Ohio History Journal

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

• 4
 

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.

• 5
 

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.

• 6
 

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.

• 7
 

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.

• 8
 

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.

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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.

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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.

• 11
 

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.

• 12
 

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;

• 13
 

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.

• 14
 

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.

• 15
 

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.

• 16
 

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.

• 17
 

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.

• 18
 

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.

• 19