Cleveland pressed Bayard to conclude negotiations with China.39
Bayard and Zhang fi nally came to terms on March 12, 1888, more than
two years after China first proposed the idea of self- prohibition. Ultimately,
the Bayard- Zhang (Bayard- Chang) Treaty prohibited all Chinese from
migrating to the United States for the following twenty years, save only for
merchants, students, diplomats, and laborers who had immediate family or
a thousand dollars in property or debts in the United States. The final clause
stated that the United States would grant China $276,619.75 for losses sus-
tained through mob vio lence in the Pacific states and territories, including
Washington. Bayard and Zhang signed the agreement and then presented
the treaty to their respective governments for ratification.40
In Bayard’s mind, the treaty had the potential to solve three prob lems at
once: the threat of white vio lence, the danger of Chinese aliens, and the in-
adequacy of U.S. border control. In his public letter to the president, he
described the treaty as a remedy to “manifest discontent in the states bor-
dering upon the Pacific,” the “obvious lack of assimilation” of Chinese
laborers, and the “demonstrated inefficiency” of the Chinese Restriction Act.
After lauding this diplomatic solution, Bayard spent several paragraphs jus-
tifying the additional indemnity promised by the treaty. Americans needed
to admit “a failure of justice” in the “lawless vio lence of which the Chi-
nese were the victims,” he argued. “The payment will, in mea sure, remove
the reproach to our civilization caused by the crimes.” The treaty, then, at once
denounced anti- Chinese vio lence and gave in to the vigilantes’ demands.41
Privately, Bayard feared that the treaty would not make it through Con-
gress. He believed that the Republican majority in the Senate was “wholly
184 EXCLUSION
devoid of comity, courtesy, or common justice to the Administration.”
Nothing that might offer a feather in the cap of the Demo cratic president,
no matter how “ser viceable to the Country,” could “run the gauntlet of small
politics in the Senate successfully.” In a confidential executive session, some
Republican senators, including Senator Mitchell, voted against ratification,
likely arguing that the treaty did not go far enough to exclude Chinese
mi grants. But most of Mitchell’s fellow Republicans took a diff er ent ap-
proach. Eager to claim some credit for the prohibition of Chinese migra-
tion, Republican senators insisted on several amendments, which amounted
to mere rhetorical flourishes and slight clarifications, before they would
ratify the treaty.42
“What ever excuse is put forward for these amendments,” complained
President Cleveland, “of course their object is largely po liti cal.” He anxiously
asked Bayard if the Chinese would agree to the amendments, hoping to keep
Republicans from slowing negotiations and gaining any “po liti cal advan-
tage.” Given the looming election of 1888, Cleveland desperately wished to
have the Chinese Question settled. Bayard agreed that the amendments were
not bona fide improvements to the treaty, only intended to “obstruct our
negotiations,” but he hoped these “small politics” would do little harm. It
proved easy to convince Minister Zhang that the amendments did not ma-
terially change the content of the treaty, but their addition still delayed the
negotiations for several months. In the meantime, apparently confident of
China’s response, Congress ratified the amended treaty and passed legisla-
tion to put its provisions into practice. It appeared to all that the Cleveland
administration had fi nally achieved Chinese exclusion while maintaining the
cooperative open door.43
The president celebrated victory while unbeknownst to him, trou ble was
brewing across the Pacific. When word leaked to the Chinese public about
the treaty, Chinese merchants in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Guang-
zhou petitioned the Imperial Court to reject it. They argued that the self-
imposed ban would spell the end of the Chinese American community and
their lucrative trade. Without new Chinese mi grants to Amer ica, the popu-
lation would dwindle to zero within twenty years as mi grants died or re-
turned to China. The merchants’ import and export businesses depended
on overseas Chinese as workers in American industries, consumers of Chi-
nese goods, and passengers on transpacific steamers. And what if other coun-
THE EXCLUSION CONSENSUS
185
tries followed suit? It would be disastrous if thousands of laborers were
driven back to Guangdong Province. In their protests, the Chinese targeted
Minister Zhang, who was already an unpop u lar figure due to his extrava-
gant lifestyle. When Chinese workers who had recently returned from Amer-
i ca mobbed Zhang’s residence in Guangdong, it became clear that China
was not immune to the power of violent unrest. Minister Zhang denounced
the protesters as slanderers— calling them “trafficking dealers” only con-
cerned about their “profits” and who “spared no effort in destroying the
treaty”— but the demonstrators had struck a fatal blow. Citing “many com-
plaints,” the Imperial Court rejected the treaty in July 1888.44
A Unilateral Solution
On Saturday, September 1, 1888, the New York Herald announced that the
Imperial Court had rejected the Bayard- Zhang Treaty. Although China had
not sent any official communication, Demo cratic leaders across the country
feared that their diplomatic solution had failed. In San Francisco, the
chairman of the Demo cratic State Committee, William D. En glish, tele-
graphed Cleveland’s private secretary in panic. Given national public sup-
port for Chinese exclusion, Demo crats feared that the failed treaty would
mean the end of Cleveland’s reelection campaign, unless congressional
Demo crats immediately pushed for unilateral exclusion. Pennsylvania
congressman and chair of the Demo cratic National Committee, William
L. Scott, also read the article in the Herald. Early Monday morning, he
conferred with President Cleveland about how to contain the po liti cal
fallout. No one consulted Secretary Bayard.45
When the House, controlled by the Demo crats, began proceedings at
noon, Representative Scott asked for the floor to introduce a bill for the total
exclusion of Chinese workers. When congressmen protested that they had
recently ratified a treaty and passed legislation to address this matter, Scott
explained that there were indications that China had rejected the treaty. If
speculation proved true, argued Scott, “then this bill is essential, and is the
only pos si ble way by which Chinese laborers can be kept out of the United
States.” The exclusion bill he proposed, which would come to be known as
the Scott Bill, amended the Chinese Restriction Act. Instead of barring the
coming of new Chinese laborers, the Act would bar all Chinese laborers
186 EXCLUSION
whether or not they had previously resided in the United States. Return cer-
t
ificates that U.S. Customs houses had been issuing to departing Chinese
during the previous six years would become null and void.46
Most of the House was shocked by this sudden turn of events. As statesmen
conferred in hushed voices, rumors spread that the bill had come from the
president himself. Congressman William W. Morrow, a Republican repre-
senting California, grumbled that he had not had time to review the bill.
But Morrow and other members of the House soon grasped the gravity of
the situation. Given the fervor of anti- Chinese sentiment in the country—
from western workers and from western developers as well— they could not
oppose the bill without severe po liti cal repercussions. This bill, then, was
their best chance to end the migration of Chinese workers once and for all.
Within minutes, the bill passed without a dissenting vote. The next day’s
New York Times blared, “To Shut Out Chinamen: A Total Exclusion Bill
Passed by the House.” 47
The bill’s path through the Republican- controlled Senate was not as swift
or as simple. The Senate had been busy discussing whether to admit Wash-
ington Territory as a state when news came that the House had passed an
exclusion mea sure. Over the following month, the Senate found much to
debate about the Exclusion Bill. They fought over who was to blame for the
failed treaty: Senate Republicans for their meaningless amendments or the
Demo cratic administration for its botched negotiations? They returned to
the debate over the open door: Would this bill undermine Sino- American
relations or not? And they argued about the motives behind the legislation:
Was this a matter of necessity, or simply politics?48
What was not up for debate was the need for Chinese exclusion. It was
hardly surprising that Senator Mitchell, who had long called for Congress
to abrogate U.S. treaties with China, was “earnestly and decidedly” for the
Exclusion Bill. His only reservation was that it did not go “one step further”
to absolutely exclude all Chinese from migrating to Amer ica forever.49 But
even among those who had championed Chinese migration, no one dared
speak against exclusion, given the po liti cal climate. Republican senator John
Sherman, who argued against exclusionary mea sures in 1882, now summed
up the Senate’s attitude: “What ever may have been said in the past, there is
no doubt current sentiment in this country that we should prohibit races so
distinct, so alien, so diff er ent in habits, civilization, religion, and character
THE EXCLUSION CONSENSUS
187
from ours, from coming to our country.” While Sherman referred, obliquely,
to the “current sentiment of the country,” Demo cratic senator John Tyler
Morgan explic itly invoked the role of anti- Chinese vio lence. “ These little
mobs rise, but they cannot exterminate [the Chinese], and we cannot pre-
vent [the mobs],” he argued, “All we can do is to keep [the Chinese] out of
this country.” Chinese exclusion was more than po liti cally expedient, it was
also the best answer to the danger of white vio lence in the U.S. West.50
Bayard followed the debate in the Senate with growing alarm, fearing that
legislative haste would undermine the diplomatic relations he had worked
so hard to cultivate. He wrote to Denby in Beijing asking for any news of
the fate of the treaty, but the reply was not what he had hoped. On Sep-
tember 5, Denby telegraphed that he believed the treaty had been rejected.
Before he found “positive information” to confirm this, the Senate passed
the Exclusion Bill on September 17, 1888, and sent it to the president’s desk
for his signature. Denby contacted the Chinese Foreign Office, pressing for
ratification of the Bayard- Zhang Treaty. Fi nally, he received a clear response.
The Chinese government declared its intent to renegotiate the treaty to re-
duce the period of prohibition and exempt Chinese laborers who owned
property in the United States. To Denby, these new demands amounted to
a “rejection of the treaty.” This time, there would be no diplomatic solution
to the prob lem of Chinese migration.51
Once Denby realized that there was little hope for ratification, he sent an
urgent telegraph and letter to the State Department. Describing China’s con-
duct as “eminently unjust and indefensible,” he advocated for President
Cleveland to sign the Exclusion Bill. He favored the bill because “our self
re spect would be seriously impaired if we allowed ourselves to be treated with
the indecent disregard shown us.” Denby understood that the Exclusion Bill
would violate current treaty stipulations with China, but believed such ac-
tion was justified by China’s violation of “her plighted faith.” Likening un-
civilized China to an unruly child, he argued, “our national honor demands
that China should be taught that she cannot with impunity make us the
foot ball [ sic] of her foreign policy.” It was not just national dignity that was
at stake; it was also the future of U.S. society and government. The American
republic, which he believed was founded on homogeneous citizenry, could
not continue to function with “large bodies of people who remain perpetual
aliens to our system of government.” Ultimately, Denby placed national
188 EXCLUSION
honor and Chinese exclusion above any fears surrounding the future of the
cooperative open door.52
Although Bayard usually supported Denby’s opinions, he dissented on
this issue. Even if China had rejected the treaty, Bayard disapproved of Con-
gress’s hasty actions. He believed the 1888 Exclusion Bill was in “manifest
violation of the existing Convention with China” and feared negative reper-
cussions for diplomatic and mercantile relations. He was aware that many
Demo crats, including President Cleveland, believed the passage of this bill
was essential before the November elections. In Bayard’s eyes, the Demo-
cratic Party’s anti- Chinese rec ord was “perfectly clear, and needs no such
reckless action as the ‘Scott bill [ sic]’ proposes.” He wrote to President Cleve-
land, begging, in no uncertain terms, to reject the bill in the name of “in-
ternational courtesy, good faith and self re spect.”53
The Exclusion Act
President Cleveland signed the Exclusion Act into law on October 1, 1888.
Then, in an unusual move, he sent a special message to Congress to explain
his decision to the nation and, indirectly, to China. Acknowledging that the
United States had once encouraged Chinese migration to Amer ica, Cleve-
land argued that it was now clear that “the experiment of blending the social
habits and mutual race idiosyncrasies” has been “in every sense unwise,
impolitic, and injurious to both nations.” He acknowledged that the Restric-
tion Act had failed to slow Chinese migration and using oblique and tactful
phrasing, blamed the recent anti- Chinese vio lence on that failure. He wrote,
“The inoperative and inefficient condition of the treaty and law has produced
deep- seated and increasing discontent among the people of the United States,
and especially
with those resident on the Pacific Coast.” Ending this “discon-
tent,” Cleveland made clear, would mean “danger averted and lives pre-
served.” He sympathized with “the earnest popu lar demand for absolute
exclusion for Chinese laborers,” because these mi grants had “purposes
unlike our own and wholly disconnected with American citizenship.” He
lamented that the Chinese Restriction Act had not been enough to quell
white unrest and that the Bayard- Zhang Treaty had failed to offer a diplo-
matic solution. Arguing that China’s unexpected rejection of the treaty had
created an “emergency,” he maintained that the U.S. government must “act
THE EXCLUSION CONSENSUS
189
in self defense by the exercise of legislative power.” His words echoed those
of anti- Chinese workingmen in the U.S. West, who had long believed that
self- defense against Chinese migration trumped treaty stipulations. Per-
haps that was his intent.54
Despite Amer ica’s long history of negotiating immigration policy with
foreign nations, Cleveland now asserted that immigration control was Amer-
i ca’s sovereign right. In his official message to Congress, he argued that
“exclud[ing] from its border all ele ments of foreign population which for any
reason retard its prosperity” was “the admitted and paramount right and duty
of every Government,” a right that “must be regarded as a recognized canon
of international law and intercourse.” There was pre ce dent in seventeenth-
century international law, but in the United States, it was Cleveland who
signed the sovereign right of exclusion into law. With his signature and
message of support, the president lessened the executive branch’s power to
negotiate gatekeeping and placed immigration law firmly in the hands of
Congress. To make the act more palatable for China and recognize the wrongs
of anti- Chinese vio lence, he urged Congress to issue the indemnity previ-
ously requested by Chinese diplomats. Congress complied, granting China
$276,619.75 for damages caused by anti- Chinese vio lence, including the
expulsions in Washington Territory.55
Cleveland’s message to Congress was carefully diplomatic to China, but
elsewhere, his words to the American electorate assumed a diff er ent tone.
The Chinese Must Go Page 27
