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CHAPTER TWELVE “Deplorable in the Extreme” THE HEAD OF China’s legation in Washington, D.C., Cheng Tsao Ju, complained to Secretary of State Bayard in a letter dated February 25, 1886 of “a concerted and widespread movement to deprive the Chinese residents of protection and rights guaranteed by treaties.” Cheng enclosed a copy of a letter from the Chinese Merchants Exchange in San Francisco, dated February 1, 1886, in which the merchants complained that Caucasian mobs had driven Chinese from a half-dozen California towns, while local authorities failed to intervene. Cheng said Chinese everywhere in the West, but especially in California, faced “great dangers.” The situation is deplorable in the extreme. Chinese are driven from their homes, dwellings burned, property robbed, people murdered without effort by authorities to protect them. … The Chinese people are absolutely terrorized and flocking to San Francisco where destitution, now exists among them.1 In his letter, Cheng also sought indemnification for the property losses at Rock Springs—although not yet for the twenty-eight victims. Bayard’s response to Cheng would be chilling, both in its callousness and its barely concealed prejudice. A Democrat and former U.S. senator from Delaware, Bayard had been appointed secretary of state by President Cleveland in 1885 and was best known for resolving a serious dispute with Canada over North Atlantic fisheries. Earlier in his career, he was one of the so-called Peace Democrats who opposed President Lincoln’s use of force to unite the country during the Civil War—although he was credited with helping convince Delaware not to secede.2 More important for U.S. relations with the Chinese, Bayard was said to believe that unrestrained immigration from China threatened white control of the American West.3 In his reply to Cheng on February 18, Bayard placed much of the blame on the Chinese for the violence against them. After a pro forma condemnation of the violence, he wrote: Causes growing out of the peculiar characteristics and habits of the Chinese immigrants have induced them to segregate themselves from Chapter Twelve: “Deplorable in the Extreme” 83 the rest of the residents and citizens of the United States and to refuse to mingle with the mass of population, as the members of the other nationalities. As a consequence, race prejudice has been more excited against them, notably among aliens of other nationalities who are more directly brought into competition with the Chinese in those fields of merely manual toil where our skilled native labor finds it unprofitable to engage.4 Nevertheless, following the Rock Springs massacre, President Cleveland was under pressure to do something, and he supported Cheng’s request for compensation in a message to Congress on March 2, 1886. He said that while the United States was not obligated to compensate the Chinese—in part because the government blamed the massacre on European immigrants— “the discreditable failure of the authorities of the Wyoming Territory to bring justice to the guilty parties” justified an indemnity.5 He warned of the danger of more attacks, and suggested that the only solution might be to further curtail immigration of Chinese laborers. Every effort has been made by this government to prevent these violent outbreaks and to aid the representatives of China in their investigation of these outrages; and it is but just to say that they are traceable to the lawlessness of men not citizens of the United States engaged in competition with Chinese laborers … Race prejudice is the chief factor in originating these disturbances, and it exists in a large part of our domain, jeopardizing our domestic peace and the good relationship we strive to maintain with China.6 Congress approved an indemnity for the Chinese of 147,748.74 dollars on February 24, 1887, to cover the loss of property. It would approve a second and larger indemnity for the twenty-eight victims, and for a host of other crimes against the Chinese, the following year. But the Chinese wanted more than indemnification. They also sought protection. Cheng, however, was unable to see the matter through. He fell ill and returned to China in April of 1886, replaced as minister by Chang Yen Hoon. It fell to the new minister to inform Bayard on February 16, 1888, of the massacre at Deep Creek: “It is with great regret that I have to bring to your attention another case of outrage inflicted upon my countrymen, which resulted in the murder of ten Chinese laborers in...

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