as that of a third party, the
Greenbacks, included a stand on
Chinese labor. The Democrats wanted the
Burlingame Treaty of
1868 amended to prevent further Chinese
immigration, "except for
travel, education, and foreign
commerce,..." The Republicans
declared "the unrestricted
immigration of the Chinese as a matter
of grave concernment," and that
action by China and the United
States "would limit and restrict
that immigration by the enactment
of such just, humane and reasonable laws
and treaties ..." The
Republicans' more moderate tone was
necessitated in part by the
fact that President Rutherford B. Hayes'
representatives were then
negotiating in Asia to slow the
trans-Pacific traffic into California.20
Furthermore, the public would condemn
any reprisals on American
Christian missions and traders in China
as a Republican failure. The
Greenback Party platform put the matter
bluntly: "Slavery being
simply cheap labor, and cheap labor
being simply slavery, the im-
portation and presence of Chinese serfs
necessarily tends to
brutalize and degrade American labor,
therefore immediate steps
should be taken to abrogate the
Burlingame Treaty."21
The Democrats, determined to win back
the White House, picked
a candidate whose Civil War credentials
immunized him from
"Bloody Shirt" reproach:
General Winfield S. Hancock who had
fought for the Union at Gettysburg. Nor
was the handsome Han-
cock merely an honored Union man. During
Reconstruction he had
practiced a relatively even-handed
administration throughout
Texas and Louisiana. Indeed, by 1880 the
affable Hancock was not
readily identified with any
controversial issue. In his acceptance let-
ter, Hancock's running mate, William H.
English, promised that
"The toiling millions of our people
will be protected from the
Swisher, Motivation and Political
Technique in the California Constitutional Con-
vention, 1878-79 (Claremont, Calif., 1930); equally vital for nineteenth
century
California politics is Winfield J.
Davis, History of Political Conventions in Califor-
nia, 1849-1892 (Sacramento, 1893). To follow up the judicial
decisions, see L.S.
Sawyer, Reports of Cases Decided ...
(San Francisco, 1873-1891). Carl Brent
Swisher has provided us an absorbing
account of how California's most famous
jurist for these years zig-zagged on the
Chinese Question in his Stephen J. Field,
Craftsman of the Law (Chicago, 1969), Chap. 8.
20. HAPE, 1518-27. The 1868
treaty had permitted Chinese the right of free im-
migration into the United States. By the
time of the fall 1880 presidential campaign,
however, a U.S. diplomatic commission to
China had succeeded in obtaining a new
treaty that enabled the United States to
"regulate, limit, or suspend," but not ab-
solutely prohibit the entry of Chinese
laborers. Julius W. Pratt, A History of United
States Foreign Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1955), 360; Tyler Dennett, Americans
in East Asia (New York, 1963), 541-43.
21. David L. Anderson, "The
Diplomacy of Discrimination: Chinese Exclusion,
1876-1882," California History, LVII
(Spring, 1978), 32-45; HAPE, 1522.
Politics of Sinophobia 389
destructive competition of the Chinese,
and to that end their im-
migration will be properly
restricted."22
Because President Hayes had earlier
rejected a second term, the
Republican presidential convention
remained relatively open. This
was demonstrated when a one-time college
president-become-
politician gave the nominating address
for party war-horse John
Sherman, and on the thirty-sixth ballot
ended up himself becoming
the nominee. Ohio Congressman James
Abram Garfield, like Han-
cock, was a combat veteran. A persuasive
orator and tested House
Republican leader, Garfield was well
informed on national matters.23
To placate New York Stalwarts
(essentially the followers of Senator
Roscoe Conkling), resentful because
ex-President Grant had been
denied a third run for the presidency,
the party chose as Garfield's
running mate Chester Alan Arthur, a
recent Collector of the Port of
New York whom President Hayes had
earlier removed from office
because of his refusal to discontinue
his excessive politicking for
Conkling. New York, along with
Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana,
was a state Republicans had to carry to
defeat the Democrats now
armed with their Solid South phalanx.
Throughout the 1880 cam-
paign, New Yorker Arthur repeatedly
confirmed how adept were his
fund raising skills.24
Having moved to shore up Eastern allies,
Garfield next turned to
the West. In his acceptance letter of
July 12, 1880, he had spoken
optimistically about the pending treaty
which would reduce Chinese
immigration, while promising "a
great increase of reciprocal trade
and the enlargement of our
markets." Garfield had been among
those who had urged President Hayes to
veto a bill in 1879
22. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone,
eds., Dictionary of American Biography
(New York, 1960), IV, 221-22; HAPE. 1501
and 1546. A brave first effort to compare
presidents and prejudice is George
Sinkler, The Racial Attitudes of American
Presidents from Abraham Lincoln to
Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1972).
23. Garfield biographies used in this
study have been primarily Margaret Leech
and Harry J. Brown, The Garfield
Orbit: The Life of President James A. Garfield
(New York, 1978); Allan Peskin, Garfield
(Kent, Ohio, 1978); Theodore Clarke Smith,
The Life and Letters of James Abram
Garfield, 2 vols. (New Haven, 1915);
and John
M. Taylor, Garfield of Ohio: The
Available Man (New York, 1970). Also see, Richard
C. Bain, Convention Decisions and
Voting Records (Wash., D.C., 1960), 114-15;
Porter and Johnson, National Party
Platforms, 60-62; Chauncey DePew, Memories
of Eighty Years (New York, 1922), 108.
24. George H. Mayer, The Republican
Party 1854-1966 (London, 1967), 200-02,
provides a fine perspective of the
larger national political picture for these years. A
good narrative history of the 1880
contest is Herbert J. Clancy, The Presidential
Election of 1880 (Chicago, 1958). Also see Alexander Flick, ed., A History of the
State of New York, 9 vols (New York, 1933-37), I, 166; Rothman, Politics
and Power,
32; Thomas C. Reeves, "Chester A.
Arthur and the Campaign of 1880," Political
Science Quarterly, LXXXIV (December, 1969), 628-37.
390 OHIO HISTORY
abrogating the Burlingame Treaty. Angry
attacks then directed at
Garfield by sinophobes had hurt. Now in
the summer of 1880, and
increasingly aware that every electoral
vote was critical, Garfield
summarized his opinion of the Asian
arrivals: "The recent move-
ment of the Chinese to our Pacific
Coast... is too much like an im-
portation to be welcomed without
restriction; too much like an inva-
sion to be looked upon without
solicitude." A Republican campaign
book justified President Hayes' veto by
first printing his message,
then by warning what a sudden treaty
abrogation might mean to
"our citizens in China, merchants
or missionaries."25
Understandably, California Democrats
maneuvered to compound
Garfield's "shameful support"
of President Hayes' "infamous
veto." One Democratic pamphlet
cleverly pasted together the
various opinions of prominent
Republicans, aiming to hoist them on
their own Chinese petard. For example,
the pamphlet credited
Senator Oliver P. Morton as saying,
"The intellectual stagnation in
China is the result of their
institutions." And further on it cited him
as declaring, "the invitation we
extended to the world, cannot and
ought not to be limited or controlled
by race, or color, nor by the
character of the civilization of the
countries from which immigrants
may come." Candidate Garfield was damned for "his contempt
for
the working man of his own race, and his
willingness to force white
American free laborers into competition
for their daily bread with a
race that knows no God, no Morality and
no obligations of social
decency."26
In 1880, three bellwether states
performed the role of what the
New Hampshire primary would a century
later. Maine, Ohio, and
Indiana held their gubernatorial
contests well in advance of the
November elections. In none of these
pre-presidential contests does
the Chinese question appear to have
loomed large. The victory of a
Democratic governor in Maine on
September 13 alarmed
Republican organizers, but they recouped
with wins in Ohio and In-
diana.27 With the national
election less than two months off, both
parties targeted on the opposition
candidate. Cartoonist Thomas
Nast sketched Hancock as a dignified old
soldier-benignly ig-
norant of the paramount national
problems. Democrats branded
25. New York Times, June 9 and
16, 1880; HAPE, 1537; Smith, Life and Letters,
II, 677; Edward McPherson, A Handbook
of Politics for 1880 (San Francisco, 1880),
39-44. A consideration of what candidate
Garfield actually may have believed about
racial matters is in Sinkler, Racial
Attitudes, 243.
26. N.a., General Garfield and
Chinese Immigration (n.p., 1880), a four-page hand-
out, Research Library, University of
California, Los Angeles, California.
27. Taylor, Garfield of Ohio, 214.
Politics of Sinophobia 391
Garfield for his earlier involvement
with Credit Mobilier, his "liber-
tine licentiousness," his
"thefts during the war," and for just about
any act of fiction Democratic editors
could contrive.28
Examination of the Garfield
correspondence leaves little doubt he
was in command of his party and was
determined to minimize
mistakes. Warned by Western Republicans
that his previous stand
on Chinese immigration had injured him,
Garfield tiptoed about
this combustible, the pending
renegotiated immigration treaty of-
fering him a degree of insulation. And
then on October 20, with the
election but a few weeks off, the Morey
Letter and Garfield's alleged
sinophilia became front page news.29
The letter first appeared in New York
City's Truth, an organ hard-
ly distinguished for truthful
publication. Garfield's purported letter
to H.L. Morey of Lynn, Massachusetts,
dated January 23, 1880,
read:
Dear Sir:
Yours in relation to the Chinese problem
came duly to hand. I take it that
the question of employes [sic] is only a
question of private and corporate
economy, and individuals or companies
have the right to buy labor when
they can get it cheapest.
We have a treaty with the Chinese
Government which should be
religiously kept until its provisions
are abrogated by the action of the
general Government, and I am not
prepared to say that it should be
abrogated until our great manufacturing
and corporate interests are con-
served in the matter of labor.30
The last sentence was lethal. That it
could anathematize Garfield
to large numbers of westerners was
indisputable. But was the letter
itself above dispute, and had the
Republican candidate actually
penned the document? On October 23, and
just below its subtitle
"THE WHOLE TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT
THE TRUTH,"
Truth printed a facsimile of the letter, as well as a copy of
the
envelope in which it supposedly had been
delivered. The two top
men in the Democratic Party, the
distinguished New York in-
28. Peskin, Garfield, 493 ff,
sketches a hard-hitting Garfield, a bloody-shirt waver
not above name calling-a profile not
always drawn by his other biographers.
Leech, The Garfield Orbit, 217-18;
Morgan, From Hayes, 115-18; Clancy, Presiden-
tial Election, Chap. VII.
29. Ibid., 233-34. On the letter's
political and legal ramifications before and after
the 1880 campaign as written by an
involved contemporary, see, John I. Davenport,
History of the Forged Morey Letter (New York, 1884).
30. HAPE, 1513; Clancy, Presidential
Election, 233; Rutherford B. Hayes Scrap-
book, Vol. 81, 46 ff., Rutherford B.
Hayes Memorial Library, Fremont, Ohio.
392 OHIO HISTORY
dustrialist Abram S. Hewitt and the
Democratic National Cam-
paign Manager William H. Barnum,
endorsed the letter as
genuine.31
Some days earlier, the New York Times
had magnified General
Hancock's statement that he was against
"nigger domination,"
while lauding ex-President Grant's
reminder to a New Jersey au-
dience that the Civil War was a
"Democratic War." However, the
Bloody Shirt's power to arouse the
electorate was fading. Among
Pacific Slope voters, its impact was
trifling compared with that of
the Morey Letter.
Acutely conscious of California's
sinophobia, Republican State
Senator C.C. Conger had already coupled
the Democrats with a solid
South whose leaders advocated the
importation of coolies to sup-
plant their freed Negroes. "Any man
who looks to Hancock," fumed
the San Francisco Chronicle, "or
the Democratic Party to put a
check on Chinese coolies in America is a
fool ... the South is ...
always for the cheapest and most servile
labor it can find .... Gar-
field had spoken unmistakably against
the importation of Coolie
labor to compete with our free
labor." Now the Democrats' publica-
tion of the Morey Letter aimed to
shatter their opponent's implica-
tions, just as surely as had Hancock's
artillery blasted his foes at
Gettysburg.32
The detonation of the explosive epistle
on October 20, with its re-
sounding national repercussions, stunned
the Republican leaders.
Midwestern workers were soon being
greeted at their factory gates
with copies of the Morey Letter;
"one hundred thousand copies"
were speedily railroaded to California;
and "fly-gobbler" Barnum (a
Republican expletive describing Barnum's
hasty swallowing of the
Morey Letter) had the letter translated
into various languages for
the widest possible distribution. In a
confidential letter to Garfield,
Marshall Jewell, the Republican National
Chairman, groaned that
printed handouts of the Morey Letter
were "being used by the
millions." Predictably, Democratic
newspapers made the most of
the sensation. Concurrently, Republicans
rallied to their standard
bearer. One Texan urged Garfield to
retaliate by using the "fact
that Louisiana Democratic planters have
contracted with New
Orleans firms and steamships to import
Chinese coolies from
Cuba." An Oakland, California,
citizen warned, "Great capital is be-
31. M.B. Schnapper, Grand Old Party
... (Wash., D.C., 1955), 176, contains a
photocopy of the Truth, October
23, 1880 issue.
32. New York Times, October 10,
14, 22, 28, 30, 1880; San Francisco Chronicle,
September 28, 1880.
Politics of Sinophobia 393 |
|
ing made out of your alleged 'Chinese letter.' A denial over your signature will have great effect on this coast." East Coast publisher Whitlaw Reid joined the Republican chorus pleading for "contradic- tion of your alleged letter on Chinese cheap labor." However, Reid cautioned Garfield, "Better be sure. . . your memory is exact and that they have no trap for you. They boast loudly of proofs."33 Having penned dozens of brief dispatches under the pressure of the campaign battle, Garfield therefore hesitated to condemn the letter as a forgery. Doubts about the document's authenticity vanished, however, when Republican detectives discovered that there was no H.L. Morey, and that the letter itself exhibited inter- nal discrepancies. In late October, charges of criminal libel were quickly brought in New York against the Truth journalist who had published the letter, Kenward Philip. Philip denied any complicity in the matter; however, his notorious reputation as a political prankster raised immediate doubts about his denial.34
33. New York Times, October 29, 1880; Clancy, Presidential Election, 234 ff; New York Times, October 27, 28, 1880; Presidential Papers of James A. Garfield, Microfilm reel no. 57, Marshall Jewell to James A. Garfield, October 22, 1880; Ridge Paschal to James A. Garfield, October 27, 1880; E.C. MacFarlan to James A. Gar- field, October 22, 1880; Whitlaw Reid to James A. Garfield, October 24, 1880. Hereafter this reel cited as PG 57. 34. New York Times, October 23, 24, 26, 1880; PG 57, M.C.D. [?] to [James A. Garfield], October 21, 1880; ibid., [?] Keffer to D.G. Servain, October 22, 1880; |
394 OHIO HISTORY
Republican leaders, aided by
newspapers, bent every effort to
publicize these late October New York
City court proceedings seek-
ing to discover who in fact had
perpetrated the fraud. The New York
Herald headlined: "The Chinese Labor Roorback [political
slander]
Destroyed," "The Alleged
Morey Letter Pronounced a Forgery,"
"Nailing a Fraud," and
"Extraordinary Efforts of the Democrats to
Circulate the Bogus Document." On
the twenty-sixth, that organ
published on its front page a facsimile
of a letter written three days
earlier by Garfield to Marshall Jewell:
Garfield "denounced the
Morey Letter as a base forgery. Its
stupid and brutal sentiment I
never expressed nor entertained."35
Shortly afterward, the Ohioan
wrote an old college chum, "It is
very gratifying to know that my
classmates are everywhere aiding in
stamping out the miserable
Morey Forgery. In the long run I think
that business will hurt the
Democrats far more than they thought it
would hurt us." Indeed,
Charles A. Dana, who had bitterly
criticized the Republican can-
didate, commented in his New York
Sun, "If a party requires such
infamous aids, that party, by whatever
name it may be called,
deserves to perish."36
But while Garfield and the Republicans
had satisfied themselves
that the letter was a fabrication, and
the daily proceedings of a New
York courtroom confirmed that the letter
was indeed a forgery, the
Democratic high command would not
jettison their damaging roor-
back. Hewitt cited it in his speeches,
and on November 1, one day
before the national election, Barnum
declared, "The genuineness of
the letter is now so fully established
that it should be clearly im-
Smith, Life and Letters, II, 1040; Hayes
Scrapbook, Vol. 81, 1; Los Angeles Herald,
October 27, and November 18, 1880; New
York Times, May 20, 1881; Philip
obituary, New York Times, February
22, 1886.
35. New York Herald, October 26,
29, 30, 1880; James A. Garfield to Marshall
Jewell, October 23, 1880, James A.
Garfield Papers, Collection 27, Ohio Historical
Society, Columbus, Ohio. A similar
dispatch to Jewell, October 22, 1880, appeared
(although not in facsimile) in the New
York Times, October 24, 1880, in which Gar-
field condemned the Morey Letter as
"a bold forgery both in its language and senti-
ment." The archaic word
"roorback" (or roorbach) for last-minute political slander is
derived from the slurs originally cast
by Baron Roorbach's Tour through the
Western and Southern States in 1836, as applied against James K. Polk in 1846. For
a brief look at the origin of the word
and its role in the 1880 campaign, see Peskin,
Garfield, 505-510.
36. James A. Garfield to Henry Root,
October 30, 1880, J.A.G., Ac. 644, Ruther-
ford B. Hayes Memorial Library; Robert
Franville Caldwell, James A. Garfield: Par-
ty Chieftan (New York, 1931), 307. Dana's misgivings proved
correct, and Barnum
and Hewitt appear to have regretted how
easily "they had been duped." Caldwell,
Garfield, 307; and Harper's Weekly, December 4 and 18,
1880; Hayes Scrapbook,
Vol. 81, 36 ff.
Politics of Sinophobia 395
pressed upon the minds of all those who
would be affected by the
policy it declares." Barnum quite
correctly noted that the specific
charges against Philip were
inconclusive. As it transpired, he would
go free. The only individual to serve a
prison sentence in conjunc-
tion with the forged letter was James
O'Brien, alias Robert Lind-
say, and his conviction was for perjured
testimony surrounding the
investigation, not the actual forgery.
He received an eight-year
sentence to Sing Sing on September 14,
1881, and actually remained
incarcerated until August 20, 1886. In
the author's opinion, which
he cannot document, it was probably the
prankster Kenward Philip
who penned the Morey Letter.37
Americans' reactions to the Morey Letter
ranged from the
vengeful to the comic. Determined to
catch the "rascal who
prepared the Chinese letter,"
Republican party worker S.B. Chit-
tenden of Brooklyn offered $5,000 for
the arrest and conviction of
the real Mr. Morey. Mark Twain,
lecturing in Hartford, Connec-
ticut's opera house to an audience of
nearly 2,500 people, admitted
that "I am going to vote the
Republican ticket myself from old
habit...." To no one's surprise and
everyone's delight, America's
preeminent humorist spoofed the
destructive force of electioneering
hyperbole.
I have never made but one political
speech before this. That was years ago.
I made a logical, closely reasoned,
compact powerful argument against a
discriminating opposition. I may say I
made a most thoughtful, sym-
metrical, and admirable argument, but a
Michigan newspaper editor
answered it, refuted it, utterly
demolished it, by saying I was in the con-
stant habit of horse whipping my great
grandmother.38
Republican condottieri on the Pacific
Slope, however, saw no
humor in the matter. Nor did Garfield,
who from the first had sur-
mized that the counterfeit document
"may lose us the Pacific
states." Furious, he sputtered
about "the clumsy villain, who can-
not spell nor write English, nor imitate
my handwriting," and then
snapped, "Hunt the rascal
down." Republican attorneys in the
courtroom, and detectives without,
certainly tried.
On October 25, Jewell telegraphed
Garfield that his statement de-
37. Los Angeles Herald, November
2, 1880; New York Times, December 20, 1881;
Letter from A.V. Byram, Acting Warden,
Sing Sing Prison, to author, February 23,
1965, Ossing, New York. In 1884, when John
Davenport published his book on the
Morey Letter, there was a fresh flutter
of interest in the matter: New York Times,
August 16, 1884.
38. New York Times, October 26,
27, 1880.
396 OHIO HISTORY
nouncing the Morey Letter as a
"bold forgery" was "now being
lithographed ... in time for night mail
for California [I] have ordered
half a million." The San
Francisco Chronicle reassured West Coast
Republicans that their National
Committee had "dispatched a
special car to San Francisco with copies
of the electrotype of the
denial of the Chinese letter.... The
trip across the continent will be
much the fastest ever made by any train."39
Well before the publication of the Morey
Letter, California's
Democratic press had stigmatized
Garfield as pro-Chinese labor.
Stockton's Daily Evening Herald claimed
he would remove "all
obstacles to the immigration,
naturalization, and Christianization of
all the mongolians and other pagans who
may ... come into this
state." The San Francisco
Examiner condemned Garfield as "a
bigot, a Know-Nothing, hater of
Irish," while "always a lover of the
Chinese."40 As on the
East Coast, the response of Pacific Slope
newspapers to Barnum's roorback was
partisan. For example, the
Garfield-allied Sacramento Bee qualified
the epistle as an "alleged
letter," whereas the pro-Hancock Fresno
Weekly Expositor titled
its column, "Garfield on the
Chinese ... Convicted under his own
hand." Possibly it was due to the
fact that California had only twice
voted Democratic in a presidential
contest (1852 and 1856) that
Senator Sargent reassured Garfield,
"The Morey forgery is so well
understood here that it can do no
harm."41
The very day that the story broke, the San
Francisco Chronicle
had impishly featured a summary of
"Garfield and Hancock on the
Chinese Question." The entire
Hancock column was left totally
blank! The next day, with Morey national
news, the Chronicle damn-
ed the letter "A stupid forgery,
... had been put in circulation by
Seven-mule Barnum." In San
Francisco both the Alta and the
Bulletin remained loyal Republican organs. In Los Angeles, the
Daily Herald, which had just justified the late Southern rebellion
"because their rights were openly
violated" and added that "George
Washington was a rebel," eagerly
embraced the Morey Letter. "The
working man who votes for Garfield will
deserve to be excluded
from employment and expelled by
Chinamen," it growled. "The
39. Ibid., October 24, 1880;
Smith, Life and Letters, II, 1041; New York Times,
October 28, 29, 30, and 31, 1880; PG 57,
Marshall Jewell to James A. Garfield, Oc-
tober 25, 1880; San Francisco
Chronicle, October 27, 1880.
40. Daily Evening Herald (Stockton),
October 19, 1880; San Francisco Examiner,
October 19, 1880.
41. Fresno Weekly Expositor, October
27, 1880; Sacramento Bee, October 21,
1880; W. Dean Burnham, Presidential
Ballots 1836-1892 (Baltimore, 1955), 257; PG
57, A.A. Sargent to James A. Garfield,
October 27, 1880.
Politics of Sinophobia 397
Republicans are in the habit of crying
out against the pauper labor
of Europe. They are in favor of the
cheaper coolie labor of China."42
Apparently, a good portion of Denver's
white community felt
threatened by the city's relatively few
Chinese. On November 1,
these few hundred Asians were subjected
to the rule of King Mob.
Clearly, widespread publicity of the
Morey Letter had been a
precipitating element in the social
explosion. On the three days
preceding the riot, Denver's Rocky
Mountain News had featured
large facsimile reproductions of
"GARFIELD'S FAMOUS CHEAP
LABOR LETTER." Although the loss
of life was small, almost the
entire Chinese quarter was gutted.
Newspapers on both the east
and west coasts conveniently laid the
blame on the Morey Letter.
The Los Angeles Herald reported
that "constant repetitions of Gar-
field's letter" displayed in
parade placards had aroused Colorado's
mob. Within Denver, the Rocky
Mountain News voiced no remorse
and continued to chant, "The
Chinese must go."43
Although it would be weeks before the
precise vote was
tabulated, the November 2 election did
not suffer the protracted
verdict that had so crippled Hayes'
"contested victory" four years
earlier. The 1880 Republican candidate
got 214 electoral votes while
his opponent tallied 155. Nevertheless,
Garfield's plurality over
Hancock was but 9,457 votes, the
smallest in American history. Of
all the potential votes, 78.4 percent
were cast, another record not
yet equalled in any American
presidential contest.44
California's Hancock-marked ballots
exceeded those of Garfield's
by fewer than a hundred. Garfield also
lost Nevada, although by no-
where near so thin a margin.45.
Had the Morey Letter been decisive
in the Golden State? Writing to
Cornelius Cole later in November,
President-elect Garfield was
"satisfied that our losses in California
were due to the Morey letter."
Newspaper reactions, on the other
hand, were extremely varied. The Los
Angeles Herald was of the
42. San Francisco Chronicle, October
20 and 21, 1880; Alta California, November
3, 1880; San Francisco Bulletin, October
20, 1880; and Los Angeles Herald, October
12 and 26, 1880. Certainly the Chronicle
bent every effort to remove a pro-Chinese
stigma from Garfield. From October 21 to
election day, it ridiculed the Morey Let-
ter. Afterward, on November 22, it
claimed that copies of the spurious document
"were distributed directly to
servants ... even posted in the kitchens."
43. Roy T. Wortman, "Denver's
Anti-Chinese Riot, 1880," Colorado Magazine,
XLIII (Winter, 1965), 275-91; Los
Angeles Herald, November 2, 1880; Hartford
Courant, November 1, 1880; San Francisco Chronicle, November
1, 1880.
44. Clancy, Presidential Election, 242
ff, notes that "The influence of third parties
on the election was practically
nil." For a recent look at the election, see Allan
Peskin, "The Election of
1880," The Wilson Quarterly, IV (Spring, 1980), 172-81.
45. Statistics vary according to the
source used. These figures are from Petersen,
A Statistical History, 43.
398 OHIO HISTORY
opinion that the "letter did not
unsettle California.... What hurt
Garfield was the business depression on
the West Coast." Essential-
ly in agreement with this view was the San
Francisco Chronicle.
The New York Times disagreed,
convinced that "ignorant and un-
thinking people" had been taken in
by the fraud.46
Garfield did not simply view the Morey
Letter as critical in
California alone. The President-elect
insisted "the forged letter cost
us all the Northern states which we
lost."47 Few if any historians can
accept such a monocausal interpretation;
certainly this author does
not. All of the secondary studies cited
in this paper consider the let-
ter to have been only one of the many
factors that directly affected
the final November vote, a view with
which this author concurs.
What other conclusions can be drawn from
the 1880 presidential
contest and the Morey affair? Shortly
after the election, the San
Francisco Chronicle preferred to lay the campaign to rest with good
humor:
In the last election in New York City
twenty-five Chinese registered voters
cast their ballots. An eastern
journalist thinks they will become a factor in
American politics. It will probably be
in that far distant millennium of the
long-haired reformers, when woman is to
be given all her "rights" including
the privilege of purifying politics.
With a more sober and prophetic arrow,
the Sacramento Bee hit the
political bullseye. Its editor
speculated that perhaps the loss of
California and Nevada might awaken
eastern politicians to the im-
portance of the Chinese question.48
Long before the next presiden-
tial battle, Garfield would fall victim
to an assassin's bullet and the
United
States would let fall its portcullis on Chinese im-
migrants-the former accomplished by a
deranged citizen, the latter
by Congress responding to the wishes of
aroused citizens.
It seems clear that tough-minded Gilded
Age politicians accurate-
ly estimated how volatile had become the
issue of Chinese labor. By
1880 a surprising number of their
toiling constituents were gen-
46. James A. Garfield to Cornelius Cole,
November 22, 1880, Cornelius Cole Col-
lection, Box 4, Research Library,
University of California, Los Angeles; Los Angeles
Herald November
9, 1880; San Francisco Chronicle, November 11 and 13, 1880;
New York Times, November 4, 6, and 10, 1880; and Peskin, "Election
of 1880," 181.
It is worth noting that Hancock later
believed New York City electoral irregularities
(unrelated to the Morey Letter) had
defrauded him of a rightful presidential victory.
See, Almira Russell Hancock, Reminiscences
of Winfield Scott Hancock (New York,
1887), 174-75.
47. Smith, Life and Letters, II,
1042.
48. Ibid.; San Francisco Chronicle, November
27, 1880; Sacramento Bee,
November 6 and 13, 1880.
Politics of Sinophobia 399
uinely alarmed at the Chinese threat as
postulated by the Los
Angeles Herald: "The election of Garfield would be the signal for
the discharge of all white men from
employment by manufacturers
and corporations and substitution of
Chinese coolies."49 With all the
advantages of hindsight, the menace was
more perceived than real.
Yet for Democrats and Republicans alike
at the time, the Garfield-
Hancock contest had powerfully focused
public attention on the
dangers, real or imagined, of cheap
oriental labor. In less than two
years, Congress responded to this
national alarm by legislating
Chinese exclusion.50
49. Los Angeles Herald, October
26, 1880.
50. Congress' May 1882 legislation
suspended Chinese immigration for a period
of ten years and forbade their naturalization. This was
renewed in 1892, and in 1902
Chinese immigration was suspended for an indefinite
period. See, Maldwyn Allen
Jones, American Immigration (Chicago, 1960),
249-63.
TED C. HINCKLEY
The Politics of Sinophobia: Garfield,
the Morey Letter, and the Presidential
Election of 1880
Looking backward from the 1890s and
ruminating on the almost
dozen presidential contests with which
he had been familiar, Charles
Francis Adams, Jr., reflected, "So
far as the country as a whole is
concerned, the grand result would in
the long run have been about
the same whether at any particular
election"-with the exception of
1864-"the party I sympathized with
had won the day or whether
the other party had won it."
Brother Henry was even more cynical
of Gilded Age government. "The
political dilemma was as clear in
1870 as it was likely to be in 1970 ....
Nine-tenths of men's
political energies must henceforth be
wasted on expedients to piece
out-to patch-or, in vulgar language, to
tinker-the political
machine as often as it broke
down."1
While the Adamses compared their age's
politicos with the sages
of George Washington's era, our
generation is inclined to recall a
less Olympian leadership. And when we
soberly consider how our
future increasingly rests on decisions
made in Teheran and Riyadh,
invidious phrases like "piece
out," "patch," and "tinker" may not
seem so unreasonable.
Philosopher-presidents charted inspirational
voyages for early America's
"chosen people"; henceforth simply
keeping the Republic's ship of state
afloat could be triumph enough.
Possibly this explains why historians
now seem less inclined to
ridicule as "ineffectual"
America's 1865 to 1901 presidents.2 A cen-
Professor Ted C. Hinckley teaches
history at San Jose State University and is
now on the State Historic Resources
Commission of the California Department of
Parks and Recreation.
1. Edward Chase Kirkland, Charles
Francis Adams, Jr. 1835-1915: The Patrician at
Bay (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), 169; Henry Adams, The
Education of Henry Adams: An
Autobiography (Boston, 1961), 280-81.
2. As Robert Kelley notes, "The
politics of the Gilded Age, like that of every other
period, have their own inner validity
and reality." The Shaping of the American Past
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1978), 442. H.
Wayne Morgan admonishes scholars to take the