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.
1862 "...no citizen or citizens of the United States, or foreigner coming into or residing within the same, shall...build, equip, load, or otherwise prepare, any ship or vessel...for the purpose of procuring from China, or from any port or place therein, or from any other port or place the inhabitants or subjects of China, known as 'coolies,' to be transported to any foreign country, port, or place whatever, to be disposed of, or sold, or transferred, for any term of years or for any time whatever, as servants or apprentices, or to be held to service or labor... ...this act shall take effect from and after six months from the day of its passage. Approved, February 19, 1862." http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=012/llsl012.db&recNum=371
...-"Coolies" could still be obtained legally from any other Asian country.
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1869 " 'An act to prohibit the coolie trade by American citizens in American vessels,' approved February nineteen, eighteen hundred and sixty-two, shall be extended so as to include and embrace the inhabitants or subjects of Japan, or of any other oriental country, known as coolies, in the same manner and to the same extent as such act and its provisions apply to the inhabitants and subjects of China. Approved, February 9, 1869." http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=015/llsl015.db&recNum=302
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Apparently they were bit lax in enforcing the law-
1872 "Mr. Casserly asked and, by unanimous consent, obtained leave to bring in a bill (S. 1058) to prohibit contracts for servile labor, and to amend and enforce existing laws against the coolie trade; which was read the first and second times, by unanimous consent, referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations, and ordered to be printed." S. 1058 http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsb&fileName=042/llsb042.db&recNum=3296
...-afterall they needed cheap labor to build those railroads.
__________________ 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."
What did it cost to maintain a slave, a field hand, for a week? A month? A year?
How much did it cost the owner to feed, clothe, and shelter an average fieldhand/slave?
Cheap labor with hope, slavery without hope = too high a price.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Do these 'snipper' of 'snippetr' Ever read what they snip?
Yes, yes...very closely....
It appears the Federal government allowed a legal slave trade throughout the war years and beyond.
Apparently, the 1862 law was enacted under pressure from the Chinese government (or due to some reciprocal agreement) since that is the only country covered in the law.
Japan, India, Korea, Siam, Burma, Anam (Vietnam), Malaysia and the rest of the East Indies not included.
Also...wonder how effective was the enforcement against importation of Chinese "Coolies"
__________________ 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."
"I found the coolie trade in full activity in the English and French colonies, these two governments seeming intent upon retrieving their error of liberating the black man by enslaving the white man."
"The coolie trade flourishes here [French Guyana], a ship having arrived a few days before us with 500 on board. Humane Louis Napoleon! to substitute the white slave for the black!"
Raphael Semmes, CSN
__________________ 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."
You're sayin' them goody two shoes Yankee Abolitionists were all too eager to bust up the black African slave labor system in place in the south and to prevent it from expanding into the west, but they wouldn't/couldn't/didn't do squat about it in their own back yards. You're saying that they in fact imported Asian "coolie" laborers readily into the United States in order to drive down free labor prices even further and all of this at a time when the human labor pool was busting at the seems because of the efforts of their New England Immigrant Aid Society brothern to flood Kansas, Nebraska, and Minnesota with Free Laborers from Europe.
Oh My God! That sorta sounds like what's happening now in America.
NAFTA and the Global Trade Crowd have decimated manufactoring and high tech jobs and exported literally millions of American jobs overseas and at the same time, their cronies in Congress have opened the flood gates to literally millions upon millions of third world immigrants who are coming to America in droves to take what few low skilled unskilled service industry jobs remain that US loyal American citizens won't do for less than a living slave wage.
You're sayin' them goody two shoes Yankee Abolitionists were all too eager to bust up the black African slave labor system in place in the south and to prevent it from expanding into the west, but they wouldn't/couldn't/didn't do squat about it in their own back yards. You're saying that they in fact imported Asian "coolie" laborers readily into the United States
Yeah, that's about it.....
....very inconsistent, ain't it?
__________________ 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."
"March 21, 1865. The ship Derby arrived from Hongkong with two hundred coolies, sixteen of whom were sick with the small pox, and were taken to the pest-house on the Potrero." http://www.sfgenealogy.com/sf/history/he865.htm
__________________ 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."
How should I put this? Amazing is it not how desperately some do their best to distract and obfuscate how brutal & evil slavery in the US was... better than elsewhere? Certainly, but I have no doubt
Have either of you read anything at all about the Chinese in California & in the Montana territory? Their sacrifices trials AND triumphs... Somehow, I rather doubt it.
Coolies... were not treated even remotely as poorly as the black man. Read the excellent work on the Trans Continental RR by Ambrose. I wouldn't expect either of you two to read it.
How many times need it be said; Racism was an AMERICAN sin. Not just a Southern one; though I assure you the South was no more innocent than the rest of the country.
__________________
Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
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"Coolies"- The North's Legal Slave Trade 
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