Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
Is this another one of your deceptions?
What you describe is nowhere on this board.
One minor typo: this occurred around 1868, not 1858. However, it was all very cleary described in a post directly to you, #57 on this thread. There is no way you can be ignorant of it. Here's a relevant portion of the post:
=======
Actually, they appear to have been highly effective as far as America goes.
For example, the US Minister to Japan applied the 1862 law to "coolies" imported to Hawaii from Japan (and Hawaii was an independent nation at that time). This was in May, 1868 in response to a protest from the Japanese government. The Secretary of State praised his initiative and stood behind the principle, but believed further legislation was required to make the situation crystal clear. The result was a request he made to Congress, which led to the 1868 law you are trying to misinterpert into something it is not.
Presidents from Pierce to Grant spoke out against the importation of coolie labor in their annual messages to Congress. In 1868, the US signed the Burlingame Treaty with China to regulate immigration from China.
This led to an interesting situation. I am not sure about the West Coast, but in the rest of the nation the people most interested in importing coolies all appear to have been in the ex-Confederacy, particularly in the Deep South. During Reconstruction, and particularly around 1868-69, Southern planters were making tremendous efforts to avoid the laws and get around the soon-to-be-passed XV Amendment to the Constitution.
William Creevy of New Orleans (shipping merchant involved in earlier coolie shipments from Cuba, see the 1867 William Roberts affair) tried to claim the Burlingame Treaty voided the 1862 law. He wrote to the Treasury Department claiming so, and William R. Miles went to California representing the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce to make arrangements to import 10,000 coolies (primarily for sugar cane and cotton plantations along the Mississippi). Sec. of Treasury hung him out to dry, announcing publicly a month later that the 1862 law still held.
Throughout this period, Northerners regarded all attempts to get around the 1862 coolie law and subsequent legislation and treaties as Southern attempts to bring slavery back. Northern papers were adamant about it; Southern papers urged it.
=======
I am not sure of Creevy's background, but William R. Miles appears to have been a Confederate Colonel during the war. Creevy was associated in the late 1860s with the man who had been the biggest slaveowner in Louisiana before the war.
The Memphis Convention that Miles attended before heading out to get his 10,000 coolies was being run by people with famous Confederate names like Gideon J. Pillow, Isham G. Harris, and Nathan Bedford Forrest (who pledged $5,000 for the project). Also proposed by Pillow at this convention was the formation of a new stock company at $100/share to be called the Mississippi Valley Immigration Labor Company, with a capital base of between one and two million dollars to bring "Chinese agricultural laborers" into the country. They were dealing with a Dutch-born labor contractor out of San Francisco named Koopmanschap.
BTW, California passed their own Anti-Coolie Act in 1862. There was a rabid movement against coolies out there in the period after the Civil War.
At the same time, you need to realize that most coolie immigration into the US was actually voluntary. There was a case heard by Chief Justice Taney in about 1859 involving a coolie ship. The Chinese began attempting to take over the ship after a few days at sea, apparently when they discovered they'd been hood-winked and were being sent to Cuba instead. They saw a clear difference between the two. Coolies in California were treated very badly; coolies in Cuba were treated much worse. (Taney wasn't ruling on the Coolie Trade, but on the payment of promised bonuses to the crew during the voyage.)
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
I am not sure about the West Coast, but in the rest of the nation the people most interested in importing coolies all appear to have been in the ex-Confederacy, particularly in the Deep South.
You sure about that? Looks like a new Yankee mythology to me-
Chinese Population, United States
1860 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy........26
The rest of the United States.....................35,539
1870 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......216
The rest of the United States.....................62,960
1880 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......888
The rest of the United States...................102,877
The great majority were in the far western states and territories.
Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
At the same time, you need to realize that most coolie immigration into the US was actually voluntary.
Well, let's see some supporting evidence.
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
New York Times, 27 September 1861
Last edited by Battalion : 04-09-2008 at 05:24 PM.
You sure about that? Looks like a new Yankee mythology to me-
Chinese Population, United States
1860 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy........26
The rest of the United States.....................35,539
1870 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......216
The rest of the United States.....................62,960
1880 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......888
The rest of the United States...................102,877
The great majority were in the far western states and territories.
Just truth you are trying to ignore, Battalion. Just go and actually read the posts you already have. The information is there for you. It has been posted to you at least twice in this thread. Stop trying to avoid it; all you can do is damage your own credibility time and time again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
Well, let's see some supporting evidence.
Already given to you. You'll just ignore it. Try rereading post #81, which refers you to post #57. Or maybe UnionBlue's post #39, where you'll find this quote:
=====
"In 1854 the [Charleston] Mercury enthusiastically raised [Leonidas W.] Spratt's banner (Spratt advocated the reopening of the African slave trade).
But in April 1857 it expressed doubts about the possibility of reopening the [African slave] trade and suggested instead the importation of coolies. Coolie laborers were cheap and could work "like the negro on Southern plantations."
=====
You'll note in reading post #57 (which was posted to you, directly) this passage at the end:
=====
You might want to start with Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation By Moon-Ho Jung.
=====
I guess you haven't bothered. But if you do, a little work will show you the coolies being imported to Louisiana from Cuba in the late 1860s. The Mr. Creevy I mentioned was involved, as were other individuals. Read it and you'll find them, and a lot more (like Nathan Bedford Forrest, Gideon J. Pillow, and Isham G. Harris in 1868-69). But then you'd have to be open to information that didn't fit your bias to see it, and the way you continually blot out of your sight everything you don't want to know about pretty much tells us you never will see them.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Since you didn't read this the first time I posted it to you as #81 in this thread, I thought I'd just post it again to make it easy for you to finally bother to read it.
=====
One minor typo: this occurred around 1868, not 1858. However, it was all very cleary described in a post directly to you, #57 on this thread. There is no way you can be ignorant of it. Here's a relevant portion of the post:
=======
Actually, they appear to have been highly effective as far as America goes.
For example, the US Minister to Japan applied the 1862 law to "coolies" imported to Hawaii from Japan (and Hawaii was an independent nation at that time). This was in May, 1868 in response to a protest from the Japanese government. The Secretary of State praised his initiative and stood behind the principle, but believed further legislation was required to make the situation crystal clear. The result was a request he made to Congress, which led to the 1868 law you are trying to misinterpert into something it is not.
Presidents from Pierce to Grant spoke out against the importation of coolie labor in their annual messages to Congress. In 1868, the US signed the Burlingame Treaty with China to regulate immigration from China.
This led to an interesting situation. I am not sure about the West Coast, but in the rest of the nation the people most interested in importing coolies all appear to have been in the ex-Confederacy, particularly in the Deep South. During Reconstruction, and particularly around 1868-69, Southern planters were making tremendous efforts to avoid the laws and get around the soon-to-be-passed XV Amendment to the Constitution.
William Creevy of New Orleans (shipping merchant involved in earlier coolie shipments from Cuba, see the 1867 William Roberts affair) tried to claim the Burlingame Treaty voided the 1862 law. He wrote to the Treasury Department claiming so, and William R. Miles went to California representing the Vicksburg Chamber of Commerce to make arrangements to import 10,000 coolies (primarily for sugar cane and cotton plantations along the Mississippi). Sec. of Treasury hung him out to dry, announcing publicly a month later that the 1862 law still held.
Throughout this period, Northerners regarded all attempts to get around the 1862 coolie law and subsequent legislation and treaties as Southern attempts to bring slavery back. Northern papers were adamant about it; Southern papers urged it.
=======
I am not sure of Creevy's background, but William R. Miles appears to have been a Confederate Colonel during the war. Creevy was associated in the late 1860s with the man who had been the biggest slaveowner in Louisiana before the war.
The Memphis Convention that Miles attended before heading out to get his 10,000 coolies was being run by people with famous Confederate names like Gideon J. Pillow, Isham G. Harris, and Nathan Bedford Forrest (who pledged $5,000 for the project). Also proposed by Pillow at this convention was the formation of a new stock company at $100/share to be called the Mississippi Valley Immigration Labor Company, with a capital base of between one and two million dollars to bring "Chinese agricultural laborers" into the country. They were dealing with a Dutch-born labor contractor out of San Francisco named Koopmanschap.
BTW, California passed their own Anti-Coolie Act in 1862. There was a rabid movement against coolies out there in the period after the Civil War.
At the same time, you need to realize that most coolie immigration into the US was actually voluntary. There was a case heard by Chief Justice Taney in about 1859 involving a coolie ship. The Chinese began attempting to take over the ship after a few days at sea, apparently when they discovered they'd been hood-winked and were being sent to Cuba instead. They saw a clear difference between the two. Coolies in California were treated very badly; coolies in Cuba were treated much worse. (Taney wasn't ruling on the Coolie Trade, but on the payment of promised bonuses to the crew during the voyage.)
=====
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
...
Chinese Population, United States
...
1870 Census
The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......216
The rest of the United States.....................62,960
I hate to tell you this -- really I do -- but on December 19th, 1869 a group of about 250 Chinese laborers left San Francisco for Texas. A labor contractor (Chew-Ah-Heung of San Francisco) had negotiated a three-year deal for them with John G. Walker, an agent of the Houston and Texas Central (H&TC) Railroad. So if 250 Chinese are arriving in Texas at the start of the year 1870, and you tell us there are only 216 in the 11 states of the Confederacy in that year, I suspect there were a few the Census didn't catch.
Take a look at Irwin A. Tang, Asian Texans: Our Histories and Our Lives
(http://www.austincc.edu/itang/sample...apter_One.html) where you'll find information like this:
===== In the months after the Civil War, Southerners and Cuban planters suggested that Chinese and Asian Indian coolie laborers from the Caribbean islands be contracted to work in the South. In the two years following the Civil War, Louisana plantations “imported” over one hundred Chinese coolies to work on sugar and cotton plantations, but in August 1867, the “trade” in coolies was halted temporarily by order of the federal government, which had outlawed coolie labor five years earlier. (Cohen, 54-58)
Nevertheless, the Chinese “experiment” continued. Despite protests that the Chinese were “heathens” and that introducing the Chinese might once again upset race relations in the South, commercial conventions in 1869 resolved that Chinese be brought to work in the South (Cohen 72). A convention organized to discuss the possibilities of Chinese labor met on July 13, 1869 in Memphis, Tennessee. The Southern capitalists and planters voted to form a joint stock company that would bring to the United States “as many Chinese immigrant laborers as possible, in the shortest time.” (Cohen 67) The possibility that the Chinese might be treated as slaves still motivated the white planters and capitalists. One attendee, J.W. Clapp, stated that the South preferred labor managed “as of old,” meaning as slaves. An importer of Chinese laborers and coolies named Cornelius Koopmanschaap, who was considered the “star” of the Memphis Convention, stated that in the South, “nothing but coerced labor will bring about prosperity.” (Harper’s Weekly, 8/14/1869)
=====
Then there were the 960 Chinese workers on the Nashville & Chattanooga RR in 1870-71, and the 169 Chinese coolies who arrived in New Orleans from Hong Kong in June 1870, and ... well, you get the picture.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
The Cohen references in the last post are to Chinese in the Post-Civil War South: A People Without A History by Lucy M. Cohen, Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, 1984.
Just another book you should be reading if you want to keep heading down this line.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
... Chinese Population, United States ... 1870 Census The 11 states that formed the Confederacy......216 The rest of the United States.....................62,960
I hate to tell you this -- really I do -- but on December 19th, 1869 a group of about 250 Chinese laborers left San Francisco for Texas. A labor contractor (Chew-Ah-Heung of San Francisco) had negotiated a three-year deal for them with John G. Walker, an agent of the Houston and Texas Central (H&TC) Railroad. So if 250 Chinese are arriving in Texas at the start of the year 1870, and you tell us there are only 216 in the 11 states of the Confederacy in that year, I suspect there were a few the Census didn't catch.
Not surprised that the census would miss some...but comparatively speaking how much more would be missed in the far west?
It appears your direction on this subject is an attempt to transfer the onus of Chinese exploitation from other areas of the country...to the South...based on the minuscule efforts of a few Southern planters. It ain't gonna work. The numbers are against you.
And you keep insisting that the Coolies came here voluntarily. Hmmm [Big, big Hmmm-]...
"...represented that the Chinese who come here come as free men, and that if they are successful they return to their own country enlightened and instructed as missionaries of civilization, or in plain English, they tell their acquaintances to come here and do the same thing. But I say, and I ask the California miner to mark the statement, that the most of them in the mines are not free – that they are coolies, brought here by rich mandarins or merchants to work for little more than a bear subsistence....There is one man in California who has 14,000 coolies at work in our mines – 14,000! This man is a large merchant and of such wealth that he can import the most of the goods and provisions which his own slaves consumes. He pays them next to nothing for their labor, and what must be his profits. It is beyond credulity to believe the amount if named. It is enough, however, that he can afford to pay for having all sorts of representations made to the public, and it is enough too, so that he can afford the most powerful appliances to be made to prevent legislative action on the subject. " Daily Alta California, July 29, 1853 http://www.maritimeheritage.org/newtale/chinese.html
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
New York Times, 27 September 1861
Last edited by Battalion : 04-10-2008 at 02:24 PM.
In reading the entire article, I get a different story. The outrage against Oriental immigration (not necessarily importation) is the fear of losing jobs, as the typical "coolie" can work longer and harder for less than any other laborer.
I had thought we were talking about the North's Legal Slave Trade? To be sure, many coolies were treated shabbily if not in fact enslaved, but I saw little to that effect in the proffered link. And it begs the question: Was California a northern state?
Yet another example of cherry-picking an agreeable sentence and presenting it as the tenor of an entire article.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Not surprised that the census would miss some...but comparatively speaking how much more would be missed in the far west?
It appears your direction on this subject is an attempt to transfer the onus of Chinese exploitation from other areas of the country...to the South...based on the minuscule efforts of a few Southern planters. It ain't gonna work. The numbers are against you.
Battalion, don't bend over so far trying to prove your point. It was much, much easier and much, much cheaper to get from China to California than it was to get from China to Louisiana. There was also a much greater labor shortage on the West Coast than in the South. Naturally enough, more Chinese went to California -- and then some of the ones there went to Louisiana, tennesse, Texas, Mississippi, etc.
Relatively few went directly by ship to the South from China. Some of the ones who went to the South also came from Cuba after their work contracts were up (funny "slaves", huh, who become free and have a choice in where they will go to work.)
In 1869, for example, when the Southerners were trying to hire workers directly in China, they discovered that it cost $30-40 to get the coolie to San Francisco by ship -- and about $60 to move him to New Orleans by train.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
And you keep insisting that the Coolies came here voluntarily. Hmmm [Big, big Hmmm-]...
All the evidence says voluntarily. From the 1860s on, the State Department had their diplomatic staff in ports where coolies shipped from go down and check before they left port. As a result, we know that they at least said they were going voluntarily. Maybe the diplomats were corrupt; maybe they were slipshod or careless in the performance of their duties -- but we do know they were checked wherever possible. Also, none of the other nations were imposing such checks at the time, so the ones who were truly compelled to go usually went on non-American ships to non-American ports. Plus, in the eyes of the coolie, the US was the place they generally wanted to go to.
Wages were good there by their standards, and we have records of coolies rioting when they discovered they were being sent to some other place when promised America (Cuba and Peru had really bad reputations among the Chinese.)
You seem to want to believe they were compelled to come here, and some probably were, but the overall evidence is against you. So, yes, there is strong reason to believe they came, in the main, voluntarily.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
"...represented that the Chinese who come here come as free men, and that if they are successful they return to their own country enlightened and instructed as missionaries of civilization, or in plain English, they tell their acquaintances to come here and do the same thing. But I say, and I ask the California miner to mark the statement, that the most of them in the mines are not free – that they are coolies, brought here by rich mandarins or merchants to work for little more than a bear subsistence....There is one man in California who has 14,000 coolies at work in our mines – 14,000! This man is a large merchant and of such wealth that he can import the most of the goods and provisions which his own slaves consumes. He pays them next to nothing for their labor, and what must be his profits. It is beyond credulity to believe the amount if named. It is enough, however, that he can afford to pay for having all sorts of representations made to the public, and it is enough too, so that he can afford the most powerful appliances to be made to prevent legislative action on the subject. " Daily Alta California, July 29, 1853 http://www.maritimeheritage.org/newtale/chinese.html
So here we are talking about coolie labor in the late 1860s in the South and you try to prove your point with a quote from 1853 about the situation in California?
When the South (mainly TX-AR-MS-LA-TN, it seems) made their effort to get coolie labor after the Civil War, they were stunned to find that coolie labor in California was paid $20-30/month in silver. That's for the bottom rung. The boss/contractor/interpreter made more; in the case of the contractor for the gang of 250 who went to Texas at the end of 1869, this was $100/month in gold; the regular workers in that group got $30/month in silver. Think about that in terms of other wages of the day. (FWIW, I believe U. S. Grant was making about $5,000/year circa 1864.)
Southerners were also stunned to find they couldn't just scrape up a bunch of coolies and ship them East when they went to California in 1869. They had to deal with the tough negotiators in the associations instead. One group of Southerners discovered they had to promise to build a store for the Chinese, stocked with $3000 of goods, before the negotiations on wages could start.
Sound much like "slaves" to you?
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Well Battalion, how much truth do YOU ascribe to Peregrim Pilgrim's Letter to the Daily Alta? I am assuming you are accepting his figures and witholding your judgement on his racist comments Hmmmm?
P.S. According to the numbers printed in the Daily Alta of May 15, 1852, Peregrim Pilgrim's wealty mercahnt appears to have approx. 67% of all Chinese in California working his mine. How much truth does Battalion ascribe to that particular Article, Hmmmm?
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