by Yunte Huang
At the beginning, things looked promising, for the finance committee reported favorably on the twins’ request. But, as Harris recalled later, when the assembly turned to the matter, the discussion took an unexpected turn. One assemblyman got up, stating that they would be quite mistaken if they considered themselves doing anything to favor the Siamese Twins by lifting the tax, because “it would only do good to some fellow in one of the Eastern States who had bought them of their mother.” Obviously, the members of the Virginia legislature regarded the twins as slaves, property of their owner. Imposing taxation on the twins’ exhibition pertained, therefore, to the financial welfare of their owner, not to Chang and Eng. Based on this assumption, the legislature dismissed the twins’ request. Adding insult to injury, a newspaper in Norfolk published an article by a local doctor, stating that the twins “were sold by their Mother to Mr. Hunter and Captain Coffin” in Siam and therefore were indeed slaves. “On hearing this CE’s [Chang and Eng’s] rage knew no bounds,” as Harris described it, “and they made me go immediately to the Young Doctor who drew out the Memorandum and ask him how he came to state such a thing.” The doctor replied nonchalantly that he had obtained the information from a paper published by the esteemed Dr. John Warren, who had given the twins their first examination, and that every medical man in this country had a copy of that paper. In fact, Dr. Warren’s article did indeed open with the statement, “These boys were purchased of their mother, by Captain Coffin and Mr. Hunter (the owners) in a village of Siam.”13
Irked by these reports and the legislature’s rejection, Chang and Eng realized for the first time the true nature of their precarious position. Even if they had never thought of themselves as slaves, they had been regarded as such by everyone else and treated accordingly. That realization was, as Joseph Orser puts it, “a wakeup call to the twins.”14
Since their arrival from Siam, Chang and Eng had not been shy in vocalizing their discontent, complaining about unfair treatment, and fighting for what they deserved. Prior to the ill-fated visit to Virginia, they had just tussled with Mrs. Coffin over a raise in their travel allowance. Their arrangement with her had been for them to pay for the maintenance of their horses and conveyances out of a two-dollar expense allowance each week. But frequent accidents on icy roads had greatly increased maintenance costs. They wrote, via Harris, to Mrs. Coffin and asked her to raise the weekly allowance to three dollars, or they would board their horses and carriage and use public stagecoaches to get around. Mrs. Coffin’s reply was slow in coming, and when it did, it was intentionally ambiguous: “about the chaise CE can do as they please.” Deeply upset, Chang and Eng wrote again, arguing their case. When her reply was again slow in coming, they wrote for the third time, suggesting that Mrs. Coffin had intended to “place them in an awkward place, and that it was like taking a bird, clipping off his wings & then holding it up on one’s hand & saying, ‘Now you may fly if you wish.’ ” Their colorful metaphor was pretty persuasive, and Mrs. Coffin yielded to their demand.15
A negotiation over a one-dollar raise was apparently no comparison with a fight over their status, trying to free themselves from bondage and exploitation. Nat Turner and his slave rebels had paid dearly for such a struggle. So would millions of others in the coming years during the bloody Civil War. Yet now was the time for Chang and Eng to wage a war, finally, to obtain independence for themselves.
18
Emancipation
Buffalo, “a little town on the shores of Lake Erie,” as Gustave de Beaumont called it, population 8,500, saw its fortune on the rise in 1832.
The Neutral Nation and then the Iroquois Indians had first settled here, followed by the French, who arrived at Buffalo Creek in the 1750s. And then the British took control of the region and built the town on a radial street system. During the War of 1812, the British army, before famously torching Washington, DC, burned Buffalo to the ground and destroyed all but a handful of its 150 buildings, leaving its residents fleeing in the teeth of a snowstorm. The few who stayed paid dearly for their mistakes. One woman, Sarah Lovejoy, was tomahawked while trying to save her dresses from the looting forces. As a local historian writes, “A few days later, residents trickled back to the village, now mostly piles of smoldering black ashes scattered in the white snow. A solitary cat wandering the ruins was the only living thing left in Buffalo. Strewn in the wreckage were the stripped and scalped bodies of their fellow villagers.”1 The survivors buried the frozen bodies of their neighbors and slowly rebuilt the town.
The 1828 opening of the Erie Canal, however, would start a new chapter in Buffalo’s history. It would make the city, blessed by its convenient proximity to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, a transportation turnpike and a gateway to the western frontier. In 1832, when Michigan had not yet joined the Union and Wisconsin was still a trackless forest beyond the pale of civilization, boomtown Buffalo was incorporated as a city. After an election by the Common Council, Dr. Ebenezer Johnson, the wealthiest Buffalonian, was appointed mayor on May 28, the day the famous Siamese Twins rode into town.
Because they arrived in the evening, after a three-day journey through the woods of western New York, Chang and Eng probably missed the celebration and hoopla surrounding the new mayor. The best hotel in town, the Eagle, with a capacity of two hundred, had been fully booked by rich tourists on their way to Niagara Falls, and its ballroom was abuzz with festivities each night. The twins checked in to the Mansion House, a more modest lodging at $2 a night. We do not know whether they had also missed the rare and memorable sight that had once disgusted Tocqueville and Beaumont when the two Frenchmen arrived there a year earlier. The entry in Tocqueville’s notebook for July 19, 1831, which happened to be the day when Indians came to town to collect an installment of federal payment for their lands, reads in English translation as follows:
Arrival at Buffalo. Walk through the town. A crowd of savages in the streets (day of payment) new idea which they suggest. Their ugliness. Their strange look. Their oily, bronzed skin. Their long, black, stiff hair. Their European clothes worn in savage fashion.
Tocqueville was particularly struck by the scene of a drunken Indian who was treated badly by his fellow Indians and his female companion. “Contrast with the moral and civilized population in the midst of which they are found,” the astute student of American democracy observed with plain arrogance, the Indians showed “something of the wild beast.”2
Distinct from Tocqueville’s cryptic brevity, his travel companion Beaumont’s description in a letter was more detailed and expressed more empathy:
The evening of our arrival at Buffalo, we witnessed a curious spectacle, which moved us to pity. . . . The streets of Buffalo were full of drunken Indians when we arrived. We stopped near one who was dead to the world and perfectly motionless. An Indian woman—his wife, we were told—approached him, vigorously shook his head, knocked it against the ground, and, when the poor man gave no sign of life, wailed and laughed like an idiot. Further on we saw another woman, this one intoxicated, being carried back to her forest encampment by two or three tribesmen.3
Chang and Eng had no time, nor were they in the mood, for lamenting the sad plight of “drunken Indians” brutalized by European civilization. While the local tribesmen, drunk or sober, wandered the streets of Buffalo, the brave Sauk and Fox Indian warriors, led by Black Hawk, were waging a battle across the West from Illinois to Wisconsin, a conflict that lasted from April to September, giving the young Captain Abraham Lincoln his brief military stint. Meanwhile, the Siamese Twins were having their own beef with the whites and their personal battle to fight.
After their alarming experience in Virginia, Chang and Eng were inspired to plan their own revolt, though one less violent than the Turner insurrection. They recruited their former manager, James Hale, as a confidant and intermediary, and, through Hale and Harris, they repeatedly asked for a face-to-face meeting with Captain Coffin, who was traveling overseas on business. When the captain, originally due back
in January, was held up indefinitely in Batavia, the twins demanded that Mrs. Coffin meet with them in Buffalo. All this time, they had not disclosed to the Coffins the real purpose of the requested meeting, but their owners must have had an inkling of what was brewing inside the twins’ heads. They knew that the twins would turn twenty-one in May, which meant they would reach adulthood and could legally make decisions over their own lives. But, having in hand that contract hastily executed on the eve of the twins’ departure from Siam, the Coffins must have felt reassured of their continued ownership and the lucrative gains from the twins’ labor. What could two heathen freaks do in a land of God-fearing people, two human monsters who could barely read and write in God’s tongue? Well, a rude surprise awaited the Coffins.
When Mrs. Coffin replied in April that she could not meet them in Buffalo, Chang and Eng decided to take the matter into their own hands. After a long trek through the deep valleys of the Allegheny Mountains, they arrived in Pittsburgh, then a city of more than twelve thousand people. There, on May 11, 1832, the twins celebrated their twenty-first birthday by announcing that their relationship with the Coffins would be terminated by the last day of the month. The news shocked Mrs. Coffin. The prospect of losing the two Asian boys who had been raking in thousands to her coffer was devastating. In letter after letter, she accused them of breaking their promise, threatened them with legal actions, and reminded them how much she had cared for them, “liking and loving them.” Calling them ingrates, she refused to let them go.
“As social equality spreads there are more and more people who, though neither rich nor powerful enough to have much hold over others, have gained or kept enough wealth and enough understanding to look after their own needs,” opined Tocqueville, who was now back in France and had started working on his classic book on American democracy. He went on to describe, with abundant admiration and a touch of envy, the quintessential character of the American people, whose lives he had observed up close for nine months: “Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands.”4 Tocqueville might just as well have referred to the Siamese Twins, two newly minted American adults fighting fiercely to gain independence, to stand alone together, and to take their destiny into their own hands.
Undeterred by Mrs. Coffin’s refusal and incensed by her accusation, the twins, as if taking a page from American history, made a declaration to unchain themselves once and for all. On May 29, when Buffalonians continued to celebrate the founding of their city and the Indians sang about chasing the buffalos soon to be extinct, Chang and Eng made Harris sit down in their room at Mansion House and pen a long letter to Mrs. Coffin, in care of Captain William Davis. This declaration of independence is so unique and occupies such an important place in their conjoined life that it merits quoting at great length here:
Dear Sir,
Your letter of the 22nd came to hand last evening & I must thank you for your promptitude in so quickly replying to mine from Pittsburgh. It was of great importance to me to know that my letter had been received & whether or not Mrs. C. could make it convenient to come on here—as without a letter from you I would have been not a little embarrassed as to the course which I had to pursue on Thursday evening—when they mean to close the concern.
I have read your letter over to Chang-Eng & they say that as to the “promise” made to Captain Coffin “that they would stay under Mrs. Coffin until the return of Captn. to the U.S.”—as to this they say there must be a great mistake somewhere as they must deny this altogether. When they last saw Captn. C.—they distinctly understood from him that he would in all human probability be home in January (1832)—but on this they stated their wish (in case of any accident to him) to have a memorandum under his hand as to the time they were to consider themselves under his control—he immediately stated that of course when they attained the age of 21—they were “Their Own Men”—to use the words of Captn. C on the occasion. Moreover they say January, February, March, April & May have all passed & the chance of seeing Captn. Coffin seems (they say) as far off as ever.
Repeatedly using the parenthetical phrase they say, like stage directions or novelistic asides, this epistle recorded as closely as possible the voice of the twins. Through Harris, the twins flatly rejected the two lines of reasoning by which Mrs. Coffin had tried to persuade them to stay: their promise to remain until Captain Coffin’s return and her love for them. “Suppose, they say,” the letter continued, “that Captn. Coffin should prefer remaining altogether in Batavia or any other distant region—is it reasonable that they should wait from month to month & year to year until his return? In fact, they say, such an undefinable term as that of ‘till Captn. C. returns’ is quite absurd after 4 months having passed since the time fixed for his return.”
As for Mrs. Coffin’s putative motherly affection for them, the twins pulled no punches in venting their bitter anger by recounting numerous instances of her abuse and exploitation:
As to Mrs. Coffin doing all she could for their comfort & loving them & liking them—they say, they have no doubt that the number of thousand of hard shining dollars which they have enabled her to spend have made her like them—but let Mrs. C. look into her own heart & they feel confident she will discover that the great loving & liking was not for their own sakes—but for the sake of the said Dollars. If there is any doubt in her mind on this subject they say, she has only to retrace in her mind the cruel manner in which they were forced to go into a crowded room when they were more fit to be in an hospital. If they wanted to give a few instances they would remind her of New York (their first visit) & likewise London & Bath—they say to Mrs. C.—let her look over these things in her own mind (they hope she has not forgotten them), & after this let her make up her mind as to her loving & liking them—In fact, they say, the less she says about loving & liking—the better.
They felt especially resentful about their visit to Newburyport, the Coffins’ hometown, when they had expected to have a little rest, but her “wish to make money was so great that instead of having any time to themselves a room was procured & visitors admitted just as it had been a few days before at Boston.”
In conclusion, they reemphasized “the fatigues & dangers by Sea & Land in Ships & Carriages—by Night & Day,” which they had endured to make money for the Coffins. Fully aware of the importance of this letter, they regretted not being able to draft it by themselves, but they were now sophisticated enough to know how to authenticate their words transcribed by someone else: “They have asked to affix their signature to it to stamp it as their deed, their sentiments & their feelings, concerning the transactions. Chang Eng, Siamese Twins.”5
For the first time, Chang and Eng affixed to a letter their English signatures, conjoined as their body, raw as their feelings, and emphatically self-asserting as the label they had adopted for themselves, “Siamese Twins.” Later, P. T. Barnum would try to claim credit for coining the term Siamese Twins for Chang and Eng, but we know better than to trust the words of a serial embellisher who would retrofit his autobiography nine times. “Call me Ishmael” . . . so begins Melville’s Moby-Dick. “Call us Siamese Twins” . . . thus turns the new chapter in the incredible life of Chang and Eng. A double underline—like a bond bridging the space between words, or like an arrow pointing to the right, a road sign—completed the signature field and concluded the Siamese Declaration of Independence. With the ink barely dry, the Siamese Twins had become “their own men.”
SIGNATURES OF CHANG AND ENG
19
A Parable
To celebrate their freedom, Chang and Eng went boating at Niagara Falls on June 1, 1832. According to their account book, on that special day they also bought five hundred cigars for $9; Bob, a horse with a decidedly American name, for $72.50; a pocketbook for $1; two suits for $13.50; a trunk for $10; and some other items, both necessary and extravagant. Always economic
al and never spending beyond their means, the twins also knew how to have a good time and live in style.1
Relaxing in a hired boat and cruising down the mile-wide Niagara River, the twins felt the warm northern sunlight and breathed in the sweet summer air. No more harsh words from a master or mistress, no more days of being herded like cattle. There would still be stress and hard work ahead, but at least they were their own masters. As the boat moved closer to the falls, the booming of the cataract became as loud as a buffalo stampede, and the currents became swifter. From afar, they could see a rainbow hanging over the precipice on the Canadian side, festooned by a cloud of spraying mist. On the spur of the moment, they took over the paddles from the boatman and rowed the craft by themselves. Memories of the muddy Meklong came back to them, the bygone days when they chaperoned the quacking ducks down the great river, reeking of weeds and fish after a monsoon storm. Without knowing it, they rowed past Goat Island, where the rapids became dangerously strong. If not for the persistent reminders and then screams from the boatman, they might have taken their chances just to see how perilously close they could get to the edge, where the narrowing river tumbled down a 160-foot-high precipice at a rate of 100 million tons of water per hour.
After landing at Table Rock, they paid the boatman $4 for the rental and twenty-five cents as an extra tip for the scare. They walked away laughing, like two boyish pranksters, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. Then they descended a steep and slippery wooden staircase that led to a cavern below the cliff and a hundred feet above the water. Looking down into the misty abyss and listening to the thunderous roar, they were thrilled by the sublime scenery and excited by the prospects awaiting them on the road ahead.
