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DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Glenn Negley Collection 
 of Utopian Literature 
 
*^^ltK^ 
 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Archive 
 in 2010 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/lastdaysofrepubl01doon 
 
LAST DAYS 
 
 The Republic 
 
 By p. W. DOONER. 
 
 "She sighted, afar, the foam of the maelstrom, and tossed her haughty 
 pennants in sovereign disdain of its power. But its current was around her, 
 and she glided noiselessly to her doom." 
 
 Illustrated by G. F. Keller. 
 
 SAN FRAN'CISCO: 
 ALTA CALIFORNIA PUBLISHING HOUSE, 
 
Copyrighted, 1879, 
 By PIERTON W. DOONER. 
 
2r '^^ 
 
 &j 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The reader will bear in mind that this history is written for 
 the Twentieth, and not for the Nineteenth Century. It details, 
 however, the events in which we now, and will continue to, 
 have an active interest. But the present generation must, 
 in the ordinary course of nature, pass into the grave before the 
 curtain shall have fallen upon the last act of this national drama. 
 
 It will, doubtless, be objected to this work that it is, in part, 
 mere speculation; and it will, further, be urged that it is absurd 
 in presupposing the possibility of a condition of aifairs so 
 extreme as that foreshadowed in its pages; but I have only to 
 say, in explanation, that I am not responsible for the result any 
 more than I should be for the product of the multiplication of 
 two given numbers. In the one case, the numbers are submit- 
 ted to the process of multiplication according to the rules of 
 arithmetic, and a third, or additional number, is produced. It 
 would be folly to quarrel with this result. In the second case, 
 the data of thirty years of observation and experiment have been 
 taken and submitted to a deductive examination — multiplied, as 
 it were, by the hopes, the fears, the experience, the passions and 
 prejudices of men, as well as by the example of history, and I 
 am compelled to abide the result. 
 
 That I am not satisfied with this, must be obvious; but I can 
 no more conscientiously change it in any particular, without 
 discovering some plain mistake in the data upon which it is 
 based, than I could change a figure in the product of my multi- 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 plication example, without discovering that I had mistaken a 
 digit in one of the given numbers. 
 
 If, therefore, that very enterprising " failure " known as the 
 Book Critic should wish to deal with the inevitable, I should 
 reasonably look on with unconcern; but it is requested to under- 
 stand, now, and for all time, that, in this matter, I am out of the. 
 controversy. I have simply done my duty in a matter of deduc- 
 tive research, and submit the result of my labors — hoping, 
 meanwhile, that some timely act of administrative foresight may 
 avert the impending catastrophe, which, at this period, menaces 
 not only our civilization, but, indeed, our very existence as one 
 among the nations of the earth. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 Introductory. . . , 9 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Golden Age in California J. W. Marshall and General Sutter 
 
 Early Immigration From Chaos to Government 
 
 Crimes and Penalties The Advent of the Coolies Early 
 
 Intercourse of the Races Visions of Conquest Pursuits 
 
 and Occupations II 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Rise and Progress of the Race Conflict The Political Faith of 
 
 China Her Traditions of Universal Dominion Character- 
 istics of her Plan of Government Her Population She en- 
 courages Emigration Rc-arrangement of her Treaties 
 
 Burlingame becomes a Dupe The Six Chinese Companies 
 
 The Question of Labor Trouble Brewing The Rise of 
 
 Monopolies Labor Combinations Crash in Values Con- 
 gress Considers the Situation Dry Facts about Political Par- 
 ties New England's Propagandism California makes a 
 
 Constitution The People and the Corporations 20 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Chinese Immigration and Immigrants The White Laborers become 
 
 Restive Intrigues of the Imperial Government Status of 
 
 the Immigrant Agency of the Chinese Companies Sew- 
 ard falls into the Little Trap set by Wein-Siang Induce- 
 ments that Suggested Conquest Statesmanship Defined and 
 
 Illustrated Authority of the Companies Legal Technical- 
 ities The Dead Coolie Master and Slave Mongolian 
 
 Theology 49 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Pag^ 
 
 Partisan Strife and Sectional Antagonism The Growth and Decay 
 
 of Governments Republics and Monarchies Contrasted 
 
 What Washington knew about Parties Reconstruction 
 
 Decay of Independent Thought Public Extravagance 
 
 Chartered Rights Construed Fragmentary Demoralization 
 
 The Judicial System Respectable Felony Political 
 
 Economy 65 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Immigration becomes Invasion A Deductive History Cause 
 
 and Effect The Attitude of all Parties The Masses become 
 
 Threatening and Defiant The Coolies make Preparations 
 
 Legislation under California's New Constitution A grain of 
 
 Consolation The plan of Colonization New England and 
 
 the South invite the Coolie Causes affecting Population 
 
 Platforms and Platitudes Institutions that begin to Topple 
 
 The Coolie strikes for Civil Rights 85 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 March of the Conquest The People invoke Legislation Mod- 
 ification of the Naturalization Laws Trans-Pacific Intrigues 
 
 Chinese Citizenship The Federal Courts on the Califor- 
 nia Constitution The Li^boring Element in Arms First 
 
 Battle of the Revolution Statesmanship of the Period 
 
 Coolie Ascendancy Trade with the East Mandarins in 
 
 Congress The Coolie at the South lOl 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Labor on the Rampage The Chinese control the Railroads A 
 
 Social Suggestion The Sum of Partisan Virtue Southern 
 
 Estimates of the Coolie The Rise of Classes The Negro 
 
 Exodus The Coolie settles in New England and breeds Dis- 
 tress The Morals of New England Suffer Her Peace is 
 
 Disturbed She seeks to Repudiate the Coolie and Fails 
 
 Her Moral Refiections Her Political Reflections Beneath 
 
 the Surface 124 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Chinese Empire Birth of a new Civilization Rise of the 
 
 Military Spirit The National Armament Commercial Su- 
 premacy in Asia The Arts and Sciences She aims at the 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 Page. 
 
 Dominion of the High Seas England and Hongkong Con- 
 quest of Farther India China becomes the Dictator of Asia 
 
 She clings to her Traditions Speculations in the Realm 
 
 of Conquest Preparations for the Struggle Mandarins in 
 
 American Politics The Discovery 145 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 American Society Extremes of Luxury and Squalor Some Re- 
 flections upon Human Nature Class Attributes Obstacles 
 
 to Race Assimilation Natural Laws of Society become Inop- 
 erative Sectional Conditions The Coolie and the Negro 
 
 Subversion at the South Mongolians in Office The 
 
 Militia, Old and New Mongolian Obtuseness Race Com- 
 parisons Administrative Infidelity 164 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Picture that became a Reality Further Political Victories at the 
 
 South South Carolina is Vanquished and Forces a Crisis 
 
 Preparations for War The Whole South in Arms The 
 
 Coolies Equal to the Occasion Factions The Battle of 
 
 Charleston Events that Followed The Mongolians raise 
 
 the Standard of China The Viceroy of America A War 
 
 of Conquest The Struggle Inaugurated 185 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Equipment of the Hostile Forces Trans-Pacific Co-operation 
 
 Arrival of the Chinese Fleet Naval Engagement Impor- 
 tation of Troops and Munitions of War The Atlantic Coast 
 
 Conquest of the Pacific States Prevailing Laws, etc., 
 
 Abolished The Imperial Edict 210 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Americans and Europeans, from an Asiatic Stand-point Intrigue 
 
 against European Intervention Russia and England in Cen- 
 tral Asia The Struggle Transferred to Europe The East- 
 em Question Austria and Germany The "Plains of 
 
 Mursa" Small Causes and Great Effects The Balance of 
 
 Power France Another Bonaparte A Mexican Revolu- 
 tion Analyzed How the South American Republics Fight. . . 220 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Army Characteristics The Struggle for Existence Glory and 
 
 Gold Mongolian Reverses Supplies begin to Fail Neg- 
 ative Success Practical Infinitude The Boundaries of Free- 
 dom The Spirit of Colonial Days The Women of Amer- 
 ica Famine Material Exhaustion 223 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 National and Army Diet War and Agriculture at the South 
 
 Occupations of American Prisoners of War The Chinese 
 
 Army in New England The Beginning of the End The 
 
 First Mongolian Victory- Pillage March of the Conqueror 
 
 Washington in Danger The Soldier's Reflection The 
 
 last Stronghold 245 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The New Government An Imperial Edict Mongolian Conser- 
 vatism Aid to the Suff^-rers The Last Combat A Pro- 
 gramme that Failed of Execution The Western Empire 
 
 Farewell Reflections The End , 253 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 In picturing the condition of the American continent toward 
 the close of the Nineteenth, or about the beginning of the 
 Twentieth Century, a. d., it will be necessary, to the intelligent 
 appreciation of the apparently incredible order of events at that 
 time to be established, that we trace the causes which must 
 superinduce this change, and lay them, in their order, before the 
 reader. To faithfully carry out this historical scheme is the aim 
 of the present work. 
 
 The State of California will figure somewhat conspicuously in 
 these pages, but this is owing entirely to the fact that she is the 
 member of our national political organization into which has 
 been injected the poison that is slowly corroding the vital prin- 
 ciple of our national life. This wounded member being the 
 first to taste the agonies of impending death, was also the first 
 to give intimation, by the unnatural discord of her internal 
 affairs, of the terrible disease that had fastened its grasp upon 
 the vitals of the whole governmental structure. 
 
 The logic of these deductions, considered in the abstract, 
 will, of course, be omitted. . It would be of but little interest to 
 the average reader, nor, in fact, would a purely metaphysical 
 dissertation be appropriately located as a part of a purely his- 
 torical work. It is sufficient for the author's aims and purposes 
 ihat the conclusions arrived at be stated with sufficient clearness 
 and detail to enable the counir)' to see the necessity of taking 
 measures to arrest the disease, before the power so to do shall 
 have passed, forever, beyond the reach of political regeneration. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Golden Age in California J. W. Marshall and General 
 
 Sutter ^Early Immigration From Chaos to Government 
 
 Crimes and Penalties The Advent of the Coolies 
 
 Early Intercourse of the Races Visions of Conquest 
 
 Pursuits and Occupations. 
 
 This history begins with the birth of a new era 
 in American enterprise, when, in the first month 
 of the year 1 848, an obscure workman looked with 
 unfeigned incredulity upon a stratum of shining 
 gravel and sand, laid bare by the waters of the 
 American river. It might be gold ; but the sup- 
 position was too extreme for the credulity of even 
 the simple-minded millwright, J. W. MarshalL 
 The broader experience of his employer, General 
 Sutter, was necessary to pass upon the nature of 
 the discovery ; and his verdict settled the class- 
 ification of the mysterious samples produced by 
 Marshall. They were gold. 
 
 How it happened that, at this stage, the cool- 
 headed business man and pioneer speculator 
 escaped the fever which, for a quarter of a century 
 
12 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 afterwards, seized upon and possessed the minds 
 and faculties of the adventurous, not only in every 
 part of the American Union, but also in every 
 centre of population throughout the globe, is a 
 matter of considerable speculative curiosity, how- 
 ever much it may lack the element of historical 
 interest. 
 
 Notwithstanding the difficulties which beset the 
 traveler, at that period in the history of California, 
 through the very imperfect system of transporta- 
 tion then employed, and the dangers which lurked 
 around the pathway, whether by land or by sea, 
 that lies between this El Dorado and the centres 
 of civilization, the following year (1849) witnessed 
 an immigration to California which stands without 
 a parallel in the history of any other common- 
 wealth, or of any other people. 
 
 The report, that men were gathering sacks of 
 gold among the mountains of California, was wafted 
 to the bounds of the civilized world ; and the 
 avarice of mankind responded to the implied invi- 
 tation to come forward and participate in the 
 bounty of the earth. Young America surcharged 
 with oozing ambition was greedy to seize upon her 
 recent acquisition and to enjoy the fruits of con- 
 quest. First upon the scene, her vanguard spread 
 themselves over the mountains, taking only the 
 choicest gifts of their golden offerings. Next, the 
 slumbering Spaniards of the New World aroused 
 themselves from their wonted lethargy and poured 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 3 
 
 into this fabled territory ; after which the subdued 
 spirts of monarchical Europe drifted upon the scene. 
 
 Incongruous, indeed, was the human admixture 
 that now, for a decade, continued to flow into 
 California ; and whether through the individuals 
 themselves, or through the opinions which they 
 entertained, every civilized people, as well as every 
 sentiment of civilized government, the world over, 
 was soon represented. The tendency to organiza- 
 tion and assimilation inherent in the Caucasian 
 race, here as elsewhere soon asserted itself, and its 
 representatives, although gathered from three con- 
 tinents readily adopted a common view of the 
 situation. 
 
 Some form of social and political organization 
 had become a necessity for the protection of life 
 and property, pending the organization of a state 
 government, and the yet more dilatory operation 
 of giving direction to its requirements. As the 
 machinery of courts of justice were an impossi- 
 bility in the interim, and the Spanish law, besides 
 being imperfectly understood, was unable to cope 
 with the spirit of the age, the whole people 
 seemed, as if by tacit consent, to lix upon certain 
 principles of natural law and vigorous justice, by 
 which every man should be arrayed against every 
 individual who should improperly interfere with 
 the riofhts of others. 
 
 The commonest offences, many of which do not 
 now rise up to the dignity of felony, were punish- 
 
14 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 able with death. In fact the penalty inflicted, from 
 time to time, depended as much upon the temper 
 of the particular mob, executing the law, in each 
 particular case, as it did upon the gravity of the 
 offence charged ; and very often the whispered 
 reputation of the prisoner in the community was 
 the weight which turned the balance for, or against, 
 the forfeiture of his life. 
 
 The unanimity of sentiment by which the man- 
 dates of the mob were generally carried into ex- 
 ecution cannot fail to stamp with some measure of 
 justification the rigor of the measures adopted for 
 the public safety. At this day, the men who com- 
 prised a part of that primitive community and 
 who have, certainly, had the best opportunity of 
 judging of the expediency of those measures, are 
 the last to condemn them ; and are almost unani- 
 mous in the position that milder measures would 
 have failed of all usefulness. 
 
 In another view of the times, this severity was 
 a necessity, to protect the industrious classes. 
 The peculiar character of the immigration setting 
 into California, could not fail to bringf toofether a 
 very large proportion of the criminal classes of the 
 places whence they had come. Initiated into crime 
 among scenes of comparative restraint, these were 
 disposed to give full play to their vicious instincts 
 upon this lawless frontier, and only the terrors of 
 lynch law and the gibbet could, in any measure, 
 have restrained the dominant violence of a very 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. ^5 
 
 large proportion of the population. The system 
 of summary punishment thus estabhshed not only 
 checked the vicious tendency of the criminal class, 
 but also left its impress upon the criminal juris- 
 prudence of the State, which, in a modified form, 
 has continued down to the present day. 
 
 Amono- the immio^rants that flowed into Call- 
 fornia soon after the discovery of gold among her 
 mountains, was a people heretofore practically un- 
 known upon the American continent. Differing 
 in manners, dress, habits of life, religion and educa- 
 tion, and widely in their physical aspect, as well 
 as in their physical requirements, from all others, 
 they were also incapable of assimilation, or of 
 social intercommunication ; nor did they manifest 
 the slightest tendency or disposition to court a 
 closer relationship with their fellow pioneers. 
 
 Servile to the last degree, they seemed to be a 
 people ordained by nature to be the servants of all 
 mankind. Eminently peaceful, industrious and law- 
 abidino-, as well as shrewd in business intercourse, 
 but not strictly honest, and terribly avaricious, they 
 submitted to authority sometimes with apparent 
 reluctance, but seldom or never offered anything 
 assimilating to violent opposition. They seemed 
 to have gathered from their intercourse with their 
 more aesressive neiorhbors, that passive submis- 
 sion to all established authority was the condition 
 of their toleration, and to have accepted the terms 
 without stopping to inquire how far the authority 
 
1 6 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 exercised mieht be established or authorized. 
 They were, thus, soon subjected to every species 
 of imposition and extortion. Self-appointed tax 
 collectors visited their camps, weekly, and, indeed, 
 often daily, to collect from them that which they 
 were given to understand were the revenues of 
 the State. 
 
 The system, perhaps not differing very widely 
 from that to which they had been accustomed at 
 home, did not excite their suspicions until the 
 success of the swindle had challenged the admira- 
 tion of too many adventurers, who discovered an 
 inexpensive method of providing themselves with 
 the means of indulging their various lawless pur- 
 suits. The inordinate frequency of tax collections 
 at length led to inquiry, and consequent enlight- 
 enment, upon this one point of imposition. 
 
 Many and various were the schemes of extortion 
 from these plodding disciples of labor that were 
 resorted to, with greater or less success on the 
 part of the adventurer ; but in many instances even 
 pretence was abandoned to give place to open 
 violence, in which they were made the victims of 
 undisguised robbery. As a class, they were out- 
 side the social compact ; and the engines of justice, 
 which were ever ready to punish any infringement 
 of the rights of others than them, propelled no 
 agency for their redress or protection. 
 
 The reader who has visited the Pacific Coast 
 will have readily recognized in this description the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 7 
 
 subjects of the Chinese Empire. Suspicious by 
 nature and with that characteristic quickened into 
 a lively instinct by the peculiarities of his training 
 and education, the Mongolian had no sooner dis- 
 covered the artifice to which he had been subjected, 
 than did his mind conceive that all absorbin<if 
 distrust, which has ever since maintained the as- 
 cendant in his estimate of the American character. 
 It is possible, however, that this spirit is but 
 another form of the race, or national jealousy, 
 which, for so many centuries, isolated the Chinese 
 Empire from the intercourse of nations ; and that 
 under the most considerate treatment in California, 
 the same want of confidence would, still, have 
 characterized this people. But it is, nevertheless, 
 true, that the local prejudice entertained by the 
 Chinese immigrants to California, against its Cau- 
 casian population, was nurtured by the abuses to 
 which their pioneers were subjected. 
 
 This unwholesome spirit, seconded by a con- 
 suming avarice, and directed by a most incredible 
 cunnincf, laid the foundation of a scheme of con- 
 quest unparalleled in the history of the human race. 
 A bold ambitious desire, coupled with a deeply- 
 rooted conviction of their ability to possess alone, 
 and undivided, a land so admirably adapted by 
 nature to their habits of life, and so intimately 
 connected with the mother country for the pur- 
 poses of commerce, seemed, at this time, to have 
 
 ^ 9. 
 
1 8 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 first taken possession of the minds of their promi- 
 nent men. 
 
 Suddenly there sprang up among the Mongol- 
 ian residents of the Pacific Coast a desire for 
 material independence and the possession of 
 landed estate. This was rapidly followed by a 
 most elaborate immigration scheme — a scheme 
 which, in the course of a few years, swelled the 
 Mongolian population of the Pacific States and 
 Territories from a few thousand to more than one 
 hundred thousand souls. 
 
 The methods employed to secure this immi- 
 gration will properly belong to a subsequent chap- 
 ter. 
 
 Heretofore these people had applied themselves 
 mainly to the lowest and most servile occupations, 
 but soon there arose amonof them the new desire 
 to become artisans, and all became anxious to 
 acquire the rudiments of an English education. 
 With the bare exception of their physicians ( whose 
 practice consisted principally of exorcism and the 
 prescription of various insects, appropriately pre- 
 pared, for internal use, as a treatment of specific 
 diseases), and their priests, there were among them 
 neither professional nor trades-people ; yet their 
 capacity for acquiring trades was as remarkable 
 as their industry and indomitable perseverance. 
 They soon learned to apply the craft of the shoe- 
 maker, the carpenter, the cabinet-maker, the brick- 
 layer and others — and with so much skill and 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. IQ 
 
 dexterity as to seriously imperil the continuance 
 of these pursuits in the hands of those of the 
 white population who had made them the means 
 of a livelihood ; while those who had devoted 
 themselves to the object of acquiring an English 
 education were hardly less successful. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Rise and Progress of the Race Conflict 'The Political Faith 
 
 OF China Her Traditions of Universal Dominion -Char- 
 acteristics OF Her Plan of Government Extent of Her 
 
 Population She Encourages Emigration Re-arrange- 
 ment of Her Treaties Burlingame becomes a Dupe The 
 
 Six Chinese Companies The Question of Labor Trouble 
 
 Brewing The Rise of Monopolies Labor Combinations 
 
 Crash in Values Congress Considers the Situation 
 
 Dry Facts about Political Parties New England's Pro- 
 
 PAGANDisM California makes a Constitution The People 
 
 AND the Corporations. 
 
 The reports which, following the treaty of 1858, 
 continued to reach China, of the vast natural 
 wealth of California coupled with the further con- 
 sideration that her geographical position placed 
 her, in contemplation of commerical comity, at the 
 very doorway of China, made a deep impression 
 upon the minds of the great statesmen who, at 
 that period, conducted the affairs of the Empire. 
 Subsequent events only tended to intensify this 
 spirit of inquiry and investigation, until, in 1865, 
 a corps of observation was sent out by the central 
 government to see and report upon the resources 
 of California. 
 
 The secret nature of this measure and the 
 assumed private character of the visitors, shielded 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 2 1 
 
 them at once from public observation as well as 
 suspicion ; and I have not been able to find that 
 any reference to this commission (for such it really 
 was) has ever been made in the correspondence 
 between the two governments. In due time the 
 report of this commission was laid before the 
 Imperial government, and was found to be con- 
 firmatory of the most favorable reports theretofore 
 circulated ; and, in short, it proved satisfactory, in 
 every particular. 
 
 The traditions and the policy of China teach and 
 require that she shall aim to rule the whole world; 
 and she has been awaiting the march of events to 
 initiate, by appropriate signs, the era of her con- 
 quests. If there are those who doubt that such 
 is, indeed, the conviction of the Chinese people, 
 and hence the policy of the Empire, all such 
 are referred to the international correspondence 
 between that government and our own. This 
 sino-ular hallucination breathes throuorhout almost 
 every state paper issued under the authority of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 For particular instances, for such of my readers 
 as might not be satisfied with this generalization, 
 or as may lack the facilities for a personal investi- 
 gation of the subject, I will refer to the missive 
 from the Emperor of China to the President of the 
 United States, dated January 7, 1858, which 
 proceeds as follows : "I, the august Emperor, wish 
 health to the President of the United States. 
 
2 2 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Having received with profound respect the com- 
 mand of Heaven to sway with tender care the 
 entire circuit of all lands, I regard the people every- 
 where, within and without the wide seas, with the 
 same humane benevolence," etc. 
 
 And, again, in his missive of January 23, 1863, 
 the business of state is introduced in the following 
 manner : "In virtue of the commission we have 
 received, with awe, from Heaven to rule all the 
 world, natives and foreigners must be to us as one 
 family," etc. 
 
 By these and similar expressions everywhere 
 occurring throughout the state correspondence of 
 China, the tendency of that people is made clearly 
 manifest. To Rule the World, is a dogma, a creed, 
 a holy tradition of China and the middle of the 
 Nineteenth Century combined the circumstances 
 that promised the realization of this national dream 
 — a tradition that was hoary with the frosts of cen- 
 turies ere yet the "Mistress of the World" had 
 traced the foundation marks of her imperishable 
 structure upon the banks of the Tiber. 
 
 The oldest as well as the richest country of the 
 Gflobe, she was also the first and most advanced in 
 the exercise of political economy, and hence in the 
 science of government. This is made manifest by 
 the vast population she sustains, considered in 
 connection with the extent of her territory ; for no 
 other government, whether of ancient or modern 
 Limes, has ever succeeded in maintaining, in a 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 23 
 
 condition of prosperity and peace, a population so 
 immense upon a like extent of territory — large, 
 though it is. And if the peace, protection and 
 prosperity of a people are an indication of good 
 government, then the government of China stands 
 vindicated. Of the pacific disposition of that 
 government, proofs are not wanting; while, of the 
 prosperity of the people, something may be gath- 
 ered from the writings of diplomatic agents and 
 others traveling or resident in China. In this 
 connection reference may be had to the letter of 
 Hon. G. F. Seward, from Hong Kong, in March, 
 1876, to Mr. Fish. He says : "As things are, 
 there are, perhaps, as few persons pinched with 
 want, to be seen in the streets of most Chinese 
 cities, as in those of the cities of Christendom." 
 
 Burlingame tells us, in his letter to Secretary 
 Seward, of date December 14, 1867, — and that 
 he should be an excellent authority upon the sub- 
 ject no one will, for a moment, doubt, — that the 
 population of China comprises one-third of the 
 whole human race. 
 
 That nation, which built up her civilization and 
 maintained her autonomy by the undeviating pur- 
 suit of peace, early became aware that a conquest 
 inaugurated by the exercise of peaceful negotia- 
 tions could, alone, promise complete success. The 
 hour had arrived for the vindication of her tradi- 
 tions. She had weighed all the circumstances, 
 and become determined in the prosecution of he; 
 
24 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 resolve. The control of the United States would 
 f^ivc her the virtual control of the Western Hemi- 
 sphere. The resolve had become fixed, and its 
 prosecution, alone, remained. 
 
 As the introductory act, she proceeded to trans- 
 port her surplus population to America and to have 
 them learn to maintain themselves there. She had 
 unbounded confidence in the patriotism of her 
 people, while, upon their industry she knew she 
 could rely. Hence, her subjects must fill up every 
 avenue of industry; must become the yeomanry 
 of the Western World; must first effeminize and 
 then conquer the luxurious people who, judging 
 from the pursuits and pleasures that have grown 
 up into institutions among them, live only to 
 gratify the various dominant passions of their 
 nature. 
 
 The first step to be made would prove the 
 most difficult; after that should have obtained 
 recognition and toleration, all else would follow 
 with comparative facility. Then, out of her five 
 hundred millions of people, she could readily 
 afford the millions necessary to carry out this 
 immense design. 
 
 The existing treaties between the United States 
 and China being silent upon the important matters 
 essential to the regulation of emigration between 
 the two powers, the subjects of the Chinese Em- 
 pire were entitled to maintain, in America, barely 
 the natural ricrhts of man. It was evident that no 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 25 
 
 grand scheme of emigration could be launched 
 under such adverse circumstances. 
 
 But the whole scheme of conquest having been 
 settled as a mere question of expediency, was 
 admitted in that particular. It remained only to 
 consider its practicability. The guarantees of ex- 
 isting treaties being insufficient to favor a scheme 
 of emigration such as would be necessary to trans- 
 fer any considerable portion of the population of 
 China to our shores, further treaty stipulations 
 must be entered into. But how, at this time, to 
 solicit negotiations heretofore tendered herself, 
 and rejected with disdain, was, indeed, a problem 
 more difficult of solution than it might, at first, 
 seem. 
 
 The exclusive and haughty character of the Ta- 
 Tsing Government rendered it quite impossible 
 that overtures should now come from China. 
 Any such action would be inconsistent with, as 
 well as a reflection upon, her dignity, and con- 
 trary to her policy and her traditions, extending 
 back into the shadows of pre-historic times. 
 
 But chance, and the aptitude to turn fortuitous 
 circumstances to account (which has always been 
 a mark of successful statesmanship), now pointed 
 to a plausible, if not a quite honorable, procedure 
 for the amplification of the treaty stipulations 
 between the high contracting parties. 
 
 Anson Burlingame was at this time Envoy 
 Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary from 
 
26 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the United States to China. Prince Kung and 
 another able statesman of the Empire, named 
 Wein-Siang, affected, very suddenly, to have dis- 
 covered in our Minister a knowledge of the world 
 and of men, besides other qualifications which 
 would make him a valuable attache of the Foreign 
 Office of China. He was accordingly invited by 
 Wein-Siang, whose action was approved and sec- 
 onded by Prince Kung, to accept the position of 
 Envoy to the Treaty Powers, to represent the 
 Chinese Empire. 
 
 Now, the American people, however excellent 
 at home, or liberal abroad, are exceedingly sus- 
 ceptible to the influences which play about Im- 
 perial Courts, and which promise, however re- 
 motely, to confer class distinction upon the indi- 
 vidual ; and this passion for rank- distinction is 
 perhaps the most ludicrous and contemptible 
 phase of the American character. Burlingame was 
 not an exception to his countrymen. His position 
 as Minister of the United States shrunk into 
 insignificance at the brighter prospect of repre- 
 senting China as her Envoy to the Treaty 
 Powers ; and, accordingly, to accept that position, 
 he, on the 21st of November, 1867, resigned his 
 office as Minister, in the following grandiloquent 
 and crushing phraseology, addressed to the State 
 Department, at home : 
 
 " Sir : — In the interest of my country and of 
 civilization, I do hereby resign my commission as 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 2^ 
 
 Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipoten- 
 tiary from the United States to China ;" and 
 became a high functionary of the Chinese Empire. 
 No sooner was this appointment promulgated 
 by the Imperial decree, which was signed on the 
 day immediately following, than the scheme, for 
 the advancement of which he had been promoted 
 and betrayed, was considered in State Council. 
 
 In justice to Mr. Burlingame, however, it must 
 be admitted that he never suspected the treachery 
 that lay hidden at the bottom of his elevation ; 
 and up to the hour of his death, which occurred 
 soon after the treaty was made, and before its 
 ratification, it had never flashed upon his mind 
 that he had been betrayed into a foreign con- 
 spiracy against the independence of his country 
 and the freedom of his race. 
 
 It is needless to enter further into the details of 
 the treaty of 1868, which has become a part of the 
 history of both countries, and is familiar to all. 
 Suffice it to say, that, through the successful 
 manipulation of an ex- Minister of one country, 
 who had become the Envoy of another, the 
 United States were placed in the attitude of 
 solicitor, to whose plaint the cunning statesmen 
 of China finally gave a hypocritical consent. 
 
 Thus was opened up a scheme of invasion which 
 has since been conducted to the utmost limit that 
 American endurance would tolerate. For many 
 years this immigration has flowed incessantly, 
 
2 8 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 landing at the various ports on the Pacific sea- 
 board of the United States hundreds of thousands 
 of Coohe laborers. To further expedite the work 
 of invasion and hasten the hour for final occupa- 
 tion, a scheme of immigration was fixed upon by 
 which every immigrant was assured a support. 
 Companies were organized, ostensibly as private 
 enterprises, but virtually chartered, controlled and 
 directed by the central government at home. 
 These were known in America as the Six Chinese 
 Companies — of which, more hereafter — whose 
 agents were commissioned by the Emperor ; and, 
 by the same authority, exercised the functions of 
 legislative and judicial officers as well as virtual 
 governors of the Chinese people in America. 
 
 The impetus given to Coolie immigration by the 
 scheme now put into practical operation soon 
 called forth the earnest remonstrance of the peo- 
 ple of the Pacific Coast. The whole department 
 of labor was becoming revolutionized, and " Chi- 
 nese cheap labor" became a familiar phrase to 
 represent a fall in the status, or the value of com- 
 modities. Unlike most slang phrases popularized 
 by the spirit of the age, this had a substantial 
 foundation in fact ; for, within a few years follow- 
 ing the ratification of the Burlingame treaty the 
 price of unskilled labor fell fifty to seventy-five 
 per cent, below its former standard. The Pacific 
 Coast, but particularly the State of California, 
 swarmed with Coolie laborers, competition with 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 29 
 
 whom, in that capacity, became impossible to while 
 laborers. 
 
 The European immigrant, who had heretofore 
 occupied this field, was seldom without family ties. 
 Parents or children were generally dependent 
 upon him for support. Besides this, the necessaries 
 of life, in his case, were such as have been pecu- 
 liar to our civilization. His table must be spread 
 with substantial food, otherwise continuous labor 
 is an impossibility, while the very requirements 
 of civilized life demand the procurement of cloth- 
 ing and habitation in reasonable proportion and 
 degree. But the opposition which now usurped 
 this department of industry was so manifestly 
 irresistible that, for the white laborer, with his 
 great comparative necessities, to persevere in 
 the retention of its control, by compethion, was 
 a positive absurdity. The Coolie labors with slow- 
 ness, but with unremitting constancy and great 
 precision, so that while he will not perform the 
 same amount of labor for a brief period of time, 
 that is usual for an European workman, yet his 
 monthly execution will compare favorably with 
 that of the latter ; while, if his work be consid- 
 ered for a much longer period, he will, probably, 
 have accomplished more. With such precision is 
 every work performed, that the Coolie seldom sus- 
 tains a loss of time through the occurrence of pain- 
 ful accidents ; he knows little of sickness, and less 
 still of those pernicious habits which are the source 
 
30 LAST DAYS OF THE RErUBLIC. 
 
 of SO much idleness and dissipation among the 
 European people. To these advantages he has 
 added a further, that he has solved the problem of 
 cheap living. Fifty dollars per annum will main- 
 tain the ordinary Coolie laborer, whose food con- 
 sists of little else than rice ; and add to this that 
 he is untrammeled by family ties, and it must be 
 admitted that in the field of labor he is, indeed, 
 irresistible. 
 
 Thus it was that the first battle of the Chinese 
 conquest was won. The field of unskilled labor 
 was in the hands of the invaders, and a conquered 
 populace stood disarmed and discomfited, while 
 the conquerors complacently divided among them- 
 selves the franchises and prerogatives which Amer- 
 ican enterprise had created. 
 
 Enthused, although far from intoxicated, by this 
 great moral victory, the invaders next turned their 
 attention to the department of skilled labor. The 
 system of mechanical education heretofore adopted 
 had borne fruit ; and hundreds of expert Chinese 
 artisans stood ready, at a signal. They thronged 
 the factories and workshops of all the cities and 
 towns in the State ; and another field, although 
 obstinately contested, was yet, rapidly yielding 
 before the well-directed assaults of the enemy. 
 The field of skilled labor had been virtually cap- 
 tured ; and now an army of American artisans, of 
 both sexes, turned their faces toward the east and 
 departed from the inhospitable land, once wrested 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 3 1 
 
 by their fathers from the wilderness and now pass- 
 ing, without a struggle, into a province of the 
 Chinese Empire. 
 
 Contemporaneous with the fall in the prices of 
 labor, the better class of laborers gradually re- 
 turned to the eastern states. But all who had the 
 disposition so to do, did not happen to have the 
 means with which to put it into practical enforce- 
 ment. It resulted that many were compelled to 
 remain ; and the families of these have known little 
 else than distress in their contact with the world. 
 A generation of desperadoes — the sons of honest 
 parents, however — was the result. These were 
 commonly known in California as "hoodlums," to 
 designate that subdivision that preyed upon the 
 misfortunes of the cities and towns, or " tramps," 
 to desiornate those that traveled at larQ^e and lived 
 upon the charity of the people. 
 
 Thus it was that society soon gravitated to 
 classes. The wealthy class, enjoying the advant- 
 ages of cheap labor, rapidly accumulated additional 
 wealth, while the poorer classes, suffering from the 
 disadvantage of a most degrading competition^ 
 sank lower and lower in the social scale. The 
 causes which controlled this unnatural distribution 
 of property soon became a matter of public dis- 
 cussion, and even the "unthinking masses" were 
 not slow to discover that the presence, in our 
 midst, of a large and increasing Chinese popula- 
 tion, was, in some manner, instrumental in produc- 
 
32 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 ing the public discontent. Thereupon, and with- 
 out stopping to consider treaty stipulations, or the 
 rigrhts of foreigners in our country, the whole of 
 the citizen producing-class at once declared that 
 the Chinese must go ! and that forthwith ; while 
 the whole moneyed class resolved that the Chinese 
 must remain. Hence, the question at once as- 
 sumed a political aspect. Capital, always stronger 
 than disinterested public sentiment, until the latter 
 assumes the attitude of armed rebellion, offered no 
 exception to the general rule, in its application to 
 the present case. The citizen laboring classes, 
 looking upon the Chinese as the immediate cause 
 of the popular distress, took advantage of every 
 occurrence that might happen to place the Coolie 
 in the position of a public offender, and to visit 
 him with summary punishment. If he should offer 
 resistance, as he frequently did, he was generally 
 killed, or killed his assailant, in which latter case 
 his own fate was always speedily determined at 
 the hands of those who felt outraged at such a 
 turn of affairs. 
 
 Scenes of this character were enacted with 
 more or less frequency, but not, however, without 
 the interference of the State law, which, from time 
 to lime made feeble efforts to take the control of 
 such cases. But our criminal code had, at this 
 period, become so trifling, so wrapt up in refine- 
 ments and exceptions to general rules, that the 
 most atrocious murder could always go unscathed 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 33 
 
 of full justice, by the skillful interposition of tech- 
 nicalities, or the venality of public officers. In 
 other respects the laws of the State extended full 
 and ample protection to all classes alike — except 
 when its fair intent was blackened or misunder- 
 stood by corrupt or ignorant judges — a very com- 
 mon combination of circumstances. 
 
 Numerous attempts were made throughout the 
 State, by local municipal legislation, to discriminate 
 against the Coolie ; but all such attempts were in- 
 variably thwarted by the decrees of the Courts of 
 Justice. On the other hand, corporations, and 
 those combinations of capital, that under the name 
 of " monopolies," are very familiar to the student 
 of contemporary history in America, were arrayed 
 on the side of the Mongolian. The politics of the 
 State being largely controlled by the monopolies, 
 it was generally conceded that legislators, or 
 others who might have it in their power to em- 
 barrass the coveted relation between Monopoly 
 and Cheap Labor, must give some satisfactory inti- 
 mation of their favorable bias upon the Chinese 
 question, before their election could be secured. 
 This potential manoeuvre retained every depart- 
 ment of the Government on the side of accumula- 
 tion and cheap labor. It was the old struggle of 
 Capital against Labor, revived, with the same gen- 
 eral result — Capital in the ascendant. 
 
 Defeated in every effort to establish a better 
 
 order of affairs in California, the people adopted 
 3 
 
34 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the course of laying their grievances before Con- 
 gress in a series of petitions, stating briefly the 
 character of the prevalent abuses, and their prob- 
 able cause, and praying relief. But Congress has 
 no official advices that there is a superfluity of 
 Chinese subjects in any part of the Union ; does 
 not, officially, know that the industries of any 
 State of the Union, or that the happiness of any 
 American citizen, is at all affected by any immigra- 
 tion from any nation or part of Asia or Africa ; 
 does not, officially, know that any of the institu- 
 tions of the United States of America are menaced 
 from any cause operating fVom without ; does know, 
 officially, now that the matter has been mooted, 
 that there is a treaty between the United States 
 and one China — a Burlingame treaty ; does be- 
 lieve, officially, that under this treaty there was a 
 right of free immigration conferred ; doesn't recol- 
 lect much about it, now, but considers the immi- 
 gration correct and proper, and officially dismisses 
 the whole subject with an exhaustive laudation of 
 friendly relations, and international policy in gen- 
 eral, and the privilege of free and unrestricted 
 intercommunication in particular. 
 
 The failure to obtain relief through their appeals 
 to Congress, now impelled the people to meditate 
 redress by means more immediately under their 
 control. They resolved to appeal to arms as soon 
 as they should be finally and fully satisfied that 
 peaceful measures would ultimately prove futile: 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 35 
 
 The time was not 3'et at hand for active hostilities, 
 although it was amply ripe for preparation. 
 
 Military companies began to be formed, and the 
 white laborers of the Pacific States were quickly 
 transformed into a military people. The head- 
 quarters of this movement was in San Francisco, 
 whence, under the guidance of earnest men it 
 rapidly spread beyond the boundaries of the State 
 of California. This association of the people had 
 the direct tendency to unite the white laborers and 
 their sympathizers into a closer bond of fellowship. 
 
 A partisan spirit was soon born of this move- 
 ment; but the principles upon which it was based 
 being incompatible with the doctrines of existing 
 political parties — both of which were controlled by 
 the monopolies, and hence, pro-Coolie in their 
 tendency — it necessarily clamored for individual 
 political recognition. 
 
 Of this sentiment was born the Workingmen's 
 party, which signalized its advent into the sphere 
 of politics by electing its local ticket in many 
 of the counties of the State. The presiding genius 
 of this movement was a drayman of San Francisco, 
 but a man, withal, of undoubted natural ability and 
 firmness of character. He made no pretensions 
 to the refinements or the graces of character which 
 are supposed to belong to modern statesmen, and 
 which distinguish the man of culture or refine- 
 ment; but he was honest and not too ambitious. 
 He loved his fellow-men of the class to which he 
 
35 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 belonged, and he constituted himself their cham- 
 pion. In fact, he possessed many of the attributes 
 and qualifications of that other drayman of history, 
 who afterwards became Colonel Pride, the expur- 
 gator of the British House of Commons at the 
 time of the abduction of Charles I. 
 
 Kearney, for such was the name of the present 
 character, was not vindictive in his opposition to 
 the dominant class, but he was abusive. He 
 wielded an army of armed laborers with the same 
 ease that a father might sway the purposes and 
 inclinations cf his family. He was moderate in all 
 things except his language. He had no habits 
 that he indulged to excess, while he invariably 
 counseled moderation among his followers. But 
 in his public speeches he indulged the most violent 
 sentiments, and pictured to his auditors in homely, 
 but forcible and fluent terms, the story of their 
 common wrongs at the hands of the " hell-born 
 Chinese plague," assisted by the "hell-bound 
 bank-smashers, thieves and robbers of Nob Hill." 
 
 The progress of this anti-monopoly, anti-Chinese 
 movement, combined with threats, which now be- 
 came current, against the Chinese quarter of San 
 Francisco, at length began to work upon the fears 
 of capitalists. "The Chinese Must Go," had be- 
 come the watchword of the hour. The club- rooms 
 of the Workingmen were converted into the ar- 
 senals of an armed people; and it soon became 
 evident that the Workingmen's party lacked only 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 37 
 
 the disposition to solve, in its own way, the Chi- 
 nese question in CaHfornia, for the time being. 
 
 This disposition might be quickened into action 
 by an unforeseen occurrence, at any moment. The 
 tenure of all property, viewed in the light of this 
 uncertainty, rested upon a contingency subject to 
 no local control. The inevitable result was a sud- 
 den crash in values. Collaterals fell, in the course 
 of a few months, in about the same proportion that 
 the price of labor had already fallen. Banks closed 
 their doors, and brokers, merchants and manufac- 
 turers made assignments. Depositors of all classes 
 were hurled indiscriminately into a common vortex 
 of financial ruin. The oppression of labor had 
 borne its legitimate fruit. 
 
 The gold and silver of the State, however, had 
 not been removed, but was simply more concen- 
 trated. Without lessening the natural productions 
 of the country to any great extent, the people had 
 become impoverished. Capital accumulated in the 
 private money vaults of the millionaires; landed 
 estate had become a drugf in the market, and was 
 rapidly falling into the hands of the Chinese specu- 
 lators who, alone, of the moneyed classes, showed 
 a disposition to take advantage of me condition 
 of the market; while the ruined members of the 
 once thrifty middle class drifted aimlessly about, to 
 reach, at last, the condition of penury and want. 
 
 Demonstrations of hostility against the Chinese, 
 on a lareer and more determined scale than here- 
 
38 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 tofore, were every month becoming more fre- 
 quent. The people declared, by word and by 
 act, that they should have the protection of the 
 Government against the blighting influence of the 
 Chinese intercourse, or they would precipitate 
 revolution. 
 
 Capitalists, and the moneyed combinations gen- 
 erally, for the first time in the history of Cali- 
 fornia, found it imperative to affect a sympathetic 
 interest in the cause of the people. The political 
 machinery of the State was accordingly brought 
 to bear upon Congress, to produce some demon- 
 stration against the Chinese invasion, that might 
 lull the apprehensions of the masses. In the prose- 
 cution of this plan the influence of Oregon and 
 Nevada was enlisted to second the purpose to be 
 advanced by California. This triumvirate gath- 
 ered sufflcient influence at Washinofton to obtain 
 for its measure a species of recognition. The 
 result was the introduction of a bill, the terms of 
 which virtually nullified the treaty stipulations of 
 the Burlingame compact. 
 
 The temper of the President of the United 
 States toward this bill had been ascertained before 
 its passage was finally determined upon, and when 
 it was known that its objectionable features, 
 viewed in the light of international law, were duly 
 weighed by the President, and that the President's 
 veto might be considered assured, it was quickly 
 passed by both Houses. Upon its submission to 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 39 
 
 him, the President reviewed the bill at some 
 length, and returned it without his approval. 
 
 The action of Congress and of the President 
 had been watched with painful interest by the 
 inhabitants of the Pacific Coast during the pro- 
 gress of this subterfuge, and much acrimonious 
 criticism was directed against the action of the 
 latter by the press and the people of the Pacific 
 States and Territories, who did not stop to 
 inquire how far any other course would have been 
 justified under the Constitution and our treaty 
 obligations, both of which the President is officially 
 bound to maintain. 
 
 And now a few words upon this political comedy 
 will be a harmless digression, and not altogether 
 inappropriate in this connection. In the Congress 
 of the United States, the House was at this time 
 under the control of the Democracy, and the Senate 
 under the control of the Republicans. The Presi- 
 dential election of 1880 was already absorbing 
 much of the attention of Congress, to the neglect 
 —be it said with shame — of matters intimately 
 connected with the material interests of the peo- 
 ple. California and Oregon, both doubtful States, 
 must be courted by the politicians who occupied 
 the chairs dedicated to statesmen and to states- 
 manship at the Capitol. Here now was presented 
 a measure which was evidently popular with the 
 voting population of both States, but unpopular 
 with both parties, neither of which, at this period, 
 
40 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 could be said to represent the people as contra- 
 distinguished from the moneyed combinations 
 of the country. A little hypocritical conde- 
 scension on the part of the Democratic House 
 at this time mio-ht secure the electoral vote 
 of two doubtful States for the Democratic can- 
 didate for President in 1880. The bill was ac- 
 cordingly drawn up in a manner obnoxious to 
 well recognized princijDles of international law 
 and common justice, and so artfully withal as to 
 leave it very questionable, to the determination 
 of the uninitiated reader, whether the imputation 
 of intentional intrigue would lie. It passed, 
 with only sufficient opposition to give the whole 
 proceeding the semblance of a decently divided 
 public sentiment upon an important public 
 measure. 
 
 The Republican Senate was now thoroughly 
 alarmed. It was placed between two sets of 
 opinions of the bitterest political antagonism, both 
 of which it was called upon to conciliate. Puri- 
 tanical New England was loud in her denuncia- 
 tion of the measure. She wanted half the Chinese 
 Empire transferred to America, lo give occupa- 
 tion to her missionary heroes, and furnish cheap 
 labor for her factories ; added to which was that 
 humane fervor that was loud in proclaiming that 
 America, her laws and her policy, were forever 
 dedicated to the elevation of the benighted and 
 oppressed of all lands. New England was emi- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 4 1 
 
 nently Republican, so the opinions and the sym- 
 pathies of New England were entitled to respect. 
 But, on the other hand, the electoral votes of two 
 doubtful States, if jeopardized through deference 
 to the prejudices of New England, might, and 
 probably would, give the Presidency in 1880 to 
 the Democracy. New England was entitled to 
 respect, but the Presidency must not be given 
 away. The issue was framed, and there was no 
 time for temporizing. The bill must pass the 
 Senate. But, although a Republican Senate was 
 thus driven to the resort of self- stultification, a 
 Republican President was still empowered to save 
 the party from the wrath of New England. The 
 temper of the President as regards the bill was 
 duly ascertained, and the last obstacle was re- 
 moved. The bill was passed by the Senate, but 
 never became a law ; and the States of California 
 and Oreeon were relegated to the classification 
 of "doubtful States." 
 
 Contrary to that which might have been ex- 
 pected from a hasty view of this circumstance, the 
 hopes of the people thus suddenly and rudely 
 shattered, were not followed by any considerable 
 reaction. The apparent unanimity of sentiment in 
 Coneress, in its action on the bill, created an 
 impression in the minds of the people that the 
 country had come to appreciate the magnitude of 
 the evil that rested in the one fact of Chinese immi- 
 gration ; and that early and decisive measures 
 
42 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 would be taken to regulate this detail of our 
 foreign intercourse. 
 
 At this period it became conspicuously manifest 
 that the Constitution of the State of California was 
 insufficient in the extent and terms of its limita- 
 tions, to respond to the wants of the people. This 
 instrument had been adopted at a time when the 
 State was sparsely peopled, and before most of the 
 industries that have since grown up had had their 
 origin, even in experiment. 
 
 Combinations of capital controlled every avenue 
 of production, politics and trade ; and, as ever, 
 the pulpit, also, worshipped at the shrine of capi- 
 tal. Corporations, to secure their aims and pur- 
 poses, sought to corrupt the people at the ballot- 
 box ; and if they failed in this direction, they 
 sought the Legislatures. In their efforts against 
 the people they sometimes failed ; but against the 
 Legislature, never. 
 
 But the prestige of the new political movement, 
 about this time, infused a new sentiment into the 
 minds of the people. An Act was passed by the 
 Legislature, at its session of 1877-8, to which, 
 indeed, little or no opposition was made by any 
 element of society, and which obtained the ap- 
 proval of the Governor in March, 1878, providing 
 for a convention to frame a new Constitution. In 
 perfecting this reform the utmost expedition was 
 observed. The election for delegates was fixed 
 for the following June, to assemble in convention 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 43 
 
 in September, and frame a Constitution, to be sub- 
 mitted to the people the following May. 
 
 In the election of delegates to this convention, 
 the new party came first conspicuously before the 
 people, and it became evident to the older politi- 
 cal organizations that a young giant had stalked 
 into the arena of partisan strife. 
 
 Becoming aware that opportunity was now 
 offered to establish principles of government which 
 could not be altered or repealed by legislation in 
 the interest of any class ; and, also, as they be- 
 lieved, to regulate Chinese intercourse with the 
 citizen population so as to protect native labor and 
 home industries, the WorkinQfmen strueeled with 
 unremitting zeal and industry for the success of 
 their party, through which they had hoped to 
 effect those ends. The result that followed more 
 than justified their most sanguine expectations. 
 They had elected to the convention one-third of 
 the membership of that body. 
 
 Their representatives soon took prominence in 
 the matter of incorporating provisions into the 
 instrument under consideration : first, to curb the 
 powers of the corporations which had long since 
 ceased to regard the letter of their charters as the 
 limit of their commercial or business prerogative, 
 and, figuratively, laughed at the efforts of individ- 
 uals, or communities, to enforce the penalty of 
 forfeiture, upon admitted statutory grounds ; and, 
 
44 I'AST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 in the second place, to grapple with the Coolie 
 labor question. 
 
 These delegates were selected not only from the 
 Workingmen's party, but the most efficient among 
 them were chosen from among a large element 
 nominally within the Republican and Democratic 
 parties, but which had, for some time, been at 
 war with the popular corruption which was fostered 
 by what they were led to believe was the par- 
 tisan dishonesty and political intrigue of the re- 
 spective parties. 
 
 The popularity of the first of these measures 
 proposed in the convention, as evidenced by the 
 active support which it elicited, brought the emis- 
 saries of the moneyed interests, in force, to the 
 lobby of the convention. This furnished a new 
 sucrorestion to the dominant element of the con- 
 vention, which had resolved to sweep away every 
 trace of the corrupting influence of the past. Lob- 
 bying had, heretofore, been the great bane of State 
 legislation; and now it was proposed to make the 
 exercise of that pj'ofession (for such, indeed, it 
 had become to be recognized) a felony, by consti- 
 tutional provision. The novelty of the proposition, 
 coupled with its evident usefulness, struck a popu- 
 lar sentiment among the delegates, and it was 
 adopted. 
 
 The convention, having placed sufficient civil 
 restrictions upon the power of capital, now turned 
 its attention to the Coolie labor question. For 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 45 
 
 several weeks this continued to be a theme of 
 earnest discussion. The lobby was crowded with 
 the hired advocates of cheap labor; biit every 
 effort to bridle the spirit of reform was met with 
 defiance, and every argument employed by the 
 mercenary advocates fell paralyzed before the stub- 
 born logic of experience, detailed by the champions 
 of the people. Article XIX of the Constitution 
 was at length adopted, prescribing the duties and 
 fixing the obligations of citizens and individuals, 
 whether corporate or natural, in their intercourse 
 with the Chinese residents. Every possible hard- 
 ship which the people were compelled to suffer 
 through the instrumentality of the Chinese inva- 
 sion, found a remedy under the broad limitations 
 of this article — unless it should prove, under judi- 
 cial construction, at conflict with the Constitution 
 of the United States. 
 
 The Constitution was, at length, completed, and 
 adopted as a whole, in convention, on the 3d day 
 of March, 1879. Its ratification or rejection, by 
 the people, would be determined in May. 
 
 In the determination of this issue, the corpora- 
 tions considered themselves challenged to a con- 
 flict by the people and with th.e people, and 
 accepted the challenge. They began to concen- 
 trate their strength for a grand effort, which should 
 crush, at least for the present, this impudent inter- 
 ference with the privileges which they had hereto- 
 fore enjoyed. Large sums of money were sub- 
 
46 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 scribed and placed in the hands of the campaign 
 commission, with headquarters at San Francisco. 
 Banks issued circulars threatening with foreclosure 
 and ruin those who were so unfortunate as to be 
 at their mercy, should they support the New Con- 
 stitution. Railroad employes were given to under- 
 stand that their terms of employment were now 
 dependent upon their action regarding the ques- 
 tion before the people; while the numerous busi- 
 ness establishments that revolved within the orbits 
 of these were compelled to pattern after their stern 
 example — and all this in open defiance of penal 
 statutes. Added to this was a corps of corre- 
 spondents, with headquarters at San Francisco, 
 which was employed to flood the columns of the 
 country press with adverse criticisms of the New 
 Constitution, and to plausibly and industriously mis- 
 interpret its provisions. Newspapers were bought 
 and sold to obtain influential opposition or remove 
 influential advocacy. Public speakers, employed 
 by the same authority, were continually haranguing 
 the people from every rostrum in the State, and 
 predicting the most dreadful calamities that must 
 inevitably follow upon the adoption of the Consti- 
 tution. The California-street stock market, not 
 inappropriately termed, in Sand-lot oratory, the 
 *' Gambling Hell of North America," threw its 
 immense influence into the scale; while the Re- 
 publican and Democratic parties, flanked by the 
 pulpit of whatsoever shade, completed the array. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 47 
 
 A more unholy and incompatible alliance was 
 never before cemented, whether for the subversion 
 of a government or the robbery of a till. But 
 every effort failed. Threats of persecution and 
 promises of reward were alike powerless to fetter 
 those aspirations of individual independence which 
 are the inheritance of every free people. The 
 Constitution was ratified by a majority of ten thou- 
 sand votes. 
 
 The magnitude which the question of "Chinese 
 Coolieism" (as the Constitution quaintly puts k) 
 had now assumed, cannot be better illustrated than 
 by observing, through this struggle, the hold 
 which it had taken upon, and exercised through, 
 the moneyed interests of the State. Cheap labor 
 in mining, manufacturing, husbandry, railroad build- 
 ing, etc., had rendered possible the existence of 
 monopolies in all these departments ; and thus, 
 almost directly, built up all those collossal institu- 
 tions which had, for so long a period of time, ad- 
 ministered the affairs of the State government in 
 their private interests. 
 
 There was incorporated into the new Constitu- 
 tion nothing that aimed to curb the just and rea- 
 sonable prosperity of the corporations, dissociated 
 from a prejudicial alliance with a species of slave 
 labor. They were not divested of rights enjoyed 
 by similar corporations in other states ; but the 
 laxity or venality of previous legislation upon many 
 of the subjects discussed in the Constitution made 
 
48 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 it necessary, in the opinion of the convention, to 
 legislate as well as to limit. But it aimed to de- 
 stroy the institution of cheap labor by destroying 
 the institution of Coolieism ; and the powers which 
 had rooted their opulence in that soil and raised 
 their fabrics of oppressive wealth and political 
 domination above its reeking mass, were intem- 
 perate in their mad endeavor to prevent its puri- 
 fication. 
 
 They dared not resort to open violence to attain 
 their end, for the people were armed. They saw 
 the political power of the State passing out of their 
 hands, and learned, for the first time, that ofold 
 could not purchase the manhood of the citizen 
 who fancied that he discovered through the in- 
 trigues of the master the thrall and cofiie of the 
 slave. 
 
 The spirit that nerved the arm of his sire to 
 conquest, was now kindled into a holy fervor in 
 the son. He loved his country and he loved her 
 institutions ; and it was because he loved them so 
 well that he trusted so implicitly the integrity of 
 those whom the}- had raised to power. But these 
 latter were infidel to their mighty trust. They 
 had drifted a sovereio^n State to the vergfe of finan- 
 cial and political ruin, and hurried her people along 
 with it into the very shadows of anarchy and 
 revolution. 
 

 •r^■■tv-.4^■' 
 
 -^^ -;^' 
 
 
 ^■^-.. 
 
 THE GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Chinese Immigration and Immigrants The White Laborers be- 
 come Restive Intrigues of the Imperial Government 
 
 Status of the Immigrant Agency of the Chinese Companies 
 
 Seward falls into the Little Trap set by Wein-Siang 
 
 Inducements that Suggested Conquest Statesmanship De- 
 fined and Illustrated Authority of the Companies 
 
 Legal Technicalities The Dead Coolie Master and 
 
 Slave Mongolian Theology. 
 
 Embracing a period of ten years, up to 1882, 
 Coolie immigration to the United States continued 
 with unabated constancy and vigor. As shown 
 by the preceding chapter, every expedient that 
 seemed calculated to relieve the public distress, in 
 this direction, was fairly tested, and in each in- 
 stance the effort to achieve any mitigation, con- 
 spicuously failed. 
 
 On the one hand the Coolie-ridden communities 
 of the Pacific Coast, throughout the States of Cal- 
 ifornia and Oregon, were nursing their wrath, in 
 the anticipation that Congress, at its next session, 
 would adopt measures decisive of the controversy. 
 On the other hand, the people of California had 
 confidence that the principles adopted by their 
 new Constitution would successfully grapple with 
 and check, if they did not entirely overthrow, the 
 
50 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 project of further importation to our shores of the 
 subjects of the Chinese Empire. There was, 
 therefore, a brief lull in the adverse demonstra- 
 tions of the people. 
 
 Meanwhile, there was not less, perhaps, than 
 half a million of Chinese subjects upon the soil of 
 the United States ; and owing to the elaborate 
 scheme of immigration that had been established, 
 and the systematic perfection of its application, the 
 spirit of antagonism it encountered from the masses 
 in America, in no observable degree affected the 
 current of progress. 
 
 That this enterprise was in the hands of the Six 
 Chinese Companies, was a fact conceded by all ; 
 but beyond this the true character of the scheme 
 seems to have been but little understood. 
 
 It was generally accepted as a fact admitted, 
 that the Companies transacted no other business 
 than simply to defray the expense of the importa- 
 tion to the United States, of those of their coun- 
 trymen who were landed within our ports, pursu- 
 ant to an aofreement made between the emio^rant 
 and the Company at home, that the former should 
 reimburse the latter for the outlay occasioned, and 
 should pay, besides, a heavy rate of interest on 
 the money advanced by the Company. It was, 
 for a long time, believed, in the United States, 
 that the contract was mutual and voluntary on 
 both sides. 
 
 But statistics collected and laid before the Con- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 5 I 
 
 stitutional Convention in 1878-9 better informed 
 the people as to the nature of this immigration 
 contract. So satisfied was the Convention that 
 the so-called Free Immigration was false in its 
 representation and false in its practice, that that 
 body found it necessary, in order to place the 
 scheme in its true character before the people, to 
 declare, in the fundamental law of the State, that 
 *' Asiatic Coolieism is a form of human slavery." 
 
 Thus far, the interpretation was eminently cor- 
 rect, but it did not cover the whole oround. 
 
 Few, if any, had stopped to inquire how far the 
 governmental authority of China might be inter- 
 ested in this whole question ; as the conviction 
 had not yet obtained, that the whole plan of emi- 
 gration was, as intimated in the last chapter, a 
 scheme of invasion rooted in the purpose, and a 
 part of the programme of the sovereigns of China, 
 to extend her authority throughout "all lands 
 within and without the wide seas." 
 
 But this was a feature of the Coolie traffic, the 
 investigation of which did not interest the average 
 American. It was enouofh that the Coolies were 
 here in oppressive force, and continued to come. 
 It was immaterial to him whether the Six Com- 
 panies held their charters from the Ta-Tsin gov- 
 ernment or whether they operated without a 
 charter. 
 
 This very important inquiry was neglected — im- 
 portant, because, if it had been understood, at that 
 
52 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 day, that Coolieism was indeed a scheme having 
 the sanction of the Chinese government, more 
 vigorous measures would, in all probability, have 
 been adopted for its suppression. 
 
 But a declaration to that effect was not to have 
 been expected, officially, from the Chinese gov- 
 ernment, either now or in the future. If discov- 
 ered at all, it must be deduced from circumstances 
 occurring here and in China, corroborated by such 
 facts concerning the relation of those Companies 
 to the ofovernment as could be cfathered from con- 
 temporary writings and authentic reports. These 
 abundantly supply all the data necessary to a 
 proper understanding of this question. 
 
 It will be conceded that the government of 
 China is officially cognizant of the extent of the 
 emigration of its subjects to the United States ; 
 but that country has never felt herself called upon 
 to define the relation which her government bears 
 to the business of the Companies. The knowledge 
 and quiet acquiescence benig thus shown, as ad- 
 mitted, her sanction, and hence her encourage- 
 ment of the enterprise must, according to every 
 known principle of fair deduction, be implied. 
 Statistics submitted to the Convention and other 
 reports gathered from the writings of American 
 and European residents and travelers in China, 
 abundantly fix the dependent status of the immi- 
 grant, on boTh sides of the Pacific. 
 
 From these sources it seems clearly established 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 53 
 
 that the Chinese officials are empowered to con- 
 tract, and do contract, with the Companies, for the 
 transportation to America, of tiie offenders against 
 the laws who have been condemned to imprison- 
 ment. 
 
 If an official of any government with which we 
 are acquainted should exercise so great a power 
 as this we would not hesitate to conclude that he 
 had acted immediately under the sovereign will ; 
 and when we apply this rule to China, which is the 
 most despotic of despotisms, the force of the prin- 
 ciple is intensified. 
 
 But this argument, the plausibility of which 
 must be admitted, is not the only one that is at 
 hand to maintain the position taken in these 
 pages, to wit: the agency of the Six Companies. 
 Let it be examined from the position occupied by 
 the Companies, and the same view must be main- 
 tained. These advance money to defray the 
 expenses of criminals, and others, to the United 
 States. This is done by direct negotiation with 
 the State, through its officers, so far as it applies 
 to the criminals. For reimbursement, the Compa- 
 nies will have to depend upon the good faith of 
 the emigrant. They know well, however, that 
 if the latter should choose to throw himself upon 
 the protection of our laws, the contract cannot be 
 enforced. 
 
 But suppose the home government should with- 
 draw from the emigrant the protection of her laws, 
 
54 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 and should give to the Companies the right to 
 legislate for him in America; or, in other words, 
 should choose to establish a trans- Pacific govern- 
 ment for the emigrant, the difficulty will be over- 
 come, and the government will not be compro- 
 mised. 
 
 This would be nothingr more than enlig-htened 
 England did, in colonial days, upon the shores of 
 the Atlantic; and this is exactly what China has 
 done. That nation has sent neither diplomatic 
 nor consular agents to look after the interests of 
 her subjects, in America, But all such power, and 
 immeasurably more, she has vested in her Six 
 Companies. 
 
 When the late Secretary Seward was at Peking, 
 he suggested this oversight, as he supposed the 
 absence of Chinese consular agents, in America, to 
 be, to Wein-Siang, the great statesman of the em- 
 pire, but that wily barbarian very adroitly changed 
 the subject; and, further, to completely disarm any 
 suspicion of a deeper plot, that might suggest itself 
 to our great Secretary, wrought himselt into an 
 alarming fit of melancholy over the deplorable 
 future of the Chinese Empire, which he feared was. 
 tottering to ruin. The acting was so perfect that 
 even Mr. Seward was wholly deceived, and made 
 no effort to disguise his sympathy for the fears 
 of the great Chinese statesman. He records the 
 circumstance, in perfect good faith, and as an illus- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 55 
 
 tration of the patriotic devotion of this Mandarin, 
 in his "Travels Around the World." 
 
 Upon the conclusion of the contract between 
 the government and the Company, the subject is 
 handed over to his new masters, and even his 
 very life is placed at their disposal. We have had 
 abundant instances here, of the power which the 
 agencies of these Companies, at San Francisco, 
 exercise over the lives, liberty and property of the 
 Coolie, all over the State; and this authority is 
 but the exercise of a guaranteed right, from the 
 Chinese Government to the Company, that the 
 contract, of which the Coolie is the subject as well 
 as an element of the consideration, may be en- 
 forced as the Company may elect. 
 
 But the Companies, in return for the high privi- 
 leges accorded to them in this particular, pledge 
 themselves, under penalty of the forfeiture of every 
 privilege that they enjoy as such corporations, 
 that the allegiance of the Chinese citizen shall not 
 be transferred. How they have maintained this 
 pledge, and enforced the performance, by the 
 Coolie, of the most oppressive contracts, the star- 
 chamber proceedings of the Chinese quarter of San 
 Francisco, and the story of the hired executioner, 
 could they but be compelled to speak, would abun- 
 dantly testify. 
 
 I have devoted these few pages to the object 
 of makin'^'- manifest, from a reasonable construction 
 of the actions of men, that the Coolie invasion was 
 
56 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 not an afterthouglit, nor a mere abnormal feature 
 of this immigration to our shores, but that it was, 
 indeed, a deep conspiracy, originating in the subtle 
 mind of Wein-Siang, and seconded by Prince Kung, 
 to give practical direction, in the Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, to a theory of national dominion, which was 
 a dogma of the political creed of China while yet 
 the discovery of the Western World was an event 
 far away in the shadowy future 
 
 That the genial climate of the Pacific States, 
 the fabulous treasures of their mountains, and the 
 perpetual summer of the great valleys of Califor- 
 nia, were the primary inducements which led to the 
 project of conquest ; that the scheme was con- 
 ceived long before the Burlingame treaty was pro- 
 posed ; and that this treaty was ihe first step 
 practically taken to carry out the stupendous 
 design, must necessarily be admitted by all, who, 
 laying aside the official declarations of statesmen, 
 intended for foreign interpretation, which are 
 always more or less tainted with falsehood, or 
 hypocrisy, and in a great many instances are lit le 
 else, will take into consideration only the actions 
 of those engaged, and measure their aims and 
 purposes by the standard of their conduct, their 
 recognized and reasonable sympathies and the 
 prospective advantage to accrue. 
 
 This is the only infallible standard by which to 
 interpret the purposes of statesmen — and, it might 
 be added, all other men. It is because he rnani- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 5/ 
 
 fested so much shrewdness and statecraft, and 
 proved himself so successful as a diplomatist, just 
 prior to the late Russo-Turkish war, that the great 
 Russian statesman, Gen. Ignatieff, has been com- 
 plimented as the "greatest liar in Europe." Again: 
 Beaconsfield is a most profound hypocrite ; and the 
 natural despondency of his inexpressive face, alone 
 saved him from self-betra)al, when, with a timerity 
 born of despair, he declared, in the Berlin Con- 
 gress, that he did not "come here to yield." This 
 was an utterance of the hypocrisy of statesman- 
 ship ; the fear that he would be compelled to yield 
 every demand, alone suggested the startling 
 speech. And he was not less a hypocrite when 
 he remotely intimated, in the same grave assem- 
 blage, that half a million, more or less, of armed 
 Sepoys would be among the possibilities of an 
 Anglo- Russian war — which diplomatic thrust 
 brought Count Schouvaloff to his knees. 
 
 Ignatieff is a most pro!"ouncl statesman, or, in 
 other words, a most methodical prevaricator of 
 plain truths. Beaconsfield's hypocrisy restored to 
 England, in the brief period of a few months, the 
 prestige which had oozed out of her institutions 
 durinof half a centurv of reverses. In like manner 
 Wein-Siang saw nothing in Mr. Burlingame except 
 a most fitting instrument through which to lay the 
 foundation of his contemplated conquest. Xor 
 did he, in truth, entertain a single apprehension 
 that his country, which had become venerable by 
 
58 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 its antiquity, was about to disintegrate when, in 
 conversation with Mr. Seward at Peking, he 
 seemed possessed of this tragic fear. But he did 
 wish to leave upon the mind of the first statesman 
 of America the impression that the Chinese was 
 a tottering government, so that no apprehension 
 might be entertained, nor even conceived, that his 
 own country meditated this astonishing enterprise; 
 and in this he, Hke Beaconsfiekl, succeeded. 
 
 In looking into the attitude of the Chinese gov- 
 ernment, in this matter, and reading fairly and 
 fully her intentions, in the light of her conduct, 
 the impression of her national perfidy becomes 
 irresistible. Every detail of the great conspiracy 
 is protected with the most consummate skill. 
 
 That she mig-ht not lose the control of her sub- 
 jects beyond her dominions, if any should feel 
 disposed to embrace the principles among which 
 they were about to be transported, their life and 
 death were placed at the disposal of the Com- 
 panies which, as I have shown, slie constituted 
 her agents and representatives. These had their 
 tribunals for the enforcement of their authority ; 
 and all infractions were visited with capital punish- 
 ment. 
 
 The immigrant was forbidden to become a citi- 
 zen, or to agitate the matter, independently ; and 
 the few attempts at naturalization, which were 
 made by them from time to time, were put lor- 
 ward by the Companies, only to test the temper 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUDLIC. 59 
 
 of our laws upon this subject, and all else to which 
 it might directly appertain. 
 
 It occasionally happened that an independent 
 spirit among the immigrants, thirsting for that 
 liberty of thought and action which characterized 
 the residence of all other nationalities in America, 
 broke through the restraints of the sub-o-overn- 
 ment, started forth upon an independent career 
 and set its authority at defiance. Many instances 
 were known in California in which the spirit of 
 independence led to individual insubordination of 
 this character; but a single instance is not re- 
 corded in which the rebel did not pay the penalty 
 with his life. The judicial tribunals of the Com- 
 panies, sitting in San Francisco, took testimony 
 upon every such case ; ond when it was satisfac- 
 torily established that the reported defection was 
 indeed true, a price was put upon the head of the 
 accused. An executioner was then employed, 
 who received, besides the money appropriated for 
 that purpose, the assurance that the whole power 
 of the particular Company interested, would be 
 employed to protect him from the penalty of the 
 State laws in case he should be brought to answer 
 for murder before the established criminal tribu- 
 nals ; that in case of his conviction and execution, 
 his relatives were to receiv^e a certain fixed sum ; 
 and in case of his incarceration, the money should 
 be retained for his use and paid over to him upon 
 his restoration to liberty. In conducting the exe- 
 
60 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 •cution, he was to use his own discretion, select 
 his own weapons, and appoint his own time and 
 place. In fact, his commission was nothing more 
 nor less than a command to go forth and murder. 
 
 The Companies had not failed to observe the 
 leniency of our criminal practice ; and so confi- 
 dent had they become of their power to influence 
 the current of justice, that an executioner was 
 always readily obtainable. 
 
 The heads of the agency were generally old- 
 time residents of California, who understood our 
 language, and were versed not only in our cus- 
 toms and habits, but were more or less conver- 
 sant with the spirit and letter of our laws and insti- 
 tutions generally. They had come to understand 
 that law, and not the sword, was the instrument 
 of civilization relied upon by the races of Europe 
 and America. But they understood, likewise, that 
 Gold, and neither Joss nor Jesus, was the deity at 
 whose shrine the restless people of California were 
 wont to bow. They adroitly combined these sug- 
 gested characteristics, and evolved the inference 
 that gold was above the administration of penal 
 statutes. They accordingly employed the ablest 
 counsel and paid the heaviest attorney fees, as a 
 class, of any people in the State ; and hence, they 
 were, as litigants, the most successful. 
 
 It rarely happened that the executioners were 
 convicted ; and in no instance did any one of them 
 ever suffer the last penalty of the law for his 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 6l 
 
 otfence. If a conviction was had, it meant a sen- 
 tence for life or for years ; and if for life, it was 
 equivalent to about five years, but if for years^ 
 perhaps half that number ; for, at the most unex- 
 pected time, and under the most unexpected cir- 
 cumstances, the Gubernatorial pardon was liable 
 to issue, and some obscure Chinaman, convicted 
 of murder, perhaps, would step forth free, while 
 less criminal Caucasians were retained to appease 
 the offended majesty of the statute against sheep 
 stealing, or some public offence equally heinous. 
 
 It was in this way that a government within a 
 government was established ; or, in other words, 
 that the jurisprudence of China became the law' of 
 her people in California. 
 
 The relation which the immicrrant bore to the 
 Company, its agents and sub-agents, was simply 
 the relation of the slave to his master. On the 
 one hand, the most absolute control ; on the other, 
 the most abject submission and servility. 
 
 Every town had its duly-appointed agent, whose 
 business it was to keep himself informed as to the 
 demand for Chinese laborers, in whatsoever de- 
 partment ; to contract for labor when opportunity 
 offered, and to supply whatever labor might be 
 required by demand upon the rendezvous, at San 
 Francisco. Upon receipt of such requisition the 
 necessary detachment would be forwarded to the 
 particular agent, with orders to report. The 
 Coolies exercised no freedom — no individual 
 
62 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 volition — but, upon their arrival at the place of 
 destination, were lodgred and maintained until 
 forwarded to the field of labor. 
 
 Their discipline, under these circumstances, was 
 perfect. No military restraint, however severe, 
 could establish in the best organized army a 
 greater respect for superiors, or a more implicit 
 obedience of orders. Indeed, the provocation to 
 mutiny was often such as no army of any gov- 
 ernment with which we are acquainted would 
 have suffered without protest, if it did not openly 
 rebel. 
 
 While unemployed, the Coolies were always 
 maintained by the Companies, but in a manner 
 that consulted the largest economy. Their quar- 
 ters were the cheapest that could be procured ; 
 space, alone, as distinguished from convenience, 
 or accommodation, being the sole requisite. In 
 every instance the matter of space, in this applica- 
 tion, was economized with the utmost disregard 
 either for the health or the comfort of the 
 unfortunate immigrants. They were huddled 
 together, to sleep upon earthen floors, scantily 
 clothed, and without bedding, and often as many 
 as ten or a dozen individuals to a room, or dungeon, 
 ten feet square and half as many in height. Their 
 food consisted of boiled rice, with tea at intervals. 
 
 The inconsistency of human nature is well ex- 
 emplified in the change which is suddenly wrought 
 in the status of this most abject and persecuted 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 6 
 
 
 
 slave, when for him it comes too late to alleviate 
 the burden of existence, or gladden the face that 
 had never known a smile. No sooner has the 
 Angel of Death dragged perhaps an untarnished 
 soul from its miserable habitation than the de- 
 spised and neglected vassal of an hour ago be- 
 comes an object of reverence and care. His 
 body is accorded a respectable interment, a modest 
 funeral, and a most elaborate burial ceremony ; 
 and after the alien soil in which he is placed to 
 rest, has assimilated the elements of his flesh, his 
 bones are disinterred and transported beyond the 
 Pacific to repose beneath the proverbial flowers 
 of his native land. 
 
 But, widely different from that of the slave is 
 the picture of the life of the master. Unlike the 
 mao-nates of our race, however, those of the Mon- 
 golian race are not above occupation. The lords 
 of the sub-government are among the great 
 Chinese merchants, importers and manufacturers 
 of San Francisco. Their capacity for business, 
 like their authority, seems illimitable. Little is 
 known of their domestic life, however — as their 
 homes, as a rule, are sacred from intrusion — 
 beyond the fact that it is luxurious, but without 
 any pretence to show. 
 
 They have invariably vanquished opposition 
 in every department of trade or manufacture in 
 which they have succeeded in educating their 
 people ; and no sooner has this success been 
 
64 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 achieved in one department than their energies 
 are directed to new fields. 
 
 Thus, the whole manufacturing interests of the 
 State were rapidly passing into their hands; and 
 it became only a question of time until the ab- 
 sorption of all the other branches of industry 
 would, in like manner, be effected. 
 
 The theoloofical views of the Coolie, are about 
 as incomprehensible as his social and political pe- 
 culiarities. That he is devout, there can hardly 
 be a question ; but his devotion seems to be the 
 embodiment of inconsistency. His theoretical 
 standard of religion and morals will do ; but their 
 practical exercise and application are quite intoler- 
 able. Their religion, they say, is a pure Deism ; 
 and so it is, perhaps. But how this is exercised 
 by the persistent worship of nondescript figures of 
 impossible beings, or by the noisy annual festival 
 which is said to have been originally instituted, 
 and is still observed, for the purpose of conciliat- 
 ing familiar devils, is somewhat difficult to explain. 
 
 In politics and morals, the wise sayings and 
 lofty precepts of Confucius are the example to be 
 imitated. But here, again, the perverse antagon- 
 ism of the practice which adopts demonology as 
 the rule by which to worship God, is manifested. 
 The justice, the clemency, the virtue, which Con- 
 fucius taught by principle and exemplified by his 
 intercourse with his fellow men, are topics upon 
 which the educated Mongolian loves to dwell. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 65 
 
 And yet that one of them who is armed with 
 authority is the very incarnation of injustice, 
 oppression and sexual vice. In fact, in these 
 particulars he is unconscionable. But his wicked- 
 ness is not appreciated, because it is not resisted ; 
 and it requires opposition to make public, and 
 hence notorious, the exercise of any, even the 
 blackest, private vice. 
 
 In this brief examination of the Chinese institu- 
 tions in America, it has been sought to avoid too 
 much detail ; as a very general review of the sub- 
 ject of Chinese immigration to the Pacific States, 
 and only sufficient detail to throw light upon the 
 manner in which it was conducted, and not a 
 history of Chinese institutions in America, is the 
 purpose of this chapter. 
 
 Enough has been said to show that under this 
 oppressive system of protection the hordes of 
 Asia established themselves upon the Continent 
 of America, and that their establishment here was 
 m pursuance of a scheme, having the sanction and 
 the active support of the Chinese government, 
 for the conquest of the whole Western Hemi- 
 sphere of the globe. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Partisan Strife and Sectional Antagonism The Growth and 
 
 Decay of Governments Republics and Monarchies Con- 
 trasted What Washington Knew About Parties Recon- 
 struction Decay of Independent Thought Public Ex- 
 travagance Chartered Rights Construed Fragment- 
 ary Demoralization The Judicial System Respectable 
 
 Felony Political Economy. 
 
 Having, in the preceding chapters, followed the 
 general course of the Coolie immigration, from its 
 origin down to the present date, with the view of 
 presenting a comprehensive picture of the entire 
 plan, it will now become necessary to an intelli- 
 gent appreciation of the remaining chapters of this 
 work, that a brief review be had of the tendency 
 of the political parties in the United States. The 
 attitude of these will be shown to have operated 
 to draw aside the attention of the government 
 from matters of great moment, including the sub- 
 ject immediately in hand, and their energies to 
 have been wasted in the oro-anization of measures 
 and the perfection of schemes alien, alike, to the 
 policy of good government and the welfare, wants 
 and requirements of the p:^ople. 
 
 In the liofht of historical observation and the 
 logic of experience, it must be conceded that gov- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 6/ 
 
 ernments, like all else that has been brought within, 
 and subjected to, the scope of the human under- 
 standing, have their periods of beginning and pro- 
 gress, of maturity and decay. The history of Re- 
 publics shows that these periods are shorter in their 
 case than are those assigned to r^Ionarchies; and, 
 it has happened, that the more absolute the Mon- 
 archy, the more protracted is the term of its 
 national life. 
 
 This is not only a logical sequence, but it is, 
 likewise, a fact taught us by experience. It is 
 logical, for the reason that perpetual sameness is 
 the characteristic of death in nature; while in art it 
 is the most insipid and unpopular of all appearances. 
 
 iNIonarchies change their laws, customs, and often 
 their literature at every succession, without affect- 
 ing the general form of their government. This 
 fact is well attested in the history of Monarchical 
 France, from the reign of Henry IV, down to the 
 Revolution, and perhaps equally so in that of Eng- 
 land, while yet two rival houses were contending 
 for her throne. Monarchies they were, and con- 
 tinued to be; but every successive reign brought 
 forward changes in the laws and manners of the 
 country that remodeled nearly every institution 
 that marked their subordinate political complex- 
 ions. These entire periods, although influenced 
 and colored, at intervals, by the views of each 
 sovereign, respectively, were always wrought out. 
 
68 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 hastened or delayed by the temper of the people, 
 their enlightenment and their patriotism. 
 
 Where hardships and oppressions may have 
 grown lip under a particular reign, the masses 
 look forward with confidence to the accession of a 
 new potentate, through whom relief is confidently 
 expected. Buckle tells us that the French people 
 were " wild with joy at the death of Louis XIV," 
 which was simply the expression of a hope of 
 better thinofs under the succeeding- reio^n. 
 
 The sentiment upon which this hope is based, 
 is by no means hampered in its resources. If it 
 cannot look forward to an inevitable change, 
 through which the removal of the burden may, 
 reasonably, be expected, it will manifest itself by 
 an exercise of energy in some other direction. 
 This is, usually, the energy of armed rebellion. 
 
 But, in a Republic, the people being the depos- 
 itory of all political power, if abuses fasten them- 
 selves upon her institutions, they are properly un- 
 derstood to be the deliberate creation of one or 
 the other of the political parties into which the 
 people of a Republic are always divided. And 
 Avhen that party which happens to control the ad- 
 ministration seeks to perpetuate those abuses and 
 its own ascendancy at the same time, and to do so 
 employs the whole of the vast patronage of official 
 position, a deep and dangerous disaffection is inev- 
 itably planted in the minds of the people. 
 
 Unlike the case of the succession of a Prince, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 69 
 
 which is as inevitable as the death of his prede- 
 cessor, there is no certainty that the party in power 
 will allow the reins of government to pass out of 
 its hands. This uncertainty, combined with the 
 intolerance of party dictation, becomes, first, galling 
 and then, insupportable; and, in the absence of a 
 hope upon which to base a definite purpose of re- 
 form, revolution sets in to overshadow the glory 
 of Republican freedom. 
 
 The great "Father of his Country" was wiser 
 than he knew when he penned the following, which 
 is found in his "Farewell Address," at the close of 
 his second Presidential term. He says: 
 
 " I have already intimated to you the danger of 
 parties in the State, with particular reference to the 
 founding of them on geographical discriminations. 
 Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and 
 warn you in the most solemn manner, against the 
 baneful effects of the spirit of party, generall}-. 
 The spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our 
 nature, having its roots in the strongest passions 
 of the human mind. It exists under different 
 shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, 
 controlled or repressed, but in those of the popu- 
 lar form it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is 
 truly their worst enemy. The alternate domina- 
 tion of one faction over another, sharpened by the 
 spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, is 
 itself a frightful despotism. But this leads, at 
 
yO LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 length, to a more formal and permanent despotism 
 * :■.: :;: ^q(;J^ sooncr or later, the chief of some 
 prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate 
 than his competitor, turns this despotism to the 
 purpose of his own elevation, on the ruins of 
 public liberty." 
 
 If the aggregate of the history of the United 
 States, during the entire period that has elapsed 
 since the death of Washington, would show any one 
 national tendency with special distinctness, that 
 tendency would be the disposition to contravene 
 this wise injunction with the most scrupulous par- 
 ticularity ; and this, notwithstanding the historical 
 affirmation that it is only by the exercise of the 
 most absorbing and jealous patriotism that a Re- 
 public can ever hope to be perpetuated beyond the 
 legitimate period of experiment. 
 
 At the close of the first century of Republi- 
 can independence, the United States had passed 
 through her periods of beginning, progress and 
 maturity ; and the beginning of the second cen- 
 tury saw them placed upon the incline of decay. 
 Partisan bigotry and lust of power had so thor- 
 oughly obscured those lofty principles of justice 
 and moderation, which are the very life and es- 
 sence of Republican institutions, that the States 
 which had been crushed by the overthrow of the 
 Rebellion, sixteen years before, were still impov- 
 erished and undergoing the galling process of 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 7 1 
 
 reconstruction by the coersive power of the Fed- 
 eral Army. 
 
 The pretence by which this monstrous abuse of 
 power was sought to be justified, was as base as 
 the scheme itself. The conquered States were 
 overrun by Revenue officers, marshals, etc., and, 
 during the period of their disfranchisement, by 
 Territorial civil officers, as Governors, Judges, etc., 
 far beyond the necessities of the Government, and 
 who were often so indiscreet as to provoke un- 
 necessary broils by the insolent exercise of doubt- 
 ful authority. These men were invariably selected 
 from the most ultra wing of the dominant party. 
 Their integrity to party, and infidelity to all else, 
 without regard to their qualifications, in other par- 
 ticulars, was generally the standard of their fitness 
 to govern an unreconstructed State, or to inter- 
 pret the laws to her people. In short, their ad- 
 ministration, with few exceptions, was as infamous 
 in practice, as their political creation was in theory. 
 
 The principal public journals of the country were 
 subsidized, and hence controlled, by this nonde- 
 script political despotism. It likewise controlled 
 the various lines of telegraph throughout the 
 Union ; and, in fact, every private enterprise which 
 could be said to incorporate a public use, was, lor 
 the time, obedient to the beck of the dominant 
 political party. 
 
 It followed, of necessity, that the party in power 
 had supervisory control of all the avenues of pub- 
 
72 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 lie and quasi-public communication. Its political 
 agents, the officials appointed to the conquered 
 States, manufactured ad libitum the most incredi- 
 bly atrocious social and political character for the 
 people who had been wicked enough to rebel 
 against the Government while it was compara- 
 tively virtuous, and unfortunate enough to survive 
 the frustration of their criminal design. 
 
 The reports so manufactured, passing only 
 through avenues which were more disposed to 
 aggravate than to modify, were scattered broad- 
 cast over the Union, and were the means by which 
 the armed reconstruction of the Southern people 
 was sought to be justified. 
 
 To strengthen the power of the ruling party, by 
 extending the patronage of the Government, new 
 offices were created, old ones were multiplied. 
 
 Millions of acres of the public domain were do- 
 nated to railroad corporations, ostensibly to en- 
 courage public improvements. Unquestionably, 
 those grants had this direct tendency, but the 
 advantage thus gained was more than counter- 
 balanced by the check occasioned to settlement 
 and colonization. 
 
 From this cause, throughout the Western States 
 and Territories, and from the existence, in Califor- 
 nia, Arizona and New Mexico, of those immense 
 landed estates which were originally granted by 
 the King of Spain, or by the Mexican government, 
 to individuals, and which had continued in the pat- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 73 
 
 entees or their successors, under the treaty, there 
 arose a system of land monopoly, chiefly in Cali- 
 fornia, which virtually repealed the beneficent laws 
 heretofore passed, for regulating settlement upon 
 the public domain and granting extraordinary priv- 
 ileges to actual settlers. 
 
 The ownership by individuals and corporations, 
 of those princely estates, gave rise to new politi- 
 cal disturbances. The prerogative of taxation 
 raises a question that can never fail to elicit the 
 interest of the citizen of every shade of opinion. 
 Should there happen, from any cause, to be a class 
 disproportion in the contribution to the expenses 
 of the government, it cannot be concealed ; and 
 argument, to justify any such discrimination, will 
 be worse than ineffectual. Controversy upon the 
 unequal valuation of lands began to excite the 
 popular discontent. The holders of vast areas of 
 unproductive land could not afford to pay the tax 
 rate levied in proportion to the scale by which 
 improved lands were assessed. Nor would the 
 inducement to lucrative speculation admit of any 
 disposition of land so held, as long as the condi- 
 tion of the market indicated an upward tendency. 
 
 It, therefore, became necessary to the land 
 monopolist that the Assessors and the Boards of 
 Equalization be, at once, placed under his control. 
 The engines of partisan intrigue were, accordingly, 
 set in motion, and soon o^round out the necessarv 
 decree. 
 
74 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 In California, landed estates embracing many 
 square miles of territory, were usually assessed at 
 a rate of from one-fifth to one-tenth of the esti- 
 mated value of contio;uous lands of the same 
 quality and class, but which had been cultivated or 
 improved; and yet these broad acres were held at a 
 market, or speculative, value, ranging from twenty 
 to thirty-fold that at which they were assessed. 
 As this discrimination was, virtually, a tax upon 
 industry, it was well calculated to array the pro- 
 ducing class, not only against the immediate acts 
 complained of, but, likewise, against the political 
 system and the political institutions which could 
 dare to tolerate and exercise an injustice so oppres- 
 sive, without even the semblance of disguise. 
 
 In the matter of transportation, every class of 
 carrier, whether by land or sea, learned to regard 
 the charter, under the authority of which it was 
 presumed to act, simply as a license to carry freight 
 or passengers. In all else, the conduct of each 
 corporation was regulated with a view to the 
 largest profits obtainable, and often in utter disre- 
 gard of all chartered rights, privileges, restrictions 
 or limitations. Combinations between carriers 
 were frequently formed ; and the pooling of rates 
 and the discriminations against persons, or locali- 
 ties, were a source of constant discord and public 
 controversy. 
 
 In vain was every effort of the people to reform 
 those abuses, whether by State or Federal legis- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 75 
 
 lation. Party platforms, whether National or State,. 
 were always profuse with the most solemn decla- 
 rations of reform and retrenchment. That each 
 party aimed to '"restore popular government, in 
 fact as well as in theory," had grown into a figure 
 of speech ; and although the representatives of the 
 people went forth to the halls of legislation, thus 
 sacredly pledged to alleviate the burdens of the 
 people, they were unable to withstand the induce- 
 ments, held out, to betray ; and so failed to redeem 
 a single plighted obligation. The creature had 
 become the master of its creator ; for combinations 
 of capital ruled the State and Federal govern- 
 ments ; and these latter, by holding the assurance 
 of their party ascendancy from the former, were 
 willing to be the servants, and to allow the corpo- 
 rations to indirectly legislate for themselves. This 
 species of reflex action they had the effrontery to 
 denominate "Government by the People." 
 
 The struQfSfle between contendinof factions at 
 length ran so high that the President elected by 
 one political party was refused his seat, as such 
 Chief Magistrate, by the rival party. Strange as 
 it may seem to the reader who is unacquainted 
 with the national characteristics of the American 
 people, this last act of partisan cupidity failed to 
 kindle the tire of civil war ; nor was there left, 
 within the ranks of the offending party, sufficient 
 political disinterestedness to acknowledge a wrong. 
 
76 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 in this direction, or to brand the proceeding with 
 the mark of party condemnation. 
 
 In all the other departments of the government, 
 the work of demoralization progressed apace. A 
 protective system was established and maintained 
 which did open violence to the plainest and most 
 universally admitted principles of political econ- 
 omy. Foreign manufactures, except articles which, 
 in the nature of things, could not be produced in 
 America, were virtually excluded. Nor was home 
 production proportionately encouraged ; for the 
 imposts laid upon manufactures was a burden far 
 more oppressive than foreign competition under a 
 liberal protective system. The result was an indi- 
 rect but galling system of taxation, by which the 
 rate levied was paid the moment any article 
 of production or manufacture became the property 
 of the consumer. 
 
 It was a most consummate scheme, but poorly 
 disguised, to crush down the whole dependent 
 clement of society, and to elevate all those who 
 might be so fortunate as to exercise an independ- 
 ent calling. 
 
 Meanwhile, a debt of more than two billions 
 of dollars hung like a nightmare above the couch 
 upon which were wont to repose the hopes and 
 aspirations of the people ; but repose, for national 
 industry, were an impossibility under the eye of 
 this mocking spectre. 
 
 This great national debt, secured by bonds pay- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. "JJ 
 
 able, principal and interest, in gold, was admirably 
 calculated to drain the resources of the country. 
 
 Auxiliary institutions to aid in the work of gov- 
 ernment, was the hobby of the statesmen of that 
 period. It mattered but little whether the direct ten- 
 dency of the new institution was to encourage or 
 to oppress the people so long as it was, strictly, a 
 party measure, and promised to contribute toward 
 the perpetuation of party ascendency. It was 
 enough that there was a sphere of action to which 
 an institution might be adapted. The National 
 Bank scheme was evolved from some such senti- 
 ment as this. 
 
 This was an institution incorporated under a 
 Federal statute ; and, viewed in its broadest sense, 
 it was subject to every objection that goes to the 
 theory of perpetual motion. Its energy was the 
 energy of the government; its capital the capital 
 of the government ; its credit the credit of the 
 government ; while, of itself, it lacked even the 
 power of motion, — and yet it was deemed useful. 
 Its capital invested in government bonds, it was 
 relieved from the burden of taxation, other than a 
 mere nominal rate by way of duty. It was author- 
 ized, however, to do a general banking business, 
 to discount loans, collect rates of interest, etc., 
 according to the rates established by the laws of 
 the State in which such bank was situated. 
 
 This institution was constituted the avenue 
 through which the Treasury of the United States 
 
78 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 communicated with the commerce of the country. 
 It was endowed with extraordinary privileges and 
 armed with extraorchnary power over the flow of 
 the currency of the country, and maintained in 
 luxury by the moneys wrung from the necessities 
 of the commercial population. 
 
 Another abuse peculiar to this age was the 
 matter of official salaries. These were upon the 
 most extreme scale, when considered in connec- 
 tion with the standard of wages paid by private 
 employers. This was specially noticeable in the 
 Western States and Territories. A sinofle term in 
 a very ordinary elective office, in most of the 
 Pacific States, was equivalent to a modest fortune 
 bestowed upon the incumbent. 
 
 Next, litigation became a luxury in which only 
 the wealthy could indulge. The fees payable in 
 the most ordinary action or proceeding, in the 
 courts, became so oppressive that only men in 
 easy circumstances could afford to have their 
 rights vindicated by proceedings in the tribunals 
 of justice. This placed in the hands of the more 
 powerful a means of oppression which the indigent 
 were made to feel, but against which there was, 
 for them, no remedy possible. The commonest 
 controversy could be determined only by courts 
 of competent jurisdiction, but these were barred 
 against the very class which, more than all others, 
 needed their sustaining aid. 
 
 Abuses of trust, in official position, had become 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 79 
 
 SO common, that it seldom happened that a public 
 officer retiring from position left behind him a 
 stainless record. 
 
 The opposition press, of the times, was always 
 energetic in exposing partisan and political intidel- 
 ity, and the charge of dishonest practices became 
 so familiar to the reader of the daily publications, 
 of the time, that the people no longer seemed 
 to expect integrity in their public officers, but 
 sought to give position to those who would prove 
 least extravagant in the exercise of the dominant 
 passion. Every succession in office exposed a 
 new series of defalcations, which were followed 
 by the usual arrests, examinations, commitments, 
 indictments, demurrers, continuances and final dis- 
 missals. The great engines of the law were never 
 allowed to remain idle while an embezzler was at 
 large. It was absolutely necessary that he make 
 his bow to the defrauded public through a commit- 
 ting magistrate and a grand jury. This generally 
 sufficed, however ; for the hand of justice was 
 always readily checked before the trial of the 
 criminal could be had. 
 
 It seemed, in truth, that general political demor- 
 alization had fastened itself upon the ruling spirit 
 of the people. They were divided into two great 
 parties, differing, originally, upon great principles 
 of constitutional construction and crovernm.ental 
 method. The degenerate organizations that bore 
 the names of those great parties had lost sight 
 
?0 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 of all this ; and not one in every one thousand 
 of the leading politicians of the day could define 
 the principle upon which his party was presumed 
 to differ from the other. They seemed imbued 
 with no other instincts than stupid partisan antag- 
 onism, and a passion for public plunder ; and if 
 they sought to retain the Republic intact, it was 
 only that they might plunder it still. It was. in 
 short, the festival of capitalists, banks, railroads, 
 land monopolists, stock gamblers, corporations 
 of every shade, defaulters, embezzlers, paupers, 
 hoodlums and tramps, — the last two of which 
 were creatures of, and peculiar to, the abuses of 
 the period. 
 
 To all these peculiarities of practical life was 
 added the further moral fact, that the spirit of the 
 people was fast forming itself to correspond with 
 the adaptations of the age. That groveling spirit 
 which is sometimes betrayed by certain individuals 
 when brought into the presence, or actual contact, 
 of those whom they are ignorant enough to believe 
 superior to themselves, and which is a class char- 
 acteristic in most of the Monarchies of Europe, 
 was becoming painfully manifest in the ordinary 
 intercourse of the people. This was especially 
 noticeable in the homage paid to public officials. 
 These might be, and frequently were, men of very 
 limited capacity, in private life and intrinsically; 
 but, elevated to position, by the exigencies of par- 
 tisan conflict, they at once became men of rare 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 8 1 
 
 understanding, in the estimation of those often 
 their poHtical enemies. This, "t will be said, is 
 human nature, and a small matter in itself All 
 this may be true, but, aside from its significance in 
 the present connection, it is a useful observation, 
 as showing that the instinct of individual independ- 
 ence in mankind, is but little affected by the march 
 of events ; and that to the justice born of race 
 enlightenment, and not to a developed individu- 
 ality materially differing from that of his ancestors 
 of past centuries, is the man of to-day indebted 
 for the liberty to which he was born, in the Nine- 
 teenth Century. 
 
 It should hardly be necessary to add that all the 
 abuses which have fastened themselves upon the 
 institutions of the American Union in this ao-e, are 
 the direct and the legitimate result of the great 
 contentions growing out of partisan differences. 
 It is a significant fact that all those combinations 
 that wield vast political influence are always in 
 harmony with the party in power; always con- 
 ducting its poHtical campaigns and electing its 
 nominees to office. In return for services of this 
 nature the party confers upon its benefactor a silent 
 license to draw from the people its reward; to 
 paralyze every industry, if necessary, to the grati- 
 fication of its avarice or the enforcement of its 
 ambitious designs. 
 
 The foreign commercial policy of the govern- 
 ment and its internal dissensions, were alike preg- 
 
82 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 nant with danger to the RepubHc ; but these were 
 matters of secondary interest in the minds of the 
 American statesmen. Either, those questions had 
 not occurred to them, or they had so occurred and 
 were overshadowed by the one great question of 
 partisan domination. In vain that the people 
 petitioned Congress for rehef; in vain that the 
 Legislatures of the States were appealed to ; in 
 vain that they exacted of their representatives the 
 most earnest pledges to support measures dictated 
 by the necessities of the hour ; in vain that our 
 once extensive commerce no longfer flecked the 
 ocean with her sails; in vain even the incursion of 
 the barbarian horde of Asia to enslave an already 
 impoverished people, — all vain ; for the necessary 
 remedy was ever wanting, and remedies, if pre- 
 sented at all, must be dictated by party expedi- 
 ency, and by that alone. 
 
 And such was the condition of American poli- 
 tics, and such the tendency of the classes and fac- 
 tions — political, social and civil — while the State 
 was menaced by dangers that only concert of pur- 
 pose and of action, throughout every element of 
 the people, could hope to avert. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Immigration Becomes Invasion A Deductive History Cause 
 
 AND Effect The Attitude of all Parties The Masses 
 
 Become Threatening and Defiant The Coolie makes Pre- 
 parations Legislation Under California's New Constitu- 
 tion A Grain of Consolation The Plan of Coloniza- 
 tion New England and the South Invite the Coolie 
 
 Causes Affecting Population Platforms and Platitudes 
 
 Institutions that Begin to Topple The Coolie Strikes 
 
 FOR Civil Rights, 
 
 The preceding chapters have brought the history 
 of the Chinese immigration down to the date of 
 this writing, but it does not, for that reason, become 
 necessary to close this volume, or to abridge the 
 subject which it proposes to treat, — simply because 
 the future interposes an obstacle to the recordation 
 of occurrences that have actually taken place. 
 
 That history repeats itself is a truism that has 
 obtained intellicjent recoo^nition, notwithstandino- 
 the contradictions which the brief occurrences of a 
 single lifetime so often disclose. The experiences 
 of a human life are inadequate to prove any great 
 law ; but the aggregate experience of many lives 
 will never fail to discover a general repetition of 
 all the essential changes that have stamped their 
 impress upon the history of the human race. 
 
84 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Statistics gathered and observations made, abun- 
 dantly show that there is a law of progress, as 
 determinate in its direction as is the accumulation 
 of years to the goal of a century. That the per- 
 ceptible operation of this law is nothing more than 
 the legitimate effects produced by the operation 
 of existing causes, or causes that have existed, is 
 now as well established as that the orbital motions 
 of the heavenly bodies are the agencies which 
 tend to explain the recurrence of the solar or 
 lunar eclipse. 
 
 In the preceding chapters have been examined 
 the ruling agencies which operated in two of the 
 largest and most important countries of the globe, 
 extending over a period of twenty years. This 
 examination would justly be deemed imperfect, or 
 incomplete, if the history of the internal economy 
 of those States were the object of this review ; 
 but such it is not, and it is amply sufficient for its 
 purpose : to explain the one great movement, the 
 success or failure of which must involve the ab- 
 sorption of a State and the extinction of its civil- 
 ization, or the frustration of a scheme of conquest 
 that stands unparalleled in the annals of the 
 human race. 
 
 There is no fact wanting in this inquiry from 
 which to deduce a comprehensive history of the 
 future, extending over, at least, a period of time 
 equal to that from which the data has been col- 
 lected. The conditions of both States politically, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 85 
 
 socially and civilly, and their minute interrelation 
 have been ascertained ; and now, the effects which 
 must, in the ordinary course of human events, 
 operate from without; the manifest tendency of 
 both peoples ; the causes which cast these tenden- 
 cies and which must ordinarily continue to operate 
 in a determinate direction until the energies lib- 
 
 o 
 
 erated for the purpose, and employed, shall have 
 been expended ; the limit of exhaustion and all 
 that will have been accomplished before it shall 
 have been attained, — these, all, are but the recital 
 of the effects which ordinary comprehension, aided 
 by industrious inquiry, is amply capable of deducing 
 from sufficient data. They are as much the ascer- 
 tainment of an effect from an intelligent under- 
 standing of a given cause, as is the calculation of 
 the eclipse, or the recurrence of the tides. 
 
 Taking these data, therefore, and arguing from 
 them, in the light of historical experience tem- 
 pered by the spirit of the age and the hopes, pas- 
 sions, prejudices and interests of individuals and 
 states, it becomes a matter of obvious easiness, 
 and one requiring the exercise of no mystical 
 attribute, or superhuman prevision, to forecast, 
 with considerable precision, the general outline of 
 the events that remain to be enacted upon the 
 world's stage, to the contemporary applause of 
 generations as yet unborn. 
 
 For the purposes of this history, the Burlingame 
 Treaty, which was ratified in 1 869, will be adopted 
 
86 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 to mark an epoch, by which to enter upon the 
 march of events. 
 
 At the date to which this point of history has 
 descended, viz.: the opening of the second decade, 
 there were two measures emanatino- from the 
 people, in slow, progressive action, arriving at the 
 suppression of Chinese immigration. One of these 
 consisted in the opening of diplomatic correspond- 
 ence with China, with a view to the regulation of 
 Coolie immigration ; and the other, a provision 
 embodied in the New Constitution of the State of 
 California, pretending to give power to the Legis- 
 lature to adopt such Police regulations as might 
 suffice to grapple with the popular hardship. 
 
 Pendinof a consummation in one or the other of 
 these two directions, whence relief was sought, a 
 condition of passiveness settled down upon the 
 popular tumult. Race antagonism had not, how- 
 ever, in any measure abated. The idle working- 
 man was very far from satisfied to see his family- 
 suffering for the common comforts of life, while 
 the source from which he had been accustomed to 
 derive his livelihood was controlled by Coolie 
 labor. But there was nothing in the deportment 
 of the masses to indicate the deep hostility that 
 rankled in the public mind, or the energy that 
 slumbered in the popular tranquility. But the 
 student of human nature, who had watched the 
 current of events for the lapse of a few years, 
 would not be guilty of an error of judgment so 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 87 
 
 grave as to accredit to popular acquiescence the 
 absence of demonstrative opposition. 
 
 The disaffected populace throughout all this 
 period, never relaxed their military preparations, 
 which were conducted without any ostentatious ex- 
 hibition, and for that reason were, perhaps, the 
 more impressive. But their force was slowly, but 
 surely and gradually decreasing. The necessities 
 of life compelled many to seek for support in new 
 fields. The cities of California offered no fields 
 for labor, which left no alternative but emigration 
 for the great bulk of those wdio sought to support 
 their families by their daily earnings. 
 
 The Great West no longer seemed pregnant 
 with a wealth of labor. Crowded from within the 
 city boundaries, the white artisan saw onl)- a cheer- 
 less prospect for forcing even a scanty existence 
 from the soil. Unskilled in an art peculiar to 
 another department of labor, he could not hope 
 for success under conditions of climate, soil, and 
 competition, which had rendered abortive the 
 efforts of hundreds of experts in husbandry. They 
 had made the effort and failed, and around and 
 about the scene of his observations, others were 
 failing, daily. They were gradually passing east- 
 ward — choosing rather the certainties and severi- 
 ties of the Atlantic sea-board, than the gentle but 
 seductive uncertainty of the Pacific slope. He, 
 too, must return ; and so, burying forever in the 
 grave of bitter disappointment all the buoyant as- 
 
88 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 pirations of his sanguine youth and independent 
 manhood, the subdued pioneer breathed a farewell 
 curse upon the nation of the invaders, and with the 
 scanty remnant of what was once a competence, 
 looked his last upon the seductive glory of a Pacific 
 landscape. 
 
 The time for Congressional action was drawing 
 nigh. This would test the sincerity of the Federal 
 government, in the assurances heretofore given to 
 the people and exemplified by the former measure 
 which had fallen under the Presidential veto. The 
 Cabinet was in session, and measures to be recom- 
 mended in the Presidential messagfe were under 
 consideration. 
 
 As the action of Congress would be largely 
 influenced, upon the subject of Chinese immigra- 
 tion, by the facts, or circumstances, embodied in 
 the message, the probable contents of that instru- 
 ment became the theme of most anxious specula- 
 tion. The prevailing opinion was that the Presi- 
 dent would discountenance any interference by 
 Congress, in a measure which, he had already 
 indicated, ought to be adjusted by diplomatic 
 negotiations, conducted by both governments. 
 
 The message thus foreshadowed, and widely 
 circulated, had somewhat prepared the public mind 
 for the 'reception of its recommendations, which, 
 had they been suddenly announced, might have 
 precipitated riot. But the instrument itself soon 
 appeared. It pointedly discountenanced and dis- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 89 
 
 couraged any action by Congress before the 
 apparent complications should have been duly 
 submitted and tested by diplomatic correspond- 
 ence already under way, and which promised to 
 lead to a pacific and honorable settlement of the 
 difficulty before the people. The manner in which 
 this message was laid before the country seemed 
 to pluck the sting of its disappointment ; and 
 having failed to excite to acts of violence, it 
 tended to the opposite course by precipitating 
 gloomy distrust and silent apprehension. That 
 Congressional action would be postponed, or, if 
 had at all, that it would be in conformity with the 
 views conveyed in the message, no one seemed to 
 entertain a doubt ; and that such course, under less 
 asfSfravatinof circumstances, would have been emi- 
 nently proper, and consistent with the true spirit 
 of diplomacy, no one cared to question. 
 
 But the masses saw only that the element of 
 uncertainty which had entered into the remedy 
 placed the time to which they had looked forward 
 with hope, beyond the range of definite calculation. 
 Such were the considerations that preyed upon the 
 public mind upon the Pacific coast, and yet failed 
 to incite to action. From this last extreme the 
 people were restrained by the conviction that their 
 Constitution would effect, indirectly, all that the 
 Federal government had failed to do directly. 
 
 As had been anticipated, however, Congress 
 adjourned without adopting any measures, what- 
 
90 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 ever, touching the subject of Chinese immigration ; 
 and so far as the Federal government was con- 
 cerned, the subject was doomed to drag its tedious 
 course through the meshes of diplomatic adjust- 
 ment. 
 
 The Chinese Immigration Companies were not 
 inattentive spectators of the conflicting local opin- 
 ions to which the consideration of this question 
 had given rise. They readily caught up the popu- 
 lar embarrassment, and with characteristic shrewd- 
 ness availed themselves of the inactivity of the 
 opposition, to pour into the State a continuous 
 torrent of immif^ration. 
 
 But they saw, too, that a systematic course of 
 military discipline had been inaugurated among 
 the people, and they were not ignorant of its real 
 import ; but if they felt alarm, it was artfully dis- 
 oruised. That it threatened dancfer to the Chinese 
 residents of the Pacific coast, and that the uprising 
 might take place at any moment, were speculations 
 affirmatively supported by numberless facts and 
 circumstances occurring ever}^ day ; and that only 
 the power of the State would avail to crush such 
 an insurrection, and prevent a bloody conflict of 
 races, was a result equally obvious. 
 
 The Companies had matured the conviction that 
 their countrymen in San Francisco, if placed upon 
 the defensive, were numerically capable of making 
 an obstinate and powerful resistance ; and so they 
 determined that they should not be slauglitered 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 9 1 
 
 unresistingly, when the hour of conflict should 
 arrive. They, accordingly, set to work, very 
 calmly and deliberatel}', to place their people in a 
 position for self defense. The sub-government 
 ordered that every man should procure, and carry 
 about his person, such arms as he could best 
 employ, in case of emergency. Revolving pis- 
 tols were specially recommended. Men were in- 
 structed to devote sufficient time to the inspection 
 and study of those weapons, to become skillful 
 in their use. The implicit obedience of the Coolie 
 to those who have constituted themselves his 
 masters, was specially noticeable in the present 
 instance. It was, in this case, the performance of 
 a duty under the stimulus of fear ; and under the 
 influence of these dual incentives, the poor rabble 
 set about the work of arming- themselves with the 
 utmost dispatch consistent with the due dissimu- 
 lation of their fears, to the observance of which 
 strategic h}-pocrisy they had been specially en- 
 joined. Those unable to bear the expense of fire- 
 arms, furnished themselves with knives, or other 
 weapons of a like character ; but this failed to sat- 
 isfy the watchful care of the Companies. They 
 accordingly deemed it necessary to extend the 
 sub-governmental aid to the procurement of more 
 dangerous weapons, and hence issued portable 
 fire-arms to nearly every man upon their lists. 
 This work was quickly and effectively accomplished, 
 so that every laundry in San Francisco, and many 
 
92 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 in Other cities of the State, were converted into as 
 many fortresses, of which the inmates were in- 
 structed to fight, to death itself, if necessary, for 
 their own protection against whatsoever acts of 
 lawless violence they might be called upon to 
 resist. 
 
 The first Legislature of California, organized 
 under the new Constitution of that State, was 
 somewhat conservative in the adoption of legisla- 
 tion touching the Coolie question. Certainly, the 
 Constitution, by a fair interpretation of its terms, 
 would fully guarantee measures much more radical 
 and aggressive, in this direction, than any that had 
 been enacted. This was largely, if not entirely, 
 owing to the fact that the moneyed interests of the 
 State — familiary known as the "monopolies" — • 
 had reorganized their political forces after the 
 slight oversight, or inattention, by which they had 
 allowed the masses to carry the late constitutional 
 campaign to a successful issue, and by concerted 
 action once more succeeded in placing their chosen 
 representatives in the State Legislature. 
 
 The body so elected in more than one particular 
 ignored the fundamental law of the State, and dis- 
 appointed the people by failing to adopt the 
 necessary acts of legislation to give operative 
 force to some of the most radical principles laid 
 down by the Constitution. The people began to 
 charge that they had been further betrayed by the 
 monopolists ; and, for a time, the Coolie aggrava- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 93 
 
 tion was lost sight of in the fervor of class ani- 
 mosity and recrimination. 
 
 Following this stage of the political controversy, 
 there was but one consideration that could be 
 clearly interpreted as tending to defer the inaugu- 
 ration of revolutionary measures. It was this: 
 The Constitution embodied the provisions, that 
 the general elections throughout the State should 
 be held on the even- numbered years ; and that 
 certain named offices should have a term of two 
 years. But as the Constitution was adopted in 
 
 1879, an odd-numbered year, and as the first gen- 
 eral election under its provisions was fixed for 
 September of the same year, it followed that the 
 officers then elected should hold office for one 
 year less than the absolute term of every such 
 officer. The term of office of members' of the 
 Assembly being two years, those elected in 1879 
 would be succeeded by others to be elected in 
 
 1880. Hence, the election to take place within a 
 few months would determine the complection of 
 the next Legislature. If this should seem favor- 
 able to the purposes and claims of the workino- 
 classes, which would be determined by their suc- 
 cess, or failure, to elect their candidates, then it 
 would be highly politic to defer the inauguration 
 of extreme measures, and leave the whole matter 
 to be determined by legislative enactments, still. 
 But should the advocates of Coolie immio-ration 
 again carry the elections, and thus control the 
 
94 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Legislature in their interest, as heretofore, then, 
 and in that event, the expediency of a resort to 
 the last right of a people, could hardly be ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 Under this resolve, the j^ublic mind once more 
 became settled as to every apprehension of imme- 
 diate acts of violence on the scale of rebellion ; 
 but so far did this sentiment fall short of restoring 
 confidence to the people, that values continued to 
 fall, and remained so depressed that the State 
 became, to an unprecedented extent, the purchaser 
 of lands and homesteads, which were suffered to 
 go to sale to satisfy her claims for delinquent 
 taxes. 
 
 The laboring classes now began to reorganize 
 their party, with greater care and industry than 
 heretofore, for what many of them apprehended 
 might be their last political effort in California. 
 Their party organization had already established 
 for itself political recognition throughout all the 
 cities and towns of the State, but the country dis- 
 tricts were not so well organized in its support. 
 An active canvass was therefore instituted, which 
 occupied the whole attention of the party; and 
 ao^ain the Coolie was left for a time to the undis- 
 turbed enjoyment of his industrious callings. 
 
 Throughout all this turmoil, one pursuit of the 
 sub-government, and by far the most important 
 and suggestive, was not, for a moment, overlooked 
 or neglected. This was the practical work of im- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 95 
 
 migration. Every steamer from the East landed 
 its hundreds of CooHe immigrants at San Fran- 
 cisco, while Chinese junks, and other sailing craft, 
 landed their human cargoes at all the sea-ports of 
 California and Oregon. The State was rapidly 
 filling up with this element; so much so, that from 
 the most reliable statistics that could be obtained 
 it was shown that the Chinese residents of Cali- 
 fornia made up more than one-third of the whole 
 male population of the State. 
 
 About this time the scheme of immigration de- 
 veloped a new phase. Another step had been 
 taken in the great scheme of colonization. The 
 Companies had begun to extend their labor con- 
 tracts east of the Rocky Mountains. Large de- 
 tachments of laborers were sent, from time to time, 
 not only to the Middle and Western States and the 
 Territories, but even New England had volun- 
 tarily risked her cherished forms of Christian ob- 
 servance by inviting contact with the invincible 
 heathen element. She ordered, and had imported, 
 to further pauperize her laboring myriads, an ex- 
 perimental remittance of the Coolie laborers. 
 
 But the field that held out the most flatterino- 
 promise to that wonderful people was the whole 
 territory which had lately comprised the slave 
 States. The Coolie had been tried and found to 
 be in every manner superior to the Negro. Add- 
 ed to this, the former had not, as yet, developed 
 a taste for politics; while the latter, growing from 
 
96 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 bad to worse, had finally advanced to such a stage 
 of political development, that the time and atten- 
 tion which he should devote to labor was thrown 
 away in the fruitless effort to ape the partisan 
 intrigues of his white exemplars. 
 
 The demand for Coolie labor was growing so 
 rapidly in this direction, that it promised to soon 
 invite further supply. For the present, the estab- 
 lished industries of California could maintain no 
 greater Chinese population. Every department of 
 labor was glutted, and to give further employment 
 new industries must be created or old ones multi- 
 plied. All, or nearly all, the available lands lying 
 in the neighborhood of towns or cities were already 
 in the hands of the Coolie cultivators, either as the 
 owners, in fee, or tenants of citizens who were 
 compelled to abandon the pursuits of husbandry 
 under the pressure of Coolie competition. 
 
 While no effort was made to create new indus- 
 tries, the pursuit of agriculture was gradually rising 
 in favor; but the development in this direction 
 was not sufficient to accommodate the rapid in- 
 crease of population. Internal immigration had 
 become a necessity to the march of events; so 
 that the Pacific Slope soon ceased to limit the 
 servient territory upon which the charge of 
 Coolieism was imposed. 
 
 The coil of the Asiatic serpent was gradually 
 encircling the entire body of the victim, now vir- 
 tually within its grasp. The touch was not yet so 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 9/ 
 
 rude as to startle, nor so real as to horrify ; but the 
 danger was only the more imminent that it was so 
 well disguised. The day was not far distant when 
 the constrictor would relax its folds to feast upon 
 the noble captive that too long had dallied with its 
 shrinking touch, and invited its deadly embrace. 
 
 California was not yet reduced in theory, but 
 in fact her industries had passed out of the hands 
 of her citizens, and she was gradually becoming 
 the distributing point whence the institution ot 
 Coolieism should be extended throughout the 
 whole Republic. 
 
 The white population no longer continued to 
 increase ; white immigration had ceased ; and the 
 causes, which under a healthy system at home, 
 would have operated to swell the population, had 
 likewise terminated ; for, marriage had almost 
 fallen into disuse. Laboring men would not as- 
 sume the responsibilities of the marriage relation, 
 in the face of the uncertainties that prevailed ; and 
 homes and families became an impossibility. The 
 semi-barbarous " tramp " and " hoodlum," were all 
 that was left to represent a generation whose an- 
 cestors had conquered a wilderness to build up a 
 State, which was the first to carry modern civiliza- 
 tion to the Pacific shores of the American conti- 
 nent — a pitiful mockery of a glorious memory. 
 
 The result of the election of 1880 inspired fresh 
 hopes in the minds of the masses throughout Cali- 
 lornia. Not only the indigent laborer, but many 
 
98 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 among' the wealthy citizens of the country, whose 
 patriotism was still superior to their avarice, had 
 begun to watch and study with secret alarm the 
 intrenchment of the institution of Coolieism. Ac- 
 cordingly, when the masses had announced, as one 
 of the principles of the party, that their candidates, 
 particularly those aspiring to the Legislature, should 
 pledge themselves to use every honorable and 
 lawful means to carry into effect the full spirit and 
 intent of Article XIX of the Constitution, they 
 happened to touch upon a sentiment rapidly grow- 
 ing in popularity. Their leading men were not 
 slow in perceiving this slight promise of an ad- 
 vantage, and unreservedly pledged themselves, as 
 did all aspirants to office, through this party, to 
 make this one object paramount to all others. 
 
 The utter boldness, and entire absence of com- 
 promise or equivocation, on the part of their 
 public men, was a diversion which could be rel- 
 ished by a people who had grown weary of the 
 empty platitudes of the average political assem- 
 blages of the day — from the group of politicians 
 at the street corner, to the Senate itself. The 
 new spirit seemed to arouse a sentiment which, 
 had it sprung forth to shake the political structure 
 ten years earlier, as it now seemed destined to do, 
 would have left no material for this history. 
 
 The result was, that the laboring classes, and 
 those in sympathy with them, succeeded in elect- 
 ing a large majority of the Assembly. This end 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 99 
 
 being achieved, the people began to look forward, 
 with some anxiety, to the time when the Legis- 
 lature should convene. Some time must yet 
 elapse before the genius of the movement could 
 be brought to bear upon the one absorbing ques- 
 tion. The distress of the people, meanwhile, grew 
 apace ; and their dissatisfaction, and consequent 
 dispersion to the Eastern States, continued; but, 
 in each case, upon an aggravated scale, if possible. 
 
 If there was any phase of this period which was 
 particularly noticeable, it was the rapidity with 
 which grave and significant events, bearing upon 
 the great problem of the hour, arose in succession 
 above the horizon of chaotic political speculation. 
 Others than the laborers of the country now beo-an 
 to fear that the limitless immigration license was, 
 for some reason, a mistake ; but this discovery was 
 made, not by logical deduction, but by a far 
 stronger argument, the logic of living, practical 
 experience. The Coolie had entered the contest 
 against the unskilled white laborer, and had been 
 acknowledged the victor. He next usurped the 
 domain sacred to the artisan, and victory again 
 consecrated his efforts. It was at this staee that 
 the white laborer, by act as well as by declaration, 
 acknowledged himself no longer capable of con- 
 ducting the competition. 
 
 In another respect, too, the Coolies had ob- 
 tained the mastery. In point of numbers they 
 surpassed the citizen laborers ; which latter class 
 
lOO LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 gradually left the painful record of its decadence 
 upon the institutions of the State. The first, 
 and grandest of these institutions, the Common 
 Schools, were becoming crippled; not, indeed, in 
 the spirit of the institution, considered in a theo- 
 retical sense, but practically. The attendance had 
 fallen off nearly one-half. The modest children 
 of the yeoman, in their calico suits, and the bois- 
 terous, bare-footed, but cheerful urchin of former 
 days had nearly gone for aye. With the decrease 
 of attendance came the decrease of schools, and 
 thus an army of teachers — almost exclusively 
 women, and nearly unfitted for any other sphere 
 of life — was sent adrift to participate in the gen- 
 eral ruin that was rapidly casting its shadow over 
 the land. 
 
 Added to all this, a movement was now put 
 upon foot, among their leaders, to procure for the 
 Coolie the exercise of the elective franchise. This 
 disposition had not yet assumed a practical form, 
 but the expediency of the measure had been sub- 
 mitted to the Asiatic government, and approved ; 
 and it only remained to give it practical direction, 
 when the sagacity of the Chinese statesmen, at 
 home, should deem its success assured, before- 
 hand. The perfection of this design would place 
 the politics of California largely in the hands of the 
 Chinese Mandarins. The industrial interests of the 
 country had fallen into their hands, by a species 
 of absorption ; and the same insatiate power now 
 aimed at political domination — and not in vain. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 March of the Conquest The People Invoke Legislation 
 
 Modification of the Naturalization Laws Trans-Pacific 
 
 Intrigues Chinese Citizenship The Federal Courts on 
 
 the California Constitution The Laboring Element in 
 
 Arms First Battle of the Revolution Statesmanship 
 
 OF the Period Coolie Ascendancy on the Pacific Slope 
 
 Trade with the East Mandarins in Congress The 
 
 Coolie at the South. 
 
 The hour for the convention of the Legislature 
 at length drew near. More than half of that body 
 was now pledged to support, under the Nineteenth 
 Article of the Constitution, measures for the sup- 
 pression of Chinese immigration into the State of 
 California. There could be but little, if any, doubt, 
 as to what the immediate action of the Legislature 
 would be. That a law, intended to restrict, in 
 some manner, the irruption of the subjects of the 
 Chinese Empire upon the shores of the State, 
 would be enacted, no one, for a moment, felt dis- 
 posed to doubt; but then came the question: Will 
 it be enforced? 
 
 That the Federal government will never permit 
 a State to dictate an international measure, for her 
 own advantage, and hence that the forthcoming 
 legislation will be an idle attempt, was the pre- 
 
I02 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 vailing opinion. In a moral sense, too, her states- 
 men argued, and with much reason, that to sup- 
 press this immigration, even by Federal enactments, 
 would be to present the novel feature of the ex- 
 pulsion of a people because of their enterprise; 
 for it is their enterprise, their thrift, their industry, — 
 in short, their virtues, that have made them invin- 
 cible and insupportable, and not the exercise of 
 any degrading or vicious habit. 
 
 It was this view which rendered the Chinese 
 question so difficult of definite adaptation; and it 
 is hardly presumptions to advance the opinion, in 
 connection, that no consideration, short of positive 
 demonstration that the popular grievance was 
 otherwise irremediable, would have justified any 
 exercise of administrative authority, either to sup- 
 press or to limit the immigration of a people so 
 eminently adapted to the sphere of life which the 
 Coolie had heretofore occupied, in the United 
 States, and the fullest occupation of which, the 
 prosperity of the country so largely demanded^ 
 But this demonstration was not wantino; to those 
 who would suffer themselves to be convinced; and 
 as yet that class constituted but an infinitesimal 
 fraction of the people of the United States, and 
 was confined to a few communities upon the Pa- 
 cific Coast. 
 
 The government of the State of California was 
 now in the hands of this class; and it proceeded 
 to enact laws that would give practical direction 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. IO3 
 
 to its convictions. For the prosecution of this 
 project, it had the warrant of the State Consti- 
 tution. 
 
 When that instrument provided, "That the 
 presence of foreigners, inehgible to become citi- 
 zens of the United States, is declared to be 
 dangerous to the well-being of the State," it sim- 
 ply asserted the true spirit of the naturalization 
 laws of the United States, as interpreted by the 
 United States courts; and when it directed the 
 Legislature to "prescribe the necessary regula- 
 tions for the protection of the State " * * * 
 "from aliens otherwise detrimental to the well- 
 being and peace of the State, and to impose con- 
 ditions upon which such persons may reside in the 
 State, and to provide the means and mode of 
 their removal from the State, upon failure to com- 
 ply with such conditions," it simply gave expres- 
 sion to its sovereign will, which the Federal courts 
 have recognized the right of a State to enforce, 
 for its own protection. 
 
 But the destinies of nations have always been 
 determined, rather by the power that overrides 
 the laws than by any attribute, or instinct, of obe- 
 dience to them. The fate of the great American 
 Republic was in the balance, and its laws had 
 assumed the dictation of her affairs. Internal dis- 
 cord and political and social strife had divided the 
 people, at the very hour when only the most com- 
 
104 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 plete harmony could have parried the stroke of 
 destiny. 
 
 The Legislature passed a series of laws cover- 
 ing every requirement for the public protection 
 from the hardships of Coolieism, so far as guar- 
 anteed by the Constitution. 
 
 But while these measures were in process of 
 enactment at the Capital of the State of California, 
 another, and a very different order of events was 
 occurring at the National Capital. Under the 
 Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the 
 Federal Constitution, the power to extend the 
 privileges of the naturalization laws, to embrace 
 any people, whatsoever, was vested in Congress. 
 These laws had thus far confined the privileges 
 of citizenship to Whites and Africans ; and that 
 they clearly discriminated against the Mongolian 
 was established by judicial interpretation, in the 
 Federal Courts. The enactment by which these 
 laws were amplified so as to embrace the African, 
 were peculiarly special to that race ; while in every 
 other respect the original Act remained unaltered. 
 The elective franchise being thus conferred on 
 a race, by special enactment, all others were ex- 
 cluded by direct implication. 
 
 But the measure formerly advocated by the 
 great Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Sumner, 
 was now revived: to amend the Naturalization 
 Laws, by striking out the word " White." During 
 the agitation in the Senate over this measure, the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. IO5 
 
 Chinese Embassy at Washington were unofficially 
 reinforced by some of the ablest men of the Em- 
 pire, who came unannounced in diplomatic circles ; 
 ostensibly to study the manners and customs of 
 the American people, of whose greatness they 
 were wont to fei^n an undisofuised admiration. 
 
 From some cause, that accident may reveal, but 
 which, for the present, is lost in the uncertainty 
 of conflicting opinions, contemporaneously with 
 the arrival and establishment of this Mandarin 
 corps of observation, the tone of Congress upon 
 the question of indiscriminate naturalization be- 
 came wonderfully liberalized. This liberality soon 
 developed into advocacy, until finally every term 
 and vesticre of distinction as to color and race were 
 swept from the naturalization laws of the United 
 States. 
 
 The ofreat obstacle to free immicrration beinof 
 now removed, and, by the same stroke that had 
 leveled that barrier, the shackles of political dis- 
 ability being stricken forever from the Mongolian 
 race, the great empire of the East was now in 
 position to turn loose, without the shadow of 
 reserve, the flood-gates of her pent-up human 
 torrent. .She awaited, now, only the final settle- 
 ment of the question raised in California, before 
 she should order the work of naturalization to be 
 begun, and thus further amplify the great plan of 
 emigration already in successful operation. 
 
 Of the final result she had not a doubt, but pre- 
 
I05 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 ferred to allow the writhino; nation to strano-le 
 itself into a condition of comparative passivity — 
 to have the death- scene rather of the nature of a 
 suicide than of a murder. It was determined, 
 however, that the remaining issue should be 
 forced to a trial at the earliest practicable moment. 
 Then, the status of citizenship would protect the 
 Coolie in America — would give him a political 
 status that would make him a part of the power 
 upon the throne, instead of wholly a power behind, 
 as heretofore. 
 
 The fate of California's anti-Coolie enactments 
 was, indeed, virtually decided by this action of 
 Congress, and the disposition of the Federal Ex- 
 ecutive in relation to the great controversy before 
 the country. A suit, to test the constitutionality 
 of the California enactments, was already pending 
 in the Circuit Court of the District of California, 
 involving the whole question in dispute. The 
 cause was hurried to a hearing ; both sides being 
 anxious for the decision of the courts upon the 
 questions involved. On both sides the cause was 
 presented with great ability and energy. Over 
 one hundred of the ablest counsel, from all parts 
 of the Union, were retained by the Chinese Com- 
 panies to represent their interests in this litigation. 
 The struggle was, in this respect, a most unequal 
 one. The whole wealth and influence of the Chi- 
 nese sub -government, representing the Imperial 
 government at home, to all intents and purposes, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. lOJ 
 
 with which was allied the Federal government 
 here, against the people of the State of California. 
 The result could hardly have been doubted. The 
 battle had already been fought at Washington. 
 But now, the last hope of a sovereign people was 
 shattered ; for the decision declared null and void 
 Article XIX of the Constitution of the State of 
 California, as in contravention of the Constitution 
 of the United States, and in direct and open viola- 
 tion of the (Burlingame) treaty obligations of the 
 government. 
 
 The laboringf masses, or rather the remnant of 
 what once was the laboring element, of San Fran- 
 cisco, on the one side, and the Chinese on the 
 other, seemed to realize, as if by instinct, that 
 upon this decision rested the gravest question ever 
 presented in California, since the race conflict 
 began ; and that a physical conflict of the two 
 elements would ensue, seemed, now, inevitable. 
 
 As soon as the decision of the Court was an- 
 nounced, declaring void that provision of the 
 Constitution upon which so much labor had been 
 expended and so many hopes raised up, the wild- 
 est excitement at once took possession of the 
 people. Despair, resentment, disappointment — 
 stimulated by physical deprivation such as hereto- 
 fore converted human into brute nature, urged the 
 people on to insurrection. No doubt, the popu- 
 lace was, at this period, imbued with the true spirit 
 of revolution — that spirit which, distinguished from 
 
I08 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 that of insurrection or revolt, while the student 
 of history may deprecate, he will never condemn. 
 No doubt, but that those enofao-ed believed them- 
 selves justified in this last appeal for redress or 
 protection. No doubt, but that the causes which 
 impelled to this were to the last degree calculated 
 to exasperate ; but the remedy proved too tardy 
 of application. 
 
 The last available man which the clubs of the 
 people could muster fiew to arms and formed on 
 the suburbs of San Francisco. News of the up- 
 rising was hurried over the lines to every part of 
 the State, and troops were ordered to San Fran- 
 cisco to assist in suppressing the disturbance. A 
 masterly disobedience of orders was the whole 
 and only result of that military mandate. But in 
 San Francisco, the State militia were immediately 
 placed under arms and awaited orders to march. 
 Barricades erected upon the principal streets by 
 the engineers of the clubs, were torn away by the 
 militia, but immediately erected again, at other 
 points, to obstruct the movements of the latter. 
 
 Meantime, the Chinese quarter was one great 
 scene of activity and commotion. All the ap- 
 proaches were blockaded, and breast-works of 
 such materials as could be gathered up, were 
 erected, at intervals, within the barricaded district, 
 or enclosure. Crowds of armed Coolies, to the 
 number of four thousand men, occupied not only 
 those breast-works, but also the doors, windows, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. IO9 
 
 and roofs of buildings, commanding the several 
 approaches to the barricades. 
 
 The laborers' arm}-, numbering fifteen hundred 
 men, was at length ordered to march to the Chinese 
 quarter. A force of five hundred men was detached 
 with orders to obstruct any attempt of the militia 
 to interfere. The Chinese were duly apprised, 
 through their spies, of the advance movement 
 aofainst their habitation, and retired to awake the 
 attack. As the assailants neared the barricade, a 
 deafenine clatter of Chinese musical instruments 
 rang out, accompanied by a murderous fire from 
 windows and house-tops, into the approaching 
 ranks. Unable to return the fire with any effect, 
 the attacking columns rushed upon and scattered 
 the barricade and first line of breast-works, when 
 they received a second volley, not only from fire- 
 arms, in this instance, but, having come within 
 ranee of missiles, of Chinese stench and fire-balls, 
 as well. 
 
 A prudent commander would probably have re- 
 treated in the best order possible, and reformed 
 his forces for an attack at somewhat better advan- 
 tage ; but no such generalship characterized the 
 present attack. The pent-up fury of a score of 
 years had maddened the people, at this moment of 
 its effervescence ; and every personal and moral 
 consideration was, for the time, annihilated. 
 
 The assailants felt only that they had been 
 robbed of the possibility of obtaining a livelihood 
 
I lO LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 for themselves and their families, in the land of 
 which they were proud to be citizens; and they 
 fancied that they saw before them, in the persons 
 of a few thousand Coolies, the plunderers of their 
 birthright. They had sought to chastise that mis- 
 erable race, and now it had dared to resist, and 
 with terrible effect. It was no time to think of 
 strategy, or generalship, when men were reaching 
 out for venofeance. 
 
 Breastwork, after breastwork, was scattered by 
 the assailants in their advance; and the few Coolies 
 who had attempted to withstand the rushing col- 
 umns at the breastworks, or barricades, were 
 incontinently shot down or bayoneted. But the 
 struggle was only a type of the many that would 
 follow before the close of the conquest. No hand 
 to hand opposition was encountered by the assail- 
 ants; yet at every step their numbers were deci- 
 mated by a galling fire, by vastly superior num- 
 bers, directed from housetops and windows. 
 
 But now came the final disaster. The militia 
 had cut its way through every obstacle and reached 
 the Chinese quarter while the conflict was at its 
 height. The leaders were summoned to surrender, 
 and upon their refusal to listen to terms, an attack 
 by the militia w^as begun upon the rear of the mob. 
 Thus, to virtual defeat by the Chinese was added 
 ignominy and, what seemed injustice; and the 
 assailed, now, no longer caring for aught save 
 vengeance, turned upon the militia. Only a few 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I I I 
 
 hundred were left, and these fought until their 
 ammunition became exhausted, and afterwards 
 with fixed bayonets, until they were overpowered 
 and captives made of all who were not slain. 
 
 Thus ended the first physical struggle of the 
 conquest; and the names of its heroes must go 
 down, branded with infamy, because a short- 
 sighted generation, incapable of interpreting their 
 action or appreciating its incentive, will record 
 their history. 
 
 They flew to arms, it is said, for the love of 
 riot; for the establishment of lawlessness; for the 
 propagation of agrarianism, and for the gratifica- 
 tion of race prejudice. But a graver error of 
 judgment, and a greater wrong to the memory 
 of the country's patriots nowhere stains the pages 
 of her history. As the representatives of the 
 governed class they took up arms, not against the 
 governing class, but against existing errors which 
 they were, themselves, called upon to suffer. For 
 years, the condition of this class of citizens, upon 
 the Pacific Coast, could hardly be properl)^ named 
 ''living;" it would have been better expressed by 
 saying of them that they " existed." With scant 
 food and insufficient raiment, they struggled to 
 maintain the comforts of home, and family associ- 
 ation. This struoforle was not a contest such as 
 would characterize a race of cowards, or innate 
 criminals; but, its prosecution, in the face of every 
 obstacle, when unillumined even by a solitary ray 
 
I 1 2 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 of hope that did not shine through the medium of 
 doubt and uncertainty, proved it to have been the 
 struggle of a race of moral giants. In this strug- 
 gle against want, and for the questionable privilege 
 of an unendowed existence, the parents were con- 
 demned, in a land of abundance, to see their chil- 
 dren, yet in their legal infancy, pass from beneath 
 their care to struo-orle for bread; and if the fraofile 
 girl, or the hapless boy should fall by the way, 
 there was no friendly hand to aid. It had become 
 the common lot of children to fall into habits of 
 wickedness and crime. It was under the pressure 
 of circumstances of this nature that their fathers 
 dared to strike where they supposed the evil to 
 be primarily rooted. 
 
 The governing class was entrusted with the 
 power to save, and the preceding chapters have 
 shown whether it was earnestly sought to execute 
 that holy trust. But, not so. The wise ones of 
 their generation adjudged that it were better for 
 the peasantry to perish than that certain forms 
 peculiar to international comity should be infringed; 
 better that the oroverned class should be forced into 
 a life of idleness, want, debauchery and crime, than 
 that the o-overnino- class should have been thouofht 
 to have been guilty of a breach of political eti- 
 quette, in dealing with a potentate beyond the 
 Himalayas. 
 
 So puffed up with pomp and personal dignity 
 had this honorable half of the Republic become, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. II3 
 
 that its high priests, whom, in the intensity of its 
 vanity and unconscious imitativeness, it desio-nated 
 statesmen, decreed, by every administrative act, 
 that the welfare of the nation and the happiness 
 of her people were matters of secondary consid- 
 eration; and that the great purposes for which 
 governments were organized and maintained, were 
 the institution of what might be termed the Diplo- 
 matic Strut, at home, and the International Strut, 
 abroad. Without the presence of the Diplomatic 
 Strut, throughout the various departments, admin- 
 istrative disintegration were inevitable at home ; 
 while the plainest understanding must acknowl- 
 edge that without the International Strut, the 
 nations of the earth would at once lay aside such 
 trifling matters as internal improvements, the cul- 
 tivation of science and art, and the encouragement 
 of commerce, and engage in the noble occupation 
 of cutting one another's throats. 
 
 Such were the doctrines maintained and tne 
 practice established by the conduct of the Ameri- 
 can statesmen, while the governed classes were 
 driven by want to those means of obtaining bread 
 which the laws declared to be crimes ; and how- 
 ever ridiculous the illustration, it is not, in point 
 of virtual fact, overdrawn. 
 
 The greatest political writers, whose precepts 
 have adorned the governing principles of the most 
 enlightened nations, are unanimous that legislation 
 can never be stationary, but must forever shift and 
 
114 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 change to adapt itself to the varying- necessities 
 of each successive age. Except within the skulls 
 of modern American statesmen (very modern) it 
 was never pretended that a different rule must be 
 applied to that which may properly be regarded as 
 international legislation ; and hence, that treaty 
 obligations between different states were binding 
 upon the treaty powers at the will of either party, 
 whatever the result, or in whatever new phases 
 the progress or the vicissitudes of the age might 
 develop. 
 
 It was because the governed classes arose 
 against the affirmative of this peculiar dogma of 
 diplomatic comity, which had already divested the 
 great body of its members of all that makes life 
 worthy of endurance, and even now threatened to 
 extinguish life itself by a process of mental and 
 physical torture, that it incurred the hostility of 
 the dogmatist class ; the fervor of whose animad- 
 version would not be appeased by the knowledge 
 that those who drew the sword had perished, but 
 sought further satiety by associating the memory 
 of the unfortunate dead with acts of the blackest 
 treason and infamy. 
 
 The fate of the few survivors of the insurrection 
 was speedily determined. The State lacked the 
 hardihood to punish them, or even to refuse to 
 admit them to very moderate bail. They were 
 accordingly held to await the usual grand jury 
 investigation in such cases ; but, by pre-arrange- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 1 5 
 
 ment with their bondsmen and others, they for- 
 feited their bail, and fled the State, never to 
 return. 
 
 The necessities of existence soon afterwards 
 caused the dispersion of all, or nearly all, the 
 white laborers, other than such as happened to be 
 freeholders, in California. To maintain their foot- 
 hold, they had tried competition ; then supplica- 
 tion, by petition; then legislation; then revolution; 
 and had failed at each effort. They had no longer 
 the power, nor the organization, to resist. Even 
 existence had become a strufjcjle, that left no time 
 for other aims or purposes. Circumstances had 
 made them vagabonds ; for Chinese laborers and 
 artisans filled all the avenues of labor. Then, too, 
 the people were permanently divided. Class dis- 
 tinctions, regulated by wealth, had become the 
 great social institutions. Society had become au- 
 tocratic. The upper and middle classes were still 
 largely white, but not exclusively so ; and the 
 lower class was almost exclusively Mongolian. 
 The corporate powers of the State, and of each 
 political subdivision, were still wielded by the 
 white elem.ent ; but the enfranchisement of more 
 than a quarter of a million of Chinese, in Califor- 
 nia, alone, was destined to make a most emphatic 
 impression upon the governmental system. 
 
 Immediately following the suppression of the 
 San Francisco insurrection, and the dispersion of 
 the white laborers, the tone of business rapidly 
 
I 1 6 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 revived. Every branch of industry was pushed 
 forward with rare vi^or. An extensive and im- 
 mensely lucrative trade sprang up with the East ; 
 and not only San Francisco, but most of the avail- 
 able ports of the Pacific, were carrying on an 
 active commerce with China. The commerce of 
 San Francisco was rapidly increased, two and 
 three-fold ; and at length reached a point of com- 
 mercial supremacy never surpassed by any empo- 
 rium of the continent. 
 
 Throughout all this era of prosperity, a steady- 
 tide of immigration from China provoked no 
 remark, nor criticism. The merchant princes and 
 the carriers discovered only that their business 
 and their profits had more than doubled, but did 
 not stop to inquire whether the acquisition were a 
 wholesome growth, or a spasmodic effort of an 
 administrative system, whose motive power had 
 broken from its myriad attachments, and was ex- 
 hausting itself in a single direction. 
 
 Another significant circumstance that, in due 
 time, followed the expulsion of the white laborers 
 from the Pacific Coast, was the unanimity with 
 which the Coolies availed themselves of the natu- 
 ralization laws of the United States. Those not 
 already qualified for citizenship by age and resi- 
 dence, under the statute, lost no time in making 
 the preliminary declaration. Toward the close of 
 the second decade, more than two hundred thou- 
 sand Coolies were naturalized, which, of course, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 1 7 
 
 threw the poHtical power of the State into their 
 hands, whenever they should feel disposed to take 
 upon themselves the responsibility of government. 
 
 Before the expulsion, the voting population of 
 the State numbered some one hundred and sev- 
 enty thousand, of which one-fourth was lost during 
 the few years that followed the insurrection. 
 
 Now that the Chinese became fully aware of 
 their power, they showed no disposition to shrink 
 from the responsibility of conducting the affairs of 
 the State; and the election just decided showed 
 how incalculable the price that had been paid for 
 a few years of unexampled prosperity. Only suf- 
 ficient white men were elected to office to famil- 
 iarize the new incumbents with the routine of busi- 
 ness; and, as another result, the portrait of a 
 Mandarin was suspended in the gallery of the 
 Capitol set apart to the Governors of the State. 
 
 The control of political power in California, thus 
 necessarily opened to the Mongolian the doors of 
 the National Capitol; and besides two Mongolian 
 Congressmen elected by the people, as now con- 
 stituted, the Legislature proceeded to elect a suc- 
 cessor to the Senate of the United States. To 
 this high position was chosen one of the chiefs of 
 the old sub-goverment; a man thoroughly con- 
 versant with the Enorlish lansfuaofe and literature 
 and with the political history of the country. 
 
 Following the political subversion in California, 
 came the tidings, first from Nevada, and then frora 
 
1 1 8 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Oreofon, that the Chinese had carried those States: 
 and the report did not long lack confirmation, — 
 with this exception, that while the Coolies made 
 it manifest that they had the power, in point of 
 numbers, to make their victory as complete as 
 they had done in California, they were restrained 
 by considerations of expediency. They saw that 
 they had the power, and were willing to abide 
 their time; so that, instead of taking the govern- 
 ment of those States exclusively into their hands 
 they divided it pretty evenly between themselves 
 and those with whom they were satisfied to dally, 
 yet a while. In both States, however, they had 
 been careful to appropriate to themselves the con- 
 trol of the Legislatures, and to elect their repre- 
 sentatives to Congress. They had come to under- 
 stand that any future issues to arise between them- 
 selves and the Caucasian race, in America, must 
 be determined by the temper and the constitution 
 of Congress; and hence the largest possible Con- 
 gressional representation was a matter of the 
 utmost importance. They had already secured 
 more than half the aggregate representation of 
 those States; and the control of the entire repre- 
 sentation of these was only a question of a brief 
 time. They were, even now, in a position to 
 maintain their ascendency, not only in California, 
 but race ascendency, on the Pacific Slope, should 
 that question arise. 
 
 If there was one popular characteristic of the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC, I I9 
 
 Coolie which, at this period, became more promi- 
 nent than the rest, it was his undeviating loyalty. 
 The decrees of the courts of justice (albeit, the 
 race complexion of those tribunals had not changed) 
 were observed as reverentially as the traditional 
 precepts of Confucius; and the tribunals of the 
 sub-government which had administered the affairs 
 of the people while they were alien to the land, 
 had disappeared. 
 
 The time had not yet come for them to throw 
 off the mask of dissimulation. Althouo-h the ab- 
 
 o 
 
 solute masters of the Pacific Slope, they had not, 
 as yet, established political power east of the 
 Rocky Mountains; and a single act of the Federal 
 government, even yet, might suffice to render 
 abortive their grand scheme of conquest. But so 
 long as loyalty to the government and to each 
 and every of its institutions could guarantee non- 
 intervention in this direction, there was no ground 
 for apprehension; for if industry, economy, enter- 
 prise and a willing obedience to every govern- 
 mental requirement, will constitute the attributes 
 of meritorious citizenship, the Chinese inhabitants 
 of the United States were entitled to claim this 
 merit, in the superlative degree. 
 
 And, indeed, on other grounds, their apprehen- 
 sion of wronorful discrimination against them, in 
 the direction of race suppression, might be speedily 
 removed. The badge of citizenship had placed 
 them upon terms of equality with the natives of 
 
I20 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the most favored nations who had claimed com- 
 mon allegiance ; and only the grossest injustice 
 and disregard for natural as well as constitutional 
 rights and privileges, could dare to infringe their 
 civic prerogative. 
 
 Thus far, as citizens, their march to power was 
 unmarked by scramble or local intrigue. In no 
 instance did they ever attempt to grasp the gov- 
 ernment of even the smallest municipality, before 
 their numbers were ample to secure the end 
 sought, without the aid of intrigue or political 
 maneuvering. But as soon as their numbers had 
 become ample to insure, beforehand, their political 
 ascendency, they invariably voted themselves into 
 office, in sufficient force to take control ; and in 
 every such instance, they conducted the affairs of 
 the city, county, or State, with great economy and 
 fidelity. In fact, all the intrigue and the corrupt- 
 ing tendency of the alien, by which legislation, and 
 even judicial decrees, were colored, had given 
 place to a citizenship as pure in practice as ever 
 shed lustre and prosperity upon the government 
 of any state. 
 
 During the later years, the immigration was no 
 longer confined to the Pacific ports of the United 
 States. Direct immigration to the Atlantic cities, 
 by way of the Suez Canal and Mediterranean, had 
 largely contributed to swell the Mongolian popu- 
 lation of the Southern and New Eno-land States, 
 which, at present, offered most advantages to the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 121 
 
 immigrant. Under the patient industry of the 
 Coolie, the cotton plantations of the Southern 
 States were made to yield as never before ; the 
 revenue derived from this branch of industry alone 
 having more than quadrupled under the influence 
 of Coolie labor, extending over a period of some 
 ten years. 
 
 Nor did the Mongolians suffer themselves to 
 be manipulated by the politicians of the period. 
 Numerous were the attempts made by political 
 schemers to kindle in the mind of the Coolie the 
 spirit of partisan strife and bitterness, such as had 
 characterized their intercourse with the ing-enuous 
 African, in years agone. But every such effort 
 wholly failed. In fact, the Coolie proved, in 
 this respect, intractable ; while it never occurred 
 to the self-sufficient politician that had undertaken 
 the manipulation of the Asiatic, that his apparent 
 political obliquity was simply the result of a depth 
 and acuteness of perception far superior to his 
 own. 
 
 While they were }-et too weak in numbers to 
 attempt the dictation of the affairs of a State, or 
 any of its municipal subdivisions, they voted as 
 if by rule, with both parties, about evenly, so that 
 their vote seldom determined any election, and 
 played but an indifferent part in party politics. 
 They never neglected, however, to avail them- 
 selves of their right of suffrage, although they, 
 
122 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 evidently, were but slightly interested in the 
 result. 
 
 Their presence in the Eastern States, during 
 those years, was by no means unattended by 
 social disturbances of a most alarming character, 
 in which they participated, on the defensive ; but 
 the particulars of these, as well as their influence 
 upon the whole movement, in both hemispheres, 
 will properly belong to a subsequent chapter. 
 
 Before concluding the present chapter, may prop- 
 erly be noticed one peculiarity of the immigration, 
 of which no plausible explanation was ever made 
 or offered. Indeed, it was quite sufficient to throw 
 a certain degree of doubt upon the good faith of 
 the whole vast plan of colonization, and such 
 would probably have been the result, from which 
 grave consequences might have followed, were it 
 not for the exemplary conduct of the Asiatic citi- 
 zens, in every sphere of industrial life. The feature 
 to which reference is made is the fact that less than 
 five per centum of the Chinese immigrants to our 
 shores were women. In view of this dispropor- 
 tion, the domestic relation, as understood in Euro- 
 pean life, was clearly impossible. 
 
 The immigrants, consisting chiefly of men, in 
 the vigor of life, lived in communities, and estab- 
 lished a species of family circle without the pres- 
 ence of their women. This fact, if noticed at all, 
 at that time, was simply regarded as a national 
 eccentricity, and elicited no further study or com- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 23 
 
 ment. Time, however, was destined to explain its 
 great significance, and to establish, as well, that 
 no peculiar feature of this movement was the work 
 of chance ; that every apparent eccentricity was 
 but the surface indication of a design too magnifi- 
 cent of conception to be absolutely concealed, 
 however it might be disguised ; and that each and 
 all contributed to the formation of a terrible but 
 harmonious agfprreofation. 
 
 00 o 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Labor on the Rampage The Chinese Control the Railroads 
 
 A Social Suggestion The Sum of Partisan Virtue 
 
 Southern Estimate of the Coolie Rise of Classes The 
 
 Negro Exodus The Coolie Settles in New England and 
 
 Breeds Distress The Morals of New England Suffer 
 
 Her Peace is Disturbed She Seeks to Repudiate the 
 
 Coolie and Fails Her Moral Reflections Her Politi- 
 cal Reflections Beneath the Surface. 
 
 It will be remembered that in a previous chap- 
 ter, the ratification of the Burlingame Treaty was 
 fixed as an epoch from which to date the progress 
 of events detailed in this history. Adhering to 
 this plan of computation, less than three decades 
 had elapsed, and the Mongolian population of the 
 United States numbered more than four million 
 souls. 
 
 On the Pacific Coast the plan of encroachment, 
 which was begun by an irresistible competition, 
 which drove out the white laborers, was gradually 
 extended to the commercial classes, also. The 
 commerce with Asia had become the great source 
 of wealth to San Francisco, and which did more 
 than all other causes combined, to develop the 
 latent resources of the Pacific Coast States, and 
 to encourage their manufacturing industries, soon 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 25 
 
 fell into the hands of the Chinese merchants and 
 carriers resident at San Francisco. These, by 
 privately extending special privileges to their 
 countrymen, who, in common with others, were 
 dependent upon this commerce for local traffic, 
 soon enabled them to take control of the local 
 commercial patronage of the State and of all the 
 territory tributary to San Francisco, as well. Be- 
 sides this, the white consumers had gradually 
 diminished, so that it was, in one sense, a Mon- 
 golian community, whose members were trans- 
 acting business among themselves. 
 
 The aim of the Mono-olian to establish this 
 order of things was for several years thwarted by 
 the great wealth and influence of the powerful 
 railroad corporations of the Pacific Coast, which, 
 although comprising several companies or corpo- 
 rations, were essentially the same; being com- 
 posed of the same individuals operating different 
 routes under different charters. 
 
 But a couple of decades in the enjoyment of 
 civil liberty had wonderfully developed the mental 
 capabilities of the Mongolian. Fertility of re- 
 source had become one of the most prominent 
 characteristics of that people; and to this was 
 added that boldness of enterprise, indomitable 
 perseverance and inflexible determination which 
 makes the accomplishment of every human en- 
 deavor tributary only to the lapse of time. 
 
 To obtain the possession of these immense 
 
126 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 franchises and property had long been a cherished 
 dream of the Mongolian capitalists ; and a plan 
 was at length devised by which those corporations 
 were compelled to accept terms. The Constitu- 
 tion of the State of California, the adoption of 
 which, by the people, has already been noticed, 
 aimed, among other things, to curb the powers of 
 the railroad corporations. To carry out this object 
 it provided for the election of a Board of Rail- 
 road Commissioners, whose special duty it was 
 made, to regulate the rates of freights and fares 
 over the several lines of road. As the Chinese 
 had long had the control of the political power of 
 the State, and the railroad companies obstinately 
 refused to listen to any overtures by which their 
 property should be transferred, the former, now, 
 for the first time, availed themselves of their po- 
 litical advantages to accomplish a private end. 
 They had it in their power to fix the rates of 
 freights and fares at such a standard as Commis- 
 sioners elected by themselves might report to the 
 companies. This they did, and reported a sched- 
 ule of rates so low that the roads were, first, 
 reduced to very moderate profits, and, in due 
 course of time, to no profits at all. 
 
 The railroad companies now sought relief in 
 the courts; but the most critical construction of 
 the laws failed to establish any rights of redress 
 in the premises. They next refused to carry 
 freight or passesgers at the schedule rates, whe.e- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 12/ 
 
 upon they were brought into court, at the suit of 
 the Board of Commissioners, and sustained heavy 
 damages. For some time longer they continued 
 to operate their great system of roads at rates 
 that sufficed for running expenses, with hardly a 
 margin of profit; until, finally, becoming satisfied 
 that there was no longer a principle upon which 
 to support further resistance, they accepted the 
 proposition to receive, in coin, the value of their 
 immense property and franchise. 
 
 The system of internal communication which 
 thus fell into the hands of the Mongolian citizens 
 of San Francisco, by this one act, comprised the 
 entire railroad system of California, Nevada, Ore- 
 gon, and Arizona. To their political was thus 
 added their commercial supremacy, on the Pacific 
 Coast; and as these invariably carry with them 
 the recognition of the social preferment of the 
 class to which they belong, the Chinese may be 
 said to have, at that period, become supreme 
 throughout these several States. Their wealthy 
 and influential men had already begun to inter- 
 marry with the daughters of America, — the latter, 
 in forming these alliances, having simply obeyed a 
 mandate of human nature as old as humanity : that 
 the women of the conquered race will not long 
 object to an alliance with the conquerors. 
 
 Throughout the series of years that had elapsed 
 since the Presidential veto of a farcical measure to 
 limit Chinese immigration, already detailed, the 
 
128 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Conofress of the United States looked on rather 
 with approbation than with indifference at the tide 
 of immigration from China ; but taking no account 
 of the miseries and doubts of the people, who hap- 
 pened to be the immediate sufferers, at home. 
 The partisan spirit which had settled down upon 
 the popular understanding, at the close of the 
 rebellion of 1 864, never, for a moment, lifted its 
 baleful influence from the affairs of the nation ; on 
 the contrary, it colored every public action, and 
 breathed, forever, into the public affairs of the 
 country, the discord of evil destiny. 
 
 Two great parties, each doubting the motives 
 of the other ; doubting its honesty, its ability, its 
 integrity, — in fact, believing it thoroughly and 
 absolutely depraved, and struggling only for spoil, 
 in its efforts to govern, each jealous of every 
 success, suspicious of every advantage obtained 
 by the other, — were the instruments by which the 
 revenues of a great nation and the interests of a 
 great people were administered. Always pro- 
 voking or repelling reprisals, slandering, falsifying, 
 corrupting, and debauching; these powerful divi- 
 sions, with changing successes, from time to time, 
 had no leisure to devote to such matters as might 
 determine the welfare of the whole people, and 
 lacked the disposition to combine for the common 
 good. 
 
 That which the people saw, their leaders either 
 could not, or would not see. The people saw that 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 29 
 
 the system was leading- to ruin, and the loss of 
 political liberty, either in the flash of revolution 
 or by the process of Asiatic colonization ; but 
 their leaders saw only that the ascendency of their 
 several parties, on such terms as to secure a per- 
 manent lease of power, was all that was needed 
 to establish the government upon an immovable 
 basis, and guarantee the prosperity of the citizen. 
 And the leaders triumphed over the people, as 
 leaders have generally done, and their authority 
 was as supreme as were the dictates of the Chief 
 Inquisitor of Spain, or of the preacher of the 
 Scotch kirk, in the palmy days of sectarian bigotry 
 and superstition. 
 
 Adam Smith, the great political economist, laid 
 down the rule that labor, and not land, is the 
 sottrce from which wealth is derived ; and that 
 the wealth of a nation will, therefore, be propor- 
 tioned to the number of its inhabitants who work. 
 The truth of this theory is practically vindicated 
 by the study of the United States at this period. 
 Notwithstanding the conflicting notions of gov- 
 ernmental method which prevailed, and which 
 kept the plan of government in a condition of 
 constant vacillation, the unsettled state of public 
 opinion, and the occasional conflicts of a more 
 practical nature which were occurring among the 
 laboring classes, nevertheless there never was, 
 before, a time at which the country attained to a 
 condition of national prosperity so emphatic in 
 
130 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 itself, or so exalted by comparison with that of the 
 states of Europe. The immense funded debt of 
 the nation was almost extinguished ; and the bal- 
 ance of trade with Europe, now in favor of the 
 United States, often exceeded, annually, the gross 
 amount of our former exports. This was the 
 direct result of the additional toil of more than 
 four million Coolie laborers, who were scattered 
 over the whole territory of the United States, from 
 ocean to ocean. 
 
 These patient toilers continued to wring from 
 all the kinofdoms of Nature whatsoever of value 
 she held concealed. The production of gold, 
 silver, copper and iron, and the manufactures in 
 these metals for export to every quarter of the 
 globe, were conducted with astonishing energy by 
 the Mongolian citizens. The drudgery connected 
 with the production of the raw material was almost 
 exclusively in their hands ; but the more delicate 
 work of manufacture fell to the lot of their Cau- 
 casian brethren. In the production of cotton, 
 rice and sugar, and other staples peculiar to the 
 South, they had likewise monopolized the sphere 
 of drudgery ; but some of the representative men 
 of the race were aiming to possess rich cotton 
 plantations. They enjoyed peculiar advantages in 
 these last named pursuits. Compared with that 
 in the Pacific Coast States, the progress of the 
 Coolie throughout the whole territory known as 
 the Slave States, might be said to have been 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I3I 
 
 without any obstacle worthy of the name. The 
 inhabitants were deh'ghted with them as a substi- 
 tute for the negroes. They were neither idle nor 
 vicious ; nor did they thwart the interested aims 
 of the politicians by interfering in matters of gov- 
 ernment. In fact, had the Southern people been 
 privileged to petition the Author of Nature for a 
 species of human being, to be made to order, with 
 the assurance of having the petition heard and 
 granted, they could not have provided themselves 
 with a model more suitable to the public taste 
 than they found ready-made and providentially 
 supplied in the person and presence of the Coolie. 
 He was so eminently stupid in great things, and 
 so quick and keen in small ; so devoted to toil, 
 and so averse to sentiment ; so obedient, so cun- 
 ning, so ignorant, so willing, so unassuming, and 
 so servile, that the Southern land-owners once 
 more imacrined themselves the masters of a race 
 of slaves, — but this time of willing slaves, — and a 
 prospect of permanence to the institution. They 
 had not learned to interpret the restless, anxious, 
 observing glances ; the interminable endeavor ; 
 the avarice, and the bland, significant courtesy, so 
 common to the whole Mongolian race. 
 
 They might have known that avarice, the most 
 prominent of all the national characteristics of that 
 people, is the child of ambition, and that the latter 
 is, to-day, as insatiable as it was when, only a 
 century ago, its incarnation, in the person of 
 
132 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Bonaparte, held it forth to the astonished and 
 terrified gaze of prostrate Europe, or when, at 
 periods more and still more remote, it turned with 
 lofty and imperious scorn from the devastation of 
 Rome or the ashes of Carthage. They might 
 have known that a nation which was free while 
 the caves of unregenerate Europe gave a wretched 
 shelter to their barbarous ancestors, had not come 
 from the antipodes to do them fealty, and revive 
 an effete feudalism ; they might have known that 
 the genius of Freedom must be the inspiration of 
 a people who were the first in the world to be 
 free ; that the genius of Independence must be the 
 inspiration of a people who were the first in the 
 world to be independent, and the most successful 
 in preserving their independence ; that the genius 
 of Government and Civilization must be the inspi- 
 ration of a people whose government dates to an 
 aofe so remote that its origin is lost in the shadows 
 of antiquity. They might have known that the 
 institutions of barbarism and of a barbarous age 
 could never be assimilated by a civilization so 
 crystallized by the influence of a system, change- 
 less through centuries ; but they were too con- 
 ceited, and too ignorant, to indulge a contempla- 
 tion so ignoble as that which should place the 
 laboring Coolie upon an eminence to which they 
 dare not, in theory, aspire. 
 
 This misconception indulged in by the people 
 of the Slave States, was not confined to them ; 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 33 
 
 and only differed in degree, but not in kind, from 
 the opinions of the whole independent classes of 
 the United States. The system of Coolie labor 
 was seen to work well in practice ; and as for the 
 theory, if studied at all, it was to prove how emi- 
 nently qualified it was to take care of itself. The 
 labor of four millions of Coolies, added to the 
 regular white labor of the country, developed all 
 her resources to the fullest. Some of these that 
 seemed inexhaustible, as, for instance, the coal, 
 silver and iron deposits, among the minerals, and 
 every agricultural pursuit, availed to give perma- 
 nence to the population established over vast 
 districts reclaimed from the wilderness. 
 
 No government could reasonably demand of 
 her citizens more of enterprise or of industry than 
 was freely accorded here ; and from a practical 
 standpoint it would have been political insanity to 
 have aimed a blow for the suppression or dis- 
 couragement of industries so worthily directed. 
 But the prosperity of the country, so far from 
 alleviating the suffering of the poor, rather tended 
 to its aggravation, by the erection of classes and 
 the forcing of them to extreme distinctions. 
 
 The experiences of the Pacific Coast, of many 
 years earlier, were in process of repetition, but 
 upon a larger scale. Four millions of people 
 could not introduce themselves into a nation of 
 forty millions, and confine themselves to the 
 sphere of a single class, without being sensibly 
 
134 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 felt ; and so it was. They did not fall into places 
 already vacated to receive them at the date of 
 their advent into the country, nor did they develop 
 new industries to give labor to the hands of all. 
 Throughout the Slave States the presence of the 
 Mongolian was the signal for the departure of the 
 African ; and of these latter, such as were not 
 transferred to the land of their ancestors by emi- 
 gration societies and private enterprise, were scat- 
 tered about among the cities of the Union and 
 fast striding toward extinction. 
 
 The manufacturing towns and cities of New 
 England were the first among the communities of 
 the Atlantic States to feel the blight of this unap- 
 proachable labor system ; and now they amply 
 suffered for their sin in beincr the first to raise 
 their voices for its propagation. Here the condi- 
 tions of an ordinary livelihood combined to render 
 the attendant hardships greater than any hereto- 
 fore arising from the same cause elsewdiere. Com- 
 pared with the Pacific and the Southern States, 
 the necessaries and comforts of life were more 
 expensive and difficult of procurement. To this 
 was added the further circumstance of a dense 
 population, which had been accustomed to draw 
 its sustenance from the revenues of the ereat 
 manufactories in its midst. As in California, 
 however, the untrammeled and frugal Coolie 
 offered to work at rates of wages far below any 
 at which his white co-laborer could afford to 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 35 
 
 serve and maintain the burden of his domestic 
 establishment — even below the rate at which he 
 could work and maintain himself. As it was on 
 the Pacific Slope, so, now, it was rendered in 
 New Eng-land : like causes produced similar effects. 
 The white laborers were driven out by as many 
 Coolies as had acquired skill in the various arts in 
 which they sought employment. 
 
 But the rigor of the New England winters 
 brought a new feature into the question. This 
 called for many conveniences that are indispen- 
 sable not only to individual health and comfort, 
 but, indeed, to existence itself, and which are not 
 demanded by the physical causes that beset the 
 inhabitants of more favored latitudes. Men in 
 these days will not, as a rule, sit despondent and 
 effortless while those that have grown up around 
 them, and are dependent upon them for the com- 
 mon necessaries of life, are suffering for the least 
 as well as for the greatest of these. The pangs of 
 cold and hunger appeal to a law far higher and 
 mightier ; far more universal and imperative than 
 any evolved from the brains of men. Under their 
 mfluence, the greatest coward by nature, among 
 beasts as well as among men, becomes oblivious 
 of fear. He must, therefore, be less than a nor- 
 mal creation who could, by his own hearth, con- 
 template the paling cheek and tattered garments 
 of innocent childhood, knowing the cause to rest 
 with empty store-rooms and empty wardrobes. 
 
3 
 
 6 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 where erst were the ample domestic supplies of 
 better clays, and who will yet shrink from any 
 endeavor, short only of the greatest of crimes, to 
 relieve the distress of home. 
 
 The citizen who finds himself reduced to this 
 strait, after he has exhausted every honest en- 
 deavor, and who will still shrink from the perpe- 
 tration of any crime, short of murder, to bring a 
 ray of light into his home, although the agony of 
 apprehension may fall to his own lot, may be a 
 moral man in the estimation of this Q-ood world ; 
 but the appellation is only the homage which 
 timid opulence pays to desperate poverty, in order 
 that the latter may be flattered into suicide or 
 starvation, rather than assert a right which the 
 God of Nature has proclaimed should never be 
 restrained by any conventional obligation. 
 
 The radical one of these two alternatives was 
 that which soon began to sway the multitude of 
 idle laborers throusfhout the afflicted districts of 
 New Ensfland. In vain that the Courts thundered 
 aofainst the offenders the indictments of its Grand 
 Juries ; in vain that police and detective forces 
 were multiplied ; in vain that the penalties of 
 public offences were intensified by express legisla- 
 lation — all was ineffectual to crush the lawless 
 spirit that arose. 
 
 The country was teeming with wealth, but the 
 people were in distress ; overflowing with abund- 
 ance and exporting stores to foreign lands, yet 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 37 
 
 the masses must starve ; was filled with bus)- 
 industry, yet the people had been dispossessed of 
 the means of earnino- bread. It was not un- 
 accountable that they should have turned upon 
 society, since society was first to turn upon them ; 
 that they should wring from the wealth, which 
 their labor had created and maintained, that sub- 
 sistence which was arbitrarily withheld from them. 
 Thus it was that the same causes which produced 
 the mischievous "hoodlum" and the useless 
 *' tramp," in the gentler climate and less circum- 
 scribed sphere of industry of California, produced 
 in New England not only these, but the robber 
 and bandit as well. Desperate men lurked by 
 the secluded highways, or under the shadows of 
 night issued forth upon the city streets, and pro- 
 cured by lawless daring, or by stealth, that subsis- 
 tence which they were no longer permitted to 
 earn. Nor was there, in the midst of this public 
 disorder, anything in view that could suggest a 
 general plan for the pacification of the people. 
 On the contrary, those who exercised sufficient 
 penetration to discern the identity of the noxious 
 agency at work, saw only the prospect that the 
 difficulties must increase rather than diminish, 
 with the lapse of years ; and few of those cared 
 to speculate upon the contingency that must in- 
 aug-urate a chancre for the better. The Coolie 
 immigration was rather on the increase than other- 
 wise ; and every arrival served to further dis- 
 
138 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 tribute the patronage that fell to the lot of the 
 laborer. 
 
 A few years of lawlessness, pillage and suffer- 
 ing, and New England began to awaken to a 
 realization of the fact that her ancient propogan- 
 dism in favor of Coolieism was an error of judgment, 
 and that she was now called upon to suffer the 
 penalty of her sentimental advocacy in that direc- 
 tion. She had sought and secured cheap labor, 
 and, by the same act, did much to gratify the 
 obtrusive missionary spirit of her people. By all 
 this she succeeded more in concentrating than in 
 building up her wealth ; while in the work of 
 proselytizing the Mongolian her efforts wholly 
 failed. 
 
 But her weatlh, whether accumulated or simply 
 concentrated, she was powerless to enjoy. Instead 
 of abundance, equality, contentment, peace and 
 morality, which were by no means empty figures 
 of speech in New England, and which she enjoyed 
 before she fixed her desires upon Coolie labor, 
 she had now classes in society distinguished by 
 lavish wealth on one hand ; on the other, inde- 
 scribable squalor, internal strife, and an insecurity 
 of life and property from which the laws were 
 unable to relieve. The condition of society was 
 every day growing more intolerable, while the 
 real cause of the popular disorder was too mani- 
 fest to be further dissimulated. 
 
 The people, at length, resorted to the method 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 39 
 
 employed by California, while she was yet free. 
 They flooded Congress and the Executive with 
 petitions praying for the intervention of the gov- 
 ernment to relieve from the unendurable burden 
 of Coolieism. But the time was past when Con- 
 gress would listen to interested sectional appeals, 
 which came unsupported by other inducements 
 than simple justice. The problem of partisan 
 supremacy had not yet reached a solution, and 
 questions of a novel character could be viewed 
 only in their bearings upon this greater question ; 
 and it happened, just now, that any measure 
 touching the suppression of any privilege hereto- 
 fore accorded to the Mongolian, was, at this 
 period, particularly distasteful and inappropriate, 
 and for this reason: 
 
 The hostile political parties were so nearly 
 balanced, that, should the Pacific Coast members, 
 who were all Mongolians, throw their united sup- 
 port upon one side, that side would, thereby, 
 become supreme. In other words, the antagonism 
 of the political parties was too rancorous for com- 
 promise ; and these being nearly equal, the Mon- 
 golians held the balance of power. 
 
 There was, besides, another circumstance which 
 had not escaped the notice of certain shrewd 
 members, viz.: that it was a question of only a 
 few years when one or more of the Southern 
 States would send Mongolian representatives to 
 Washington. There was not the slifjhtest cir- 
 
140 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 cumstance in the movements of the Asiatics to 
 indicate such a probability, but the vote necessary 
 to accomplish this purpose would soon be attained, 
 and then the matter would be decided without 
 noise, and when least expected. Hence, that 
 party which would prove most successful in con- 
 ciliating the Mongolian members might rely, with 
 something more than a baseless expectancy, upon 
 their co-ojDeration. 
 
 By these and kindred considerations. New Eng- 
 land was left to determine in her own way, and 
 as best she might, the question that had filled her 
 benevolent, as well as her penal, institutions with 
 inmates, her streets with homeless paupers, and 
 her highways with armed banditti. 
 
 Through all the excitement of this period, its 
 hardships, and its persecutions, the plodding 
 Coolie worked and toiled, apparently heedless 
 of the adversity of his surroundings, and deter- 
 mined only upon doing, slowly, but thoroughly 
 and well, the work in hand, of whatsoever nature 
 that might be. Whenever assaulted, he escaped, 
 if possible, to a place of safety ; but if escape was 
 impossible, in any instance, he turned at bay, with 
 no other idea of defense than to take the life of 
 his assailant. But his native frugality was more 
 than a match for any opposition ; and no retro- 
 gression ever marked his way, whether to political 
 or social position, or to the acquisition of material 
 supremacy. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I41 
 
 It began, at length, to dawn upon the New 
 England mind, associated, as it was, with scenes 
 of lawlessness and outrage, that the tendency of 
 the times, considered collectively, unmistakably 
 pointed to a subversion as unlimited in its social 
 and political sway as it promised to be in its terri- 
 torial jurisdiction. The afflicted parts of the great 
 body politic, which so industriously struggled to 
 slough off the disease, by all manner of abnormal 
 manifestations of the popular resentment, were not 
 the only localities actuated by the animus of pro- 
 test. Nor was the absence of noisy demonstra- 
 tion, outside the afflicted districts of New England, 
 an indication that the affection was merely local. 
 On the contrary, these were but the ulcers which 
 indicated the foulness of the constitution that 
 could so well sustain their inflammatory action. 
 An universal apprehension was abroad, which was 
 felt, to a greater or less degree, by all whose 
 sensatory faculties were not either blunted, par- 
 alyzed, or perverted by selfish advantage, or the 
 fervor of the reigning political antagonism. These 
 were the considerations which stamped an unchal- 
 lenged sense of security upon the minds of the 
 wealthy and the ruling classes ; while the super- 
 structure of society was reeling under the accumu- 
 lated burdens imposed. 
 
 The political and social rulers of the people 
 looked on, saw and deprecated the prevalent dis- 
 tress. It was very unfortunate, in their estimation, 
 
142 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 that men should be so improvident as to throw 
 away their time and opportunities, and allow 
 themselves, and those dependent upon them, to 
 suffer. More unfortunate still, that not satisfied 
 with the life of idleness which they had selected, 
 they must further descend to vice ; which not 
 only broods disgrace for themselves and their 
 families, but worse still, interferes with the pleas- 
 ures which the better class might, otherwise, be in 
 position to enjoy. These exceedingly proper peo- 
 ple, moved by a sense of the duty they owed to 
 society, and partly by sympathy for the families 
 of those criminal assemblages, would use their 
 influence to have the laws more rigidly enforced, 
 that the husbands and fathers of those wretched 
 women and children, — nay, even the latter, as 
 well, — may be taught, by the condemnation of 
 society which they would make manifest, the les- 
 sons they were too indolent, too stupid, or too 
 vicious to gather from its toleration. 
 
 The politician, in the enjoyment of official posi- 
 tion, and intoxicated by the homage as well as the 
 emoluments of his office, could only discover that 
 the American people were proving to the world 
 that they were unable to stand a high condition 
 of national prosperity. He pointed, with empha- 
 sis, at the condition of New England, teeming 
 with wealth, as evidenced by her powerful corpo- 
 rations, her manufactures, and the exports of her 
 great commercial cities, and yet a prey to the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 43 
 
 lawless passions of a generation of vagabonds, too 
 proud to labor and too vicious to starve. He was 
 convinced, in his own mind, that unless the Mon- 
 golian laborers were increased, in sufficient force 
 to actually sustain these vicious classes in a condi- 
 tion of absolute idleness, these latter would have 
 to be suppressed by the power of the State, at 
 large. 
 
 These were the opinions of the only classes 
 which had it in their power to avert the disaster 
 which subsequently befell. The causes at work 
 they neither studied nor understood, while the 
 tenure by which they held their offices, their 
 emoluments, and their wealth, were rooted in a 
 slumbering volcano. 
 
 It needed only the electric spark of circumstance 
 to precipitate the practical work of reform. The 
 elements were already prepared and placed in 
 contiguity; but the potentiality of combination was 
 wanting still. "Reform" was the term which the 
 people chose to adopt, by which to designate the 
 principle that had been lost, and which it was their 
 province, at the proper time, to restore. In its 
 very indefiniteness it was a term eminently proper 
 to express the thing desired, for the most acute 
 intellect, contemporaneously cast into the midst 
 of a social and political system so bewildering, 
 would stumble in the effort to analyze its constitu- 
 ent abuses. 
 
 Reform, however, was sufficiently comprehen- 
 
144 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 sive to include within its import whatever contin- 
 gent exigencies its case might demand, — whether 
 its establishment might rest with the humble effort 
 of the ballot, or whether its empire might demand 
 its restoration amidst the crash and devastation 
 of civil war. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Chinese Empire Birth of a New Civilization Rise of 
 
 THE Military Spirit The National Armament Commer- 
 cial Supremacy in Asia The Arts and Sciences She 
 
 Aims at the Dominion of the High Seas England and 
 
 Hong Kong Conquest of Farther India China Becomes 
 
 THE Dictator of Asia She Clings to Her Traditions 
 
 Speculations in the Realm of Conquest Preparations for 
 
 THE Struggle Mandarins in American Politics The 
 
 Discovery. 
 
 The Chinese Empire, at the close of the Nine- 
 teenth Century, had assumed a national splendor 
 which placed her upon an eminence far above the 
 sisterhood of nations, in point of wealth and 
 enterprise. Her immense population of four 
 hundred and seventy-five millions of souls, en- 
 joyed tranquility, prosperity and good govern- 
 ment throughout her vast dominions, covering 
 more than two and a half millions of square miles 
 of territory. Half a century of free intercommun- 
 ication with Europe and America, had effectuall}^ 
 transformed the mediaeval impracticability of her 
 institutions. Soon after the middle of the Nine- 
 teenth Century, it was, that she awoke from her 
 voluntary slumber of centuries, to discover that 
 she had been outstripped in the discoveries and 
 
146 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 applications in science and art; and with this con- 
 sciousness came, also, the determination to shake 
 the slumber from her faculties, and lead, once 
 aofain, the civilization of the world. 
 
 She entered upon this course by despatching 
 her willing subjects to Europe and America to 
 learn the languages of the nations there, and to 
 inform themselves of the means by which those 
 peoples had achieved an universal command over 
 the elements of Nature, and learned to unlock 
 the mysteries of her wonderful laws. 
 
 It needed only the combination of the great 
 mechanical contrivances of Europe and America, 
 with her own existing internal improvements, to 
 give her an impetus toward a matchless prosperity 
 in the domain of aofriculture. This combination 
 she soon effected, and in a manner eminently 
 characteristic. The vast prospective consumption 
 of labor-saving machines, which promised to fol- 
 low upon their introduction, created among cer- 
 tain of her prominent commercial communities the 
 ambitious desire to establish manufactories at 
 home. Accordingly, there sprang up, throughout 
 the Empire, great manufactories of such imple- 
 ments as were heretofore exclusively obtained 
 from abroad. These works were inaugurated 
 under the superintendence of foreigners — princi- 
 pally Englishmen and Americans. Of the raw 
 materials for manufacture, the mines of the Em- 
 pire furnished abundance. Railroads and tele- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 147 
 
 graph "Iflofes soon began to connect the distant 
 provinces of the Empire. Travel increased and 
 brought with it an increase of commercial and 
 social intercourse among the inhabitants. They 
 now began to understand, from practical experi- 
 ence, that which they had known before only in 
 theory: the magnitude of their country, its wealth, 
 and its overshadowing population. 
 
 The introduction of Western inventions had 
 not only perfected them as an agricultural people, 
 but had also made them a manufacturing people. 
 Naturally ingenious, they soon, practically, under- 
 stood, if they did not quite master, the theory 
 upon which the most complicated machinery was 
 constructed; so that they were gradually enabled 
 to dispense with the services of foreign workmen. 
 
 While she was thus marching forward upon her 
 career of marvellous prosperity, many of her citi- 
 zens returning, after years of residence abroad, 
 brought back with them a relish for military 
 achievements, as well as for many of the customs 
 and habits of life peculiar to our Western civili- 
 zation. The occasion was opportune for the 
 introduction of new ideas; for just then the na- 
 tional spirit was in a state of transition, swelling 
 from pride to enthusiasm, as the people indulged 
 themselves with the contemplation of their na- 
 tional greatness. The fervor of military fame is 
 readily kindled in a people thus enthused by a 
 sense of their own importance; and more espe- 
 
148 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 cially is this true when the ruhng powers of the 
 state show themselves in sympathy with the 
 spirit of the people, at large. Their great states- 
 men looked on with approbation, and in sundry 
 ways, and without display, managed to fan the 
 flame of popular enthusiasm. They had not 
 builded in vain; and they never lost sight of the 
 sacred traditions of their country and of their 
 race, which pointed still onward to universal 
 dominion. 
 
 Heretofore, they had men sufficient in numbers 
 to sweep the Western Hemisphere at a single 
 stride, if men had been all that was needed to 
 effect conquest. But more was required. A 
 military spirit, military equipments, transporta- 
 tion — these, and much more, were wanting still. 
 But now, the last and all of them, if not already 
 supplied, were certainties of the near future. Be- 
 sides one great manufactory for the production of 
 heavy ordinance, which was made an institution 
 of the Government, by the Imperial decree, there 
 were, elsewhere throughout the Empire, several 
 factories devoted exclusively to the production of 
 small arms of every design now in use in Europe 
 and America. Nor were the arms produced in 
 those factories inferior, either in workmanship or 
 in the materials employed, to the best English or 
 American arms. 
 
 As if determined, at the proper time, to over- 
 awe her continental neighbors by a display of 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 49 
 
 her available power, which she now chose to 
 manifest, she set about the work of creating a 
 standing army that should excel in point of num- 
 bers any other ever wielded by any one govern- 
 ment, whether of ancient or modern times. The 
 standard of this army, in the matter of arms and 
 equipments, was to be equal to the best appointed 
 army of Europe. 
 
 This proposed exhibition of military power was, 
 no doubt, intended to serve a double purpose. 
 Its prestige alone would serve to protect the 
 integrity of her boundaries at home, while it 
 furnished, at the same time, the requisite force to 
 carry out her ambitious scheme of foreign con- 
 quest. 
 
 During the years employed in the prosecution 
 of this great military enterprise, the outside world 
 remained unadvised of any movement of an un- 
 usual or important nature among this remarkable 
 people, beyond the bare fact that they had begun 
 to develop manufactures and to extend their com- 
 merce. The secrets of the government were 
 jealously guarded within the precincts of the 
 sacred city ; and while citizens without might 
 look on and speculate upon the probable direc- 
 tion of the Imperial will, they had not even 
 the slightest warrant, founded upon official re- 
 port, as to the basis of a conclusion at which 
 to arrive. The citizen only knew that he was 
 called upon to reform the habits of every-day 
 
150 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 life to which he had been accustomed, by devot- 
 ing a considerable portion of his time to the per- 
 formance of mihtary evolutions and the manipu- 
 lation of arms. He had no information as to how 
 many besides himself might be so employed ; 
 to what favored districts of the Empire these 
 exercises might be confined, or of the purposes 
 they were intended to subserve. He was not 
 only allowed to believe, but encouraged in the 
 belief, that his country might at some future day 
 decide to move toward the fulfillment of that 
 destiny of dominion prefigured in her traditions,, 
 and that the prosecution of that design might 
 demand a great military effort, which would chal- 
 lenge the patriotism of every citizen. 
 
 This system of military training, at length,, 
 toward the close of the Nineteenth Century, had 
 metamorphosed a nation of toiling husbandmen 
 into a military people, — but properly more thaa 
 merely a military people, although not, formally, 
 a standing army. So perfect had they rendered 
 their military organization, that while they still 
 pursued their peaceful avocations, the Imperial 
 order, flashed by telegraph around the circuit of 
 the Empire, could, at any time, call to arms a well 
 disciplined force of twenty millions of men, — and 
 this exclusive of one million, besides, trained solely 
 to the profession of arms, and pursuing no other 
 avocation. Although preserving intact this splen- 
 did military establishment, her productive indus- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I5I 
 
 tries were not neglected, while her commerce 
 continued to increase. 
 
 The achievements of the Caucasian intellect she 
 next turned to account, by supplying the markets 
 of Asia with Western contrivances manufactured 
 at home, while her teas, silks, and other articles 
 of export, were no longer exchanged solely for 
 manufactured goods, but gathered into her treas- 
 ury the coins of every nation of the globe. 
 
 Her increased commerce soon necessitated the 
 increase of commercial facilities ; and she accord- 
 ingly set about the work of amplifying the capacity 
 of her merchant marine. She instituted this move- 
 mant by refitting her navy yards after the manner 
 of Western nations. But the process of ship- 
 building, hurried even to the fullest capacity, was 
 too tardy to satisfy the commercial requirements 
 of the country ; so that it became necessary to 
 resort to auxiliary means of procurement. Accord- 
 ingly, her commercial agents were to be found 
 negotiating the purchase of merchant vessels at 
 all the principal maritime cities of Europe. 
 
 Indeed, at this period, in the management of her 
 affairs, nothing was neglected. A spirit of watch- 
 ful enterprise was abroad, which filled her ports 
 with commerce, her inland territory with busy 
 industry, her schools and colleges with students 
 of science and art, her store-houses and granaries 
 with articles of consumption and export, and her 
 
152 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 magazines and arsenals with arms and munitions 
 of war. 
 
 Except we consider the marvelous reign of 
 Charles III, of Spain, history furnishes no instance 
 of a change and improvement so vast, in a period 
 of time so brief as that which marked the progress 
 of China, from the date of the Burlingame Treaty 
 to the close of the Nineteenth Century. In this 
 case, the exploit was, perhaps, greater ; for Charles 
 III had only to revivify a naval, political, social 
 and military corse, which had been embalmed for 
 a hundred and fifty years, and restore it to the 
 normal exercise of its dormant faculties ; but in 
 China, as we have seen, it was the education and 
 advancement of a people from the exercise and 
 employment of the customs, habits and learning 
 of mediaeval times to the full knowledge and 
 exercise of the orandest achievements of the 
 most enlicjhtened countries of the most enliofht- 
 ened age. 
 
 Contemporaneous with the perfection of her 
 military system, was established the practical per- 
 fection of her naval establishment. Her merchant- 
 men, her transports, and her iron-clad vessels of 
 war, while challenofinof no hostile trial of strenorth, 
 conceded no superiority, — not even of that of the 
 colossal armament of England. Her vessels of 
 war were newer, more improved, and more dura- 
 ble, although not, perhaps, so numerous as those 
 of Great Britain ; but her merchantmen outnum- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I53 
 
 bered those of any other nation. She had thus 
 been enabled to obtain the greater part of the 
 trade of Asia, as the market for her manufac- 
 tures, — articles for the mechanism of which she 
 was indebted to England and the United States, 
 and the exclusive trade in which they had hereto- 
 fore enjoyed. 
 
 The time was past when Great Britain could 
 proceed to vanquish this competition, in a way 
 peculiarly her own; nor was there any indication 
 that it was ever to return. England could not 
 dare to risk the safety of her theoretical empire 
 in India, by adopting vigorous tactics for the sup- 
 pression of an inconvenient competition in trade, 
 which might call forth reprisals that would be 
 slow to yield either to force or conciliation. Her 
 opium trade had already suffered from the Impe- 
 rial frown of the great autocrat of souteastern 
 Asia; while her pretensions to the territorial ac- 
 quisition of Hong Kong were roughly rebuked: 
 indeed, her further continuance at that emporium, 
 and even its freedom to her traffic, were made 
 conditional upon the tacit surrender of her pro- 
 prietary pretensions. England was in no condi- 
 tion to remonstrate, and her knowledo-e that an 
 army of many millions of men was at her very 
 door suQforested one of two alternatives: either 
 peaceable and honorable competition or humili- 
 iating surrender. 
 
 Already had the Chinese government apprised 
 
154 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the rulers of Farther India, that China was pre- 
 pared to receive tribute from their several territo- 
 ries, as her own boundary had been extended on 
 the southwest, from the Himalaya Mountains to 
 the mouths of the Ganges. The protest of Siam 
 which, for a brief period, threatened to call forth 
 a resort to arms, was the only energetic dissent 
 from this exercise of sovereign pleasure, which 
 she was called upon to reconcile; and this she 
 effected by diplomatic correspondence, emphasized 
 by the presence of a formidable fleet cruising list- 
 lessly near the Gulf of Siam, in the China Sea. 
 
 Thus it was, that without drawing her sword 
 from its scabbard, and without the consumption of 
 any portion of her great military stores, but solely 
 by a judiciously managed display of irresistible 
 power, the Chinese Empire became, in an inter- 
 national sense, the dictator of the policy of Asia. 
 She could, at any moment, by the simple expres- 
 sion of her will, procure the usurpation of the 
 neutral territory between Russia and England, and 
 involve those powers in a relentless and exhaust- 
 ing Asiatic war. She could, on the other hand, 
 alienate from either power the allegiance of its 
 Asiatic subjects and procure rebellion; or she 
 could still further complicate the question by pro- 
 curing rebellion as well as international strife. 
 
 Both Persia and Turkestan had long been im- 
 patient of the encroachments of Russia, on the 
 one hand, and hardly less so of England, upon the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 155 
 
 Other. Hindoostan longed for the restoration of 
 her native Princes; Af^^lianistan was thirstino- for 
 the opportunity of resenting the insulting and 
 domineerinof insolence of Encrland, while her south- 
 em neighbor might be relied upon to contribute 
 her share to the cause of resistance aofainst British 
 authority. It needed but the intimation of China 
 that she would look with patronizing interest upon 
 any efforts of those States in the cause of their 
 independence, to kindle a barbarous war that 
 would occupy the full time and every energy of 
 her yet more powerful neighbors, to suppress. 
 
 Such is a brief, but not an imperfect, summary, 
 in general detail, of the power, the influence and 
 the characteristics of the Chinese Empire toward 
 the close of the Nineteenth Century. Her avail- 
 able army was many times greater than that of 
 all the rest of Asia, besides; her fleet equal to 
 that of the most powerful fleet of Europe, her 
 commerce employing a greater number of mer- 
 chant vessels than that of any other nation; her 
 internal improvements, her manufactures, and her 
 agricultural industries in a most flourishing condi- 
 tion, and her supremacy acknowledged all over 
 one hemisphere of the globe. 
 
 Conscious of her power, and fully awake to 
 every advantage by which she was surrounded, 
 she looked with calm dignity at the evident appre- 
 hension which her neiofhbors were no longer able 
 to conceal. In her days of ignorance and poverty 
 
156 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 she was great in her own estimation, because 
 unacquainted with the true elements of national 
 greatness. She had shut herself in from the con- 
 templation of the rival powers and races of the 
 Earth, and fed her ambition for national glory 
 upon an imaginary prestige born of her ignorance, 
 her vanity and her credulous regard for the legends 
 and traditions that promised to place beneath her 
 sceptre the "entire circuit of all lands." 
 
 But, now, she was enlightened, rich and power- 
 ful ; while her pride remained unimpaired. Her 
 traditions were not the less sacred, however; for 
 they had come down the flights of unknown ages 
 from the realm of prehistoric times, and seemed 
 now, even to her enlightened observation, not a 
 mere chimera, but a startling prophecy, already 
 entered upon the period of its realization. 
 
 How great and how wise must have been her 
 ancestors, who could thus brush aside the curtain 
 of unknown centuries, and bounding across the 
 barriers of Time, and the vicissitudes and accidents 
 of human actions, could grasp, as a living entity, 
 the sacred mystery of a nation's destiny! How 
 favored among the races of men that people who 
 can turn to a record like this ! How manifest the 
 design that had fostered a country for such spe- 
 cially attested ends ; preserved her territorial 
 integrity, her national characteristics, and the lofty 
 inspiration of her people, amidst the crash of suc- 
 cessive empires, the extinction of peoples, and 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I57 
 
 the mysterious and desolating throes of Nature! 
 These, and kindred considerations, they were that 
 swelled the national heart, and fitted the people 
 to enter upon the fulfillment of their astonishing 
 destiny. 
 
 Her authority being thus established at home, 
 as well througrh her own streng-th as through the 
 weakness or the jealousy of her neighbors, she was 
 fully prepared to prosecute her designs against the 
 Western Hemisphere. 
 
 It is intentionally, and with a definite purpose, 
 that the word "Hemisphere" is employed in this 
 connection ; and it is intended in its broadest 
 sense ; for, while the immediate efforts of the 
 invader were to be directed aofainst the United 
 States, they were, probably, to a great extent so 
 because they, alone, of the powers of the Western 
 Hemisphere, seemed formidable ; and their subju- 
 gation would prove, not only a great immediate 
 advantage, but would likewise remove the last 
 serious obstacle to the occupation of the whole 
 continent. 
 
 There was but little danger of Mexico, or the 
 countries of South America, growing up to a 
 magnitude that would be likely to defy the efforts 
 she should make for their subjugation, when the 
 time should come that it might please her to 
 extend her dominions, in the New World, beyond 
 the territorial boundaries of the United States. 
 
 Toward the north she neither feared opposition. 
 
158 L\ST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 nor desired conquest, at present. Her Asiatic 
 neighbor was here, again, the mistress of contigu- 
 ous territory ; but the check she held upon that 
 neighbor, through her Indian possessions, was 
 ample to secure her non-intervention. 
 
 However indisposed to rapid movements in any 
 enterprise, China was compelled by circumstances 
 to depart from her usual method with regard to 
 the progress of the conquest in hand. Her states- 
 men and emissaries advised immediate action, after 
 a careful study of the entire situation, in connec- 
 tion with a shrewd interpretation of the American 
 character. They reported that they discovered, 
 in this case, a people unlike the Asiatics in every- 
 thing; a people who, having never felt the arm 
 of despotism, would submit to nothing in the way 
 of oppression or political injustice for any consid- 
 erable length of time. They saw, in connection 
 with this, the United States of America loaded 
 down with administrative abuses and inequalities, 
 while the rostrum resounded with declarations of 
 equal rights, and professions of honest, economical 
 administration of public affairs. They saw a gov- 
 ernment entirely in the hands and under the con- 
 trol of a single class of its citizens ; while, again, 
 the rostrum thundered: "A government of the 
 people, for the people, and by the people." They 
 saw that the masses of the people were alive to 
 this inequality, and were daily becoming more and 
 more dissatisfied with the current of events ; and 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 59 
 
 they knew that they would suffer this state of 
 public affairs no longer than might be necessary 
 to convince them that it was, indeed, to be made 
 perpetual. They knew that the people of the 
 Republic, when once aroused, would shiver that 
 miserable despotism at a blow, regardless of the 
 cost, whether of treasure or of human life. They 
 knew, moreover, that the primal and indirect 
 cause of this brooding revolution was the pres- 
 ence, throughout the United States, of many 
 millions of their own people, who had undergone 
 the ceremony of naturalization ; and they knew 
 that the first blow to be struck would be a<:ra-inst 
 these. This might fall at any moment; and for 
 this they advised that the Imperial government 
 should be prepared. 
 
 Accordingly, the emigration to America, both 
 directly and by way of the Mediterranean, was 
 conducted without intermission. The class of emi- 
 grants which was now pressing to the front con- 
 sisted exclusively of men thoroughly trained to 
 the use of arms, and ready to fall into line when- 
 ever commanded so to do. Of this class of immi- 
 grants was constituted more than half the popula- 
 tion of Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana, besides 
 a large population throughout the whole valley 
 of the Mississippi river ; but the States named 
 had fallen under the political sway of the Mon- 
 golians. 
 
 For several years past, the Chinese shippers in 
 
l6o LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 San Francisco had been receivino- consio-nments 
 of arms and fixed ammunition from New England 
 manufacturers, ostensibly for shipment to the East; 
 but all such stores, instead of passing on board the 
 China-bound vessels, were surreptitiously depos- 
 ited in San Francisco, together with certain mys- 
 terious stores imported from China, to await the 
 orders of the home government, as to their dis- 
 position. 
 
 Such was the attitude of the actors in this 
 drama, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. 
 The plan of invasion was, perhaps, under the cir- 
 cumstances, the most cunning ever devised for the 
 accomplishment of so great an end, and carried 
 into practical execution. Here was a nation be- 
 yond the Pacific, contemplating a conquest quite 
 incredible in its purpose, and not less so in its 
 audacity ; and maintaining, up to the very hour 
 of the opening of the struggle, terms apparently 
 of the most perfect amity. 
 
 In the absence of the particular experience 
 afforded by the present instance, it might have 
 been asked, in what manner could the government 
 of China, by any possibility, maintain in the midst 
 of the people of the United States an army of 
 sufficient strength to carry out the object to which 
 she might be thus miad enough to aspire? 
 
 But it were useless to indulge in hypothetical 
 explanation, in view of the living fact. She trans- 
 ferred five and a half millions of soldiers to 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. l6l 
 
 America in the capacity of laborers. By a course 
 of intrigue and bribery, she managed to procure 
 an amendment to the naturalization laws of the 
 United States, by which these soldier-laborers 
 were entitled to the privileges of citizenship. This 
 accomplished, she caused their concentration at 
 given points, until, by gradual accretion by further 
 continued immiofration, their numbers became suffi- 
 ciently great to take the political control of a 
 State, and then of other and several States. 
 
 These results obtained, she was now in position, 
 through the aid of friendly State governments, to 
 prosecute her designs, untrammeled. The officers 
 of the several States under their control were 
 simply the appointees of the Official Board at 
 Peking, who were submitted to the forms of an 
 election, here, to satisfy the constitutional require- 
 ments of this government. 
 
 She was thus enabled to convert the city of 
 San Francisco into a great depot of military stores, 
 with branch establishments in Mississippi, Lou- 
 isiana and Florida. 
 
 All this time, by artfully balancing her repre- 
 sentation between the hostile political parties in 
 America — flattering and aiding each one alter- 
 nately — denouncing, applauding, condemning, ap- 
 proving, as the objects in view might demand, she 
 kept alive and glowing that partisan rancor and 
 insane prejudice, that political antagonism and 
 sectional antipathy which first began to disgrace 
 
1 62 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the nation and divide the people immediately after 
 the peace of 1864. The whole attention of the 
 government being thus centered upon the ques- 
 tion of partisan superiority embittered by sectional 
 contention, there was no time left to indulge po- 
 litical abstractions, or to discover the presence of 
 danger in the increasing activity of Coolie immi- 
 gration. 
 
 The Imperial intriguers contemplated with acute 
 satisfaction, the political discord, and with yet 
 greater satisfaction the sectional jealousy of the 
 people. They had labored for this, and their 
 efforts had been more than simply successful. 
 Thus far, indeed, their labors were emphatic- 
 ally recognized. The revolutionary tendency 
 had hastened forward even much more rapidly 
 than they had either anticipated, or desired. 
 Their arrangements for a grand coitp-de-grace 
 might have been more ample if the people could 
 have been longer restrained. True, the blow had 
 not yet fallen; but there was no longer any assur- 
 ance that it would be deferred for a week or even 
 for a day. 
 
 The popular tumult had become appalling. Ef- 
 forts such as had heretofore served to tranquilize 
 the current of public sentiment, were regarded 
 with undisguised contempt; while the suggestion 
 of armed repression was received with open defi- 
 ance. Confidence had nowhere a pillow upon 
 which to repose, throughout the whole Republic, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 63 
 
 and it was now plainly evident that the great gov- 
 ernmental prodigy of the New World was blindly 
 gathering her giant energies for one last effort to 
 protect her brood from the lurking danger which 
 maternal solicitude whispered to her was at her 
 door. She had not stopped to weigh the conse- 
 quences of the probable struggle. Her ) outhful 
 viofor miofht have been misdirected but it was not 
 impaired, while the craven finger of abject fear 
 had never traced a furrow upon the majesty of 
 her brow. She only saw that Freedom, the cher- 
 ished daughter of her holiest attachment, had 
 been stolen from the guardsmen chosen to defend 
 the Temple of Human Liberty. She raised her 
 mighty arm to strike down the stalking felon, but 
 it fell shattered and nerveless by her side, crushed 
 beneath a blow far mio-htier than her own. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 American Society Extremes of Luxury and of Squalor 
 
 Some Reflections upon the Constitution of Human Nature 
 
 Class Attributes Obstacle to Race Assimilation 
 
 Natural Laws of Society become Lnoperative Sectional 
 
 Conditions The Coolie and the Negro Subversion at 
 
 the South Mongolians in Office The Militia, Old and 
 
 New Mongolian Obtuseness Race Comparison Ad- 
 ministrative Lnfidelity. 
 
 As INTIMATED in the last chapter, the encroach- 
 ments of the invaders had forced a crisis in the 
 affairs of the United States, which, in turn, im- 
 pelled to greater exertion on the part of the Chi- 
 nese, in order to meet the tide of revolution by 
 force, should their efforts in behalf of compromise 
 or conciliation prove ineffectual, 
 
 A glance at the attitude of the contending 
 forces in the United States about the close of the 
 Century would reveal a chaos of political, social 
 and moral forces, from which the most sanguine 
 student of human nature could hardly hope to 
 extract order, harmony, or government, except 
 through the wasting and purifying process of a 
 revolution, that would drag into its vortex every 
 element of society, from the lordlings of the Sen- 
 ate to the squalid beggar of the city's purlieus. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 65 
 
 There were only two grand subdivisions of 
 society, and these might be expressed in the two 
 words, Employer and Employed. The middle 
 class of other days, which, although independent, 
 was disposed to labor still, had no longer a repre- 
 sentation that entitled it to consideration. These 
 had either overcome competition and scaled the 
 ladder of commercial fame, to riot in the luxuries 
 of the period, or were crushed in the struggle, and 
 sank to irremediable bankruptcy. The employer 
 had ceased to bestow his personal attention upon 
 matters of business, but collected his rents, or his 
 profits, weekly, and devoted his time to that riot 
 and debauchery which the necessities of society 
 so abundantly supplied. 
 
 At this period it might be justly said that the 
 spirit of the Republic had passed away, leaving 
 its inanimate body to console for the loss of the 
 living entity. The enterprises of the rich, which 
 were wont to supply the necessities of the labor- 
 ing classes, were no longer incumbered by the 
 maintenance of the families and homes of the 
 toiling poor. A new class of labor had offered 
 incomparable advantages above the old, and the 
 ancient system was literally disorganized. The 
 rich and powerful now looked abroad over the 
 ocean of humanity at their feet, whose every 
 suro^e sent forth an echoinof curse agfainst the 
 decrees of destiny. 
 
 They heard the murmur of despair, the cry of 
 
1 66 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 grief, or the shriek of mental anguish, forever 
 ringing out from the homeless throng, as some 
 family tie was suddenly sundered by the demon 
 of want or the victory of the suicide. They 
 looked upon the popular distress only to indulge 
 a shallow speculation upon the reigning brutality 
 and vice, and to call for and obtain the enactment 
 of yet more stringent laws, by which they hoped 
 to stifle the voice and paralyze the action of insen- 
 sate misery. 
 
 The moral precept, sacred to the early admin- 
 istrations of the Republic, which recognized the 
 equality of all men, had degenerated into a sneer, 
 and the very semblance of administrative justice 
 had disappeared from the forums early consecrated 
 to the equal dispensations under the laws. If the 
 distinct classes ever came in contact, it was only 
 to increase the wretchedness and degradation of 
 the masses; for the rich sought this association 
 only to indulge the basest passions of their nature. 
 
 In this particular the moneyed classes of America 
 were not worse than were their European proto- 
 types, ere yet the equality of men had become a 
 doo-ma of moral government. The vices of the 
 day were simply the result of a relapse born of 
 circumstances that human foresight had failed to 
 detect. 
 
 It would seem no more than simple justice, that, 
 while a man may be made accountable for his 
 wrongful acts by the rules of social organization, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 67 
 
 he should not be condemned for the innate base- 
 ness of his nature, nor punished except by the 
 infliction of that restraint which the pubHc security 
 has a right to exact. He was in no sense a party 
 to its original constitution, else mio^ht its dictates 
 have impelled to a course exemplary in the highest 
 degree. By the normal exercise of his selfish pro- 
 pensities, for instance, an individual may become 
 the incarnation of all that is vicious, of all that is 
 thoroughly wicked and depraved ; and that such 
 is not the history, in brief, of more than half of 
 mankind, is owing to the circumstance that the 
 exercise of the selfish instincts of every other 
 interpose an insuperable barrier to the overshad- 
 owing advancement of any one. Luxury and vice 
 are convertible terms, and human nature is only 
 the instrument by which their mutual correspond- 
 ence, or inter-relation, is made discernible. Human 
 sympathy is but the creature of education and 
 enlicrhtened observation. It ever erects its hab- 
 itation upon the ruins of moral depravity ; but, let 
 vice regain his empire, through the suspension 
 of enlightened sentiment, and he quickly razes 
 this rival fabric, and robs the human heart of all 
 those emotions which were, before, the safeguard 
 of virtue, and the champions of every human 
 friendship. 
 
 The employer class of the country had reached 
 this stage. Its luxury was all that wealth could 
 supply ; its vices all that have hitherto marked the 
 
1 68 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 degradation and decline of races and peoples. Its 
 sensibilities had become blunted by a long course 
 of sensual gratification, and its members reveled 
 in their folly, oblivious of everything save only 
 their selfish enjoyments. 
 
 The class which has been desiofnated the em- 
 ployed was made up of a compound of nationalities 
 and races, whose several peculiarities were thrown 
 into relief by the exigencies of a life which called 
 forth every attribute of their several natures — all 
 their race and national characteristics. Of this 
 human admixture, perhaps the most wretched 
 element was that made up of the native-born 
 American citizens. Their loftier aims, their higher 
 ambition, and their innate sense of intellectual 
 superiority, engendered by an hereditary instinct 
 of independence and command, could illy sustain 
 the squalor into which they were cast. The same 
 condition did not press with equal severity upon 
 those who had sprung from the dregs of European 
 society. 
 
 Theirs was a condition of frenzy, disappointment 
 and disgust ; but beyond all these in point of 
 intensity arose the apprehension that their country, 
 their common inheritance, was in the throes of dis- 
 solution. Whithersoever they turned, they found 
 only wretchedness and discontent, and open infrac- 
 tion of every municipal enactment. 
 
 How those idle thousands subsisted from day 
 to day was a problem too dark for solution ; and 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 69 
 
 if the secret of their existence were laid bare, it 
 would reveal the extreme of human endurance 
 and human suffering, — a picture from the contem- 
 plation of which the ordinary sympathies of man 
 must turn appalled. 
 
 How many times the struggle of pride and 
 virtue against the encroachments of penury and 
 the allurements that urge to degradation, may 
 have terminated in dashing another, and still an- 
 other, star from the moral firmament ; how often 
 accumulated appeals to the sympathies of their 
 kind were answered by the scotf of the powerful, 
 or by their indifference ; how often the temples 
 of Justice were profaned by the abuse of power, 
 and the perversion of the laws ; how often the will 
 of the voluptuary, alone, may have sprung the 
 prison bolts behind the objects of his apprehen- 
 sion, as they entered, or even brought these latter 
 to the scaffold, — these are queries which admit 
 of large affirmative response, but which it is 
 neither profitable to unravel nor elevating to con- 
 template. They were the inseparable conse- 
 quences of the wide-spread moral ruin of the 
 time ; the indicia of the inherent putridity of the 
 ^whole social system. 
 
 The picture presented here is more particularly 
 applicable to the cities of New England. It was 
 estimated, at this period, that fifteen per cent, of 
 the whole white laboring population were con- 
 stantly employed ; twenty-five per cent, were 
 
I/O LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 transiently employed, and the remaining- sixty per 
 cent, were not known to follow any lucrative occu- 
 pation. 
 
 Not only the cities, but the country districts, 
 were teeming with an avaricious Chinese popula- 
 tion. These latter, without family ties, and living 
 in communities, were, in proportion to their wants, 
 by far better protected, better housed and fed, 
 than any other element of the laboring or em- 
 ployed class. Their earnings were incredibly 
 meagre in proportion to the value of their labor, 
 but more than ample to supply their modest fare. 
 They were generally employed in all departments 
 of trade and manufacture, and in many instances 
 had worked themselves up to the status of the 
 employer class. 
 
 Always industrious and faithful in whatever ca- 
 pacity employed, prosperity marked the sphere of 
 their occupation. Many of them manifested the 
 disposition to intermarry with the daughters of 
 New England, and in several instances such mar- 
 riages were consummated. But the prominent 
 men among them, while they indulged the luxury 
 of American wives themselves, were wont to frown 
 upon a like inclination among the masses of their 
 countrymen, and spared no effort to discourage 
 and obstruct the tendency to race assimilation. 
 
 The cause of their unwillinofness to countenance 
 this most reasonable disposition on the part of their 
 people at large, althouo-h difficult to fathom at that 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I/I 
 
 time, becomes plainly manifest in the light of sub- 
 sequent events. New England was teeming with 
 marriageable, but unmarried women, and should 
 the intermarriage of the races become epidemic, 
 it would surely very seriously afi'ect the enterprise 
 in hand. Even the Coolie, whose patriotism is so 
 intense that he is not satisfied to rest even in 
 death unless his bones are deposited in the hal- 
 lowed soil of his mother country, might, under the 
 influence of his Caucasian wife, refuse to strike 
 when the moment for action should arrive. It 
 were, therefore, far better for the cause to post- 
 pone this felicitous condition until after the work 
 of conquest should have been determined. 
 
 The institution of marriage amongf the white 
 laborers had well nicfh fallen into disuse. There 
 was no settled purpose among the idle thousands, 
 and no prospects upon which to base a purpose of 
 any enterprise, however unassuming. Of course, 
 the marriage relation, which presupposes the ac- 
 cumulation of responsibilities, was an impossibility 
 in view of circumstances like these, if we also 
 credit the generation with the ordinary reasoning 
 faculties of civilized man. But in this respect the 
 record stamps the evidence of their rational dis- 
 crimination. Very few marriages were contracted 
 even among those of the white laborers who were 
 still fortunate enough to find employment. Their 
 tenure of occupation was far too uncertain to war- 
 
172 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 rant the risk of a responsibility that might crush 
 them at last. 
 
 But among the idle and destitute all was chaos. 
 Theirs was a struggle for existence, in the prose- 
 cution of which all order, all system and every 
 ceremony were alike disregarded. There was no 
 time to be devoted to, that sentimental play of the 
 affections incident to matrimonial preliminaries, 
 while the unromantic circumstance of actual want 
 made the physical man a slave to other and meaner 
 emotions. Marriages among the idle and desti- 
 tute were, therefore, clearly impossible, and had 
 entirely ceased. 
 
 Throughout the Middle and Western States, the 
 industries of which are, on the whole, similar to 
 those of New England, the race controversy and 
 its consequences differed from those described in 
 decree rather than in kind. The Coolie element, 
 although a large proportion of the laboring popu- 
 lation, was not so overwhelming as to precipitate 
 that degree of distress prevalent in New England. 
 
 But even there the direction of events was un- 
 mistakable. The line of demarcation between the 
 employer and the employed was every day be- 
 coming more clearly defined. Cheap labor was 
 insidiously working itself into popularity, and its 
 reception was marked by a growing disposition 
 among its patrons tending to the indulgence of 
 luxurious indolence. The army of "tramps" was 
 every day obtaining recruits from the displaced 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 73 
 
 workmen. These traveled about from place to 
 place, with no fixed object in view beyond that of 
 obtaining the means of subsistence, and this was 
 generally furnished by the charitable people to 
 whom they applied. They did not, as a rule, 
 indulge in either theft or robbery, save that they 
 carried on a system of reprisals against the Coolies, 
 whom they invariably despoiled of money, or 
 other valuables, whenever favorable opportunity 
 offered. 
 
 During the period that the Eastern, Middle and 
 Western States were thus gradually bending to 
 the pressure of circumstances, the Southern States 
 were subjected to a far deeper humiliation. The 
 industries peculiar to those States, their climate 
 and productions, were eminently congenial to the 
 wants, the habits and the constitution of the Mon- 
 golian. Of a common tendency with these causes 
 was the insatiable demand for Coolie labor in all 
 the rice, sugar and cotton-producing States, ever 
 since the earliest stages of the immiorration: hence 
 it was, that during the whole period of its contin- 
 uance into the States east of the Rocky Moun- 
 tains, two-thirds of all the immigrants gravitated 
 to the Southern States. 
 
 The Negro, heretofore the sole dependence of 
 the planter, faded before this invasion, and gradu- 
 ally, but rapidly and noiselessly disappeared — 
 perished, it seemed, by the very fact of contact, 
 and scattered, none knew whither, beyond the 
 
174 LAST DAYS OF THE REPL'BLIC. 
 
 fact that many of them were transported back to 
 the home of their ancestors. At this period it 
 was estimated that out of the four millions of 
 Blacks that were emancipated through the war 
 of the rebellion, less than half a million remained. 
 
 But the places vacated by that cheerful, indolent 
 people, were quickly and effectually supplied by 
 the sober, industrious Coolie; and here as else- 
 where, under their skill and industry, the wealth 
 of the country rapidly increased. 
 
 The people of the Southern States have always 
 been remarkable for the very exaggerated notion 
 they entertain of the respectability of the profes- 
 sion of arms; and notwithstanding the complicated 
 disaster of their rebellious struggle of 1 86 1-4, yet, 
 as a people, they never lost one whit of their 
 vaunted martial spirit. On the contrary, it hap- 
 pened that immediately upon the restoration of 
 their civil rights, they began the unprofitable task 
 of educating their young men in the tactics of war. 
 
 This movement was first instituted by detach- 
 ments, or societies, under various names, as "Ku- 
 Klux," "Rifle Clubs," "Regulators," etc., etc. 
 These several bodies, at various times, constituted 
 themselves the conservators of the public peace; 
 and in such cases furnished the rules of conduct 
 to be observed as well as a somewhat emphatic 
 procedure for their observance; thus not only sup- 
 plying the place of State militia, but something 
 else besides. The State militia, proper, they did 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 75 
 
 not feel disposed to organize. It was a State 
 institution, having the approval of the Federal 
 government, and hence they looked upon it with 
 distrust. In time, however, their hostility to the 
 Union became sufficiently allayed to induce them 
 to blend their various private military organiza- 
 tions into companies of State militia; and having 
 taken this step they became further ambitious 
 to make their militia particularly imposing and 
 excellent. 
 
 To what extent this military ambition might 
 have been indulged it were useless to inquire, as 
 the movement was suddenly interrupted by a most 
 unexpected and very extraordinary circumstance. 
 This was nothing less than the assumption of the 
 reins of the State government of three powerful 
 States by their Mongolian citizens. They had 
 availed themselves of their great numbers and 
 the high privilege of American citizenship; and at 
 3. general election voted themselves into power. 
 
 Upon this result being declared, the first impulse 
 of the deposed rulers of these States was to com- 
 pel the acknowledgment of their superior claims, 
 by turning their splendid military organization 
 ao-ainst these insolent Coolies. True, these latter 
 considerably outnumbered them ; but that circum- 
 stance they regarded as of but little importance, 
 if the contest were to be decided by force. Two 
 months must yet elapse before their term.s of office 
 should expire, and provisions might yet be made 
 
\j6 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 to avert the combined disaster and diso-race. 
 Extensive military preparations were, therefore, 
 inaugurated throughout many of the Southern 
 States, several of which saw in this result a fore- 
 ciist of that which awaited themselves, and at a 
 period by no means remote. 
 
 It was just possible, but by no means certain, 
 that the Chinese would have retired from the dan- 
 gerous position which they had assumed, at this 
 juncture, had it not been for the affirmative 
 promptings of the Federal government. But the 
 attitude of the administration toward this contro- 
 versy admitted of no doubt. It was clearly inti- 
 mated that, should any faction, or any class or 
 combination, of the citizens of any State, attempt, 
 by any riotous or unlawful means, to resist the due 
 execution and enforcement of the laws, by resist- 
 ing the due installation of duly elected officers, 
 who should have duly qualified, to fill any office 
 within such or any State, it would become the 
 imperative duty of the United States to suppress 
 all such treasonable practices, by all the power of 
 the army and navy of the United States. 
 
 In the face of this manifesto, there was nothing 
 left for the disaffected States but submission. This 
 they did, but in a manner to proclaim their disgust. 
 By pre-arrangement, on the last day of the term, 
 the various officers assembled at the Executive 
 chamber, in the several States, whence they 
 were escorted to their homes by military proces- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I 7/ 
 
 sions, made up of their matchless militia. These 
 marched, with arms reversed, to the sound of 
 muffled drums, while the national emblem, draped 
 in mourning, floated at half-mast from every flag- 
 staff. The militia then disbanded. 
 
 The new incumbents entered upon the duties 
 of their offices without ceremony or parade. By 
 retaining the clerical forces of their predecessors 
 in the several offices, they were enabled to des- 
 patch the routine of government without difficulty. 
 
 But the shock to the feelings of the sanguine 
 aristocrats of the South was too severe to be 
 borne without some further demonstration. Thou- 
 sands converted their property into money, and 
 many of them did so at enormous sacrifices, in 
 order to escape from the scene of their common 
 humiliation. Those who found themselves amply 
 provided with means embarked for Europe, whence 
 they never returned. Those who retained their 
 landed possessions lost nothing of material value 
 by the change, and were poorer only in the loss 
 of that gratification which they had before in- 
 dulged, of feeling secure in the indefinite pos- 
 session of wealth, independence, authority and 
 respectability in a land of plenty. 
 
 Among the first measures prosecuted by the 
 new government was the re-establishment of the 
 militia. Three Chinese Mandarins, who had under- 
 gone the formalities of naturalization under the 
 laws of the United States, wielded the executive 
 
178 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 powers of three of the Southern States. To these 
 men and their co-equals in rank, alone, were 
 entrusted the secrets of the home government. 
 They had long been watching for a pretense to 
 begin the work of placing their countrymen on a 
 war footing, without attracting undue notice, or 
 exciting question or suspicion. The opportunity 
 now offered was quickly seized upon, and the 
 scheme was soon practically under way. 
 
 Under existin^r regulations, the limitation fixed 
 upon the numerical strength of the regular militia 
 of those States, prevented its reorganization upon 
 a scale sufficiently grand to suit the purposes of 
 the new government. The law was accordingly 
 amended, by striking out all terms of limitation. 
 
 However imposing may have been the militia 
 force disbanded, at the time of the ascendency ol 
 the Mongolian to power within those States, that 
 which now supplied its place was hardly less so. 
 What the Mongolian lacked in point of personal 
 appearance, was more than supplied in point ol 
 numerical force. Their white fellow-citizens, who 
 had meanwhile watched their military prepara- 
 tions, indulged their mingled contempt and aver- 
 sion by the most derisory strictures upon the com- 
 inof militia. 
 
 But the Chinese character is completely impreg- 
 nable to the assaults of ridicule and sarcasm. 
 These are weapons the use of which the Asiatic 
 neither fears nor understands. His matter-of-fact 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 79 
 
 character discovers no reflection nor severity in 
 their use, unless it may be that he discovers a 
 reprehensible or unbecoming levity upon the part 
 of the satirist. In this case, however, the critics 
 were compelled to moderate their strictures upon 
 witnessing the first military parade of a body of 
 several thousand of the new militia. 
 
 Here was a people whom they had regarded as 
 immeasurably below themselves in every respect, 
 but particularly in their presumed ignorance of the 
 art of war, executing all the evolutions of a diffi- 
 cult military drill and the manual of arms with an 
 ease and regularity unsurpassed by even a body oi 
 veteran soldiers. The military training which 
 they had undergone at home had remained their 
 own secret abroad. The toilingf Coolie had never 
 appreciated the importance of the art of marching, 
 countermarching, wheeling, etc., to which he had 
 been trained ; and after he had emigrated, if he 
 bestowed a thought upon his military education at 
 all, it was but to reflect that if it had any special 
 purpose in the minds of those by whom it was 
 instituted, that purpose had no longer anything to 
 do with him. But he was pleased at this time to 
 resume the training of his )-outh. It reanimated 
 the associations of his past life — the scenes of his 
 native land, which were fast becoming clouded by 
 the lapse of years. 
 
 But it produced another effect yet more re- 
 markable. The general tone of the Southern 
 
l8o LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC 
 
 society toward the Chinese began suddenly to- 
 change. The admiration of the Southern people 
 for the profession of arms was suddenly extended 
 to embrace, in a measure, the people who mani- 
 fested this extraordinary aptitude for a military 
 education. They had had no information of the 
 extent to which a military training had been car- 
 ried on in China ; in fact, no information that mili- 
 tary tactics were any part of the education of the 
 the Coolie. They had heretofore looked upon 
 him as a being less human in any attributes of 
 mind than in form ; capable of tilling the soil, and, 
 generally, of performing the routine of manual 
 labor, but wholly incapable of understanding or 
 appreciating the elevated aims, purposes and en- 
 joyments of the Caucasian — at the very summit 
 of which they had placed the cultivation of a mili- 
 tary spirit. 
 
 But the Monofolian had taught them a whole- 
 some lesson, and now they began to respect him. 
 He taught them — first, that he was capable of in- 
 dependent thought and action, in voting himself 
 into power ; secondly, that he was capable of ex- 
 ercising sound and cultivated judgment, as mani- 
 fested in the administration of the governments of 
 the States under his control ; and, thirdly, that he 
 had proven himself their equal in whatever ca- 
 pacity of life he was placed, and their superior in 
 powers of endurance. It was an exceedingly 
 nauseous admission to be compelled to assimilate ; 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. l8l 
 
 but it was unavoidable. There were the facts in 
 most imposing array. Whatsoever the Mongolian 
 had undertaken, whether it involved the play of 
 the mental faculties or the labor of his hands, he 
 had achieved ; and as much as he had accom- 
 plished must be subtracted from the sum of their 
 own exclusive qualifications in striking a balance 
 between the races. It looked as though the scale 
 were about to tip to the other side. 
 
 It was only an unanswerable argument like the 
 one supplied that could have produced the effect 
 that now became noticeable. The Mongolian had 
 proved himself a soldier, a statesman, a politician, 
 a philosopher and a laborer. There was no longer 
 a reason why he should not be recognized in the 
 brotherhood of men. The wealthy ones among 
 them were no longer excluded from the society of 
 their white fellow-citizens ; but the newly-con- 
 ceded honors sat, indeed, very lightly upon their 
 heads. But the reaction which now set in became 
 as marked as the race hostility had been before. 
 
 The poor white man being the exception in the 
 Southern States, there was nothing here in the 
 way of suffering and wretchedness that could 
 compare with the distress which prevailed at the 
 North. The white men, as a rule, did not pretend 
 to labor for a livelihood, at the South. In the 
 producing districts, the very nature of the produc- 
 tions and their attendant conditions necessitated a 
 
1 82 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 species of labor for which the Caucasian is totally 
 unfitted. 
 
 The only white laborers that might be thought 
 to sufficiently maintain their class representation 
 at the South were confined to the cities ; but as 
 the Southern cities are devoted more to trade 
 than to manufactures, the numbers of these were 
 comparatively few. Hence it was that the lower 
 class was almost exclusively of the Coolie element. 
 Occasionally, a detachment of the wandering 
 "tramps" from the Middle States found its way 
 into the Southern districts; but there the "tramp" 
 was regarded with so much suspicion, and so con- 
 tinually harassed by the operation of the vagrancy 
 laws, that this haunt never became popular. 
 
 The growing sentiment of amity which was be- 
 ginning to spring up between the races, to which 
 reference has been made, was destined never to 
 fructify. Beneath it all was that spirit of race 
 antipathy which, while it might be schooled to 
 concede toleration, would never permit the con- 
 cession to stoop to practical equality. 
 
 Indeed, as we look upon the whole picture 
 which was now presented, we can only wonder 
 that the crisis was so long deferred. That it was 
 so is the most convincing proof of the all- pervad- 
 ing patriotism of the people. They had confidence 
 in one another, and confidence in their institutions. 
 They felt that a blight of adverse circumstances 
 had almost unconsciously fastened itself upon the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 83 
 
 pursuits of the people all over the Union, which it 
 would require the utmost skill and judgment, on 
 the part of the government, to remove. They 
 knew that the fountain of their laws and policy 
 was sullied by petty partisan broils, which, for a 
 brief time yet, might engage that attention which 
 was due to matters of a purely public nature ; but 
 they never doubted the readiness of their fellow- 
 citizens to throw aside matters of mere partisan 
 feeling, for the purpose of uniting upon measures 
 of common utility, whenever the necessity of such 
 action should be made manifest. 
 
 But the time for action had come, and brought 
 not the expected mediation ; and yet the people 
 hesitated. They had forgotten that the altered 
 circumstances of the country might have effected 
 a change in the powers and sentiments of the 
 people, themselves. They neglected to study the 
 signs and tendencies of the times, — to read 
 the characteristics of the American people of the 
 period by comparison with those that shaped their 
 intercourse of half a century before. They failed 
 to notice, for instance, that the spirit of independ- 
 ence had passed from the press of the country, 
 and that the public journals, now, ever uttered the 
 sentiments of their patrons ; that public corruption 
 was no longer assailed, nor public nor private vil- 
 lainies, in any sphere of life, any longer held up to 
 popular execration. They failed to discover that 
 between the antagonistic parties that ruled the 
 
184 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 nation, the basis of mutual opposition had changed; 
 and that it was now, no longer, both contendingf 
 parties against extravagance and corruption, and 
 presenting their several claims to the whole people 
 for their approbation ; but it became a question 
 of both parties against the radical demands of the 
 people, and the submission of their several meas- 
 ures of disguised oppression, for the citizen to 
 select the least obnoxious. 
 
 It is true that the sin of the Administration 
 was, on this account, the greater. It, directly, 
 betrayed the sacred confidence of the masses. 
 It had the power to check the invasion in time. 
 It saw the growing misery of the people, knew 
 the cause, and if endowed with ordinary foresight 
 must have foreseen the final result. But it pan- 
 dered to a mean spirit of partisan recrimination; 
 pandered to every influence that promised either, 
 or both, parties, however remotely, to promote a 
 partisan aim. It conspired with the enemies of 
 freedom, and blindly entertained at the national 
 banquets the traditional foes of popular govern- 
 ment, and aided and promoted, (involuntarily, it is 
 true, but not, on that account, innocently,) the 
 scheme of subversion. In short, it ignorantly 
 despoiled the Caucasian race of its proud inheri- 
 tance of a continent, and handed it over to an 
 unsympathetic stranger. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 A Picture that Became a Reality Further Political Victo- 
 ries AT the South South Carolina is Vanquished, and 
 
 Forces a Crisis Preparations for War The Whole 
 
 South in Arms The Coolies Equal to the Occasion 
 
 Factions The Battle of Charleston ^Events that Fol- 
 lowed The Mongolians Raise the Standard of China 
 
 The Viceroy of America A War of Conquest The 
 
 Struggle Inaugurated. 
 
 In 1854, one George W. Hall was convicted in 
 California of murder, upon the testimony of Chi- 
 nese witnesses. His case was appealed to the 
 Supreme Court, which reversed the judgment of 
 the Court below, for error, in admitting the testi- 
 mony of Chinamen to go to the jury. This ruling 
 was quite in accord with the statute then in force; 
 but, Chief Justice Murray, who rendered the de- 
 cision, intimated that even in a doubtful case — 
 which this was not — public policy would still re- 
 quire that the courts should exclude the testimony 
 of Chinese witnesses in cases where the ripfhts of 
 white citizens were involved. In his decision he 
 proceeded to picture a contingent liability that, in 
 his judgment, could not fail to work ruin and 
 disaster to the Commonwealth. The views ex- 
 pressed in this opinion were the views entertained 
 
1 86 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 by every American citizen at that date; and the 
 difference of sentiment then and now will serve 
 to show to what extremes a whole people may be 
 schooled by circumstances and the lapse of a few 
 decades. 
 
 The Chief Justice had no thought that the time 
 should ever come when the premises which he 
 had conceived should be actually presented in the 
 United States. His picture was intended simply 
 as a figure, to illustrate a principle. But now, 
 after the lapse of less than half a century, that 
 hypothetical condition was established ; and it 
 remains to be seen whether his deduction will be 
 faithful to his premises, in the logic of actual ex- 
 perience. He says: "The same rule that would 
 admit them to testify would admit them to all the 
 equal rights of citizenship, and we might soon see 
 them at the polls, in the jury-box, upon the bench^ 
 and in our legislative halls. 
 
 " This is not a speculation which exists in the 
 excited and overheated imagination of the pa- 
 triot and statesman, but it is an actual and present 
 dano^er. 
 
 "The anomalous spectacle of a distinct people, 
 living in our community, recognizing no laws of 
 this State except through necessity, bringing with 
 them their prejudices and national feuds, in which 
 they indulge, in open violation of law ; whose 
 mendacity is proverbial ; a race of people whom 
 Nature has marked as inferior, and who are incap- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 87 
 
 able of progress or intellectual development be- 
 yond a certain point, as their history has shown ; 
 differing in language, opinions, color, and physical 
 conformation ; between whom and ourselves Na- 
 ture has placed an impassable difference, is now 
 presented, and for them is claimed not only the 
 right to swear away the life of a citizen, but the 
 further privilege of participating with us in admin- 
 istering the affairs of our government." 
 
 And all this had come to pass, not only in Cali- 
 fornia, but in the East and South as well. Some 
 years had elapsed since the governments of the 
 States of Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi had 
 been transferred to the hands of their Mongolian 
 citizens, and a few years later the States of Ala- 
 bama and Georgia were subjected to a similar 
 control ; and now, at the end of another brief 
 period of years, the ballot had declared a like 
 result in North and South Carolina. 
 
 The fall of x\labama and Georsfia occasioned 
 but little comment, considered in connection with 
 the importance of the event. The people had 
 looked for this turn in their affairs, knowing that 
 the Mongolian power was numerically sufficient 
 tor this purpose whenever it should be concen- 
 trated for that one object. 
 
 The popular discontent, which under more sud- 
 den provocation might have been sufficient to 
 incite to acts of violence, was so neutralized by 
 
l88 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 anticipation that these two States bowed to the 
 decree without even a formal protest. 
 
 But now the same question was to be passed 
 upon by a State government of a different mold. 
 
 What Massachusetts has been amongf the States 
 of New England, South Carolina has ever been 
 among her Southern sisters — a species of dicta- 
 tress. Her fanaticism and her patriotism are alike 
 those of a section rather than merely of a State ; 
 and when her statesmen have spoken, whether at 
 home or in the halls of Congress, they have ut- 
 tered the sentiments of the whole Southern peo- 
 ple, rather than simply those of the people of the 
 State of South Carolina. 
 
 That she belonged to the ill-starred Confeder- 
 acy w^as not for the love of war, nor for the chi- 
 merical advantage of prospective power, but to 
 protect the integrity of her sovereignty as she 
 understood it, and as it was interpreted to her by 
 her great statesmen — and, by the same act, to 
 help maintain the integrity of the Federal com- 
 pact, as she understood it to be. But the conflict 
 of arms settled those questions, and by an adjudi- 
 cation so emphatic that it left not even the power 
 or right of appeal. South Carolina was coerced 
 into compliance under this determination ; but 
 while she acknowledged the convincino- force of 
 the argument employed, she failed to discover its 
 logic. She as implicity believed in the right of a 
 State to exercise any act of sovereignty, not ex- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 89 
 
 pressly limited by the Federal Constitution, at that 
 day as she did when she hurled her armies against 
 the inimitable legions of the North, half a century 
 before. 
 
 She now saw the government of her people 
 about to pass — and she believed, forever — into 
 the hands of a race with whom she believed it 
 impossible for the Caucasian to assimilate and 
 avoid absorbtion and total annihilation. She be- 
 lieved, too, that she had come to interpret cor- 
 rectly the hidden purpose of the Chinese invasion, 
 and that the time for action was at hand. 
 
 The Federal government was, apparently, under 
 the spell of a fascination wrought by the presence 
 of a large corps of high functionaries of the Chinese 
 Empire temporarily resident at Washington. 
 
 Viewing these things, she knew that, unaided, 
 her arm was powerless to check the tide of the 
 Mongolian invasion. She expected, too, that 
 now, as in the past, any protest by herself would 
 receive the most damaging possible interpreta- 
 tion ; that her disloyalty, her insubordination, her 
 spirit of rebellion, would constitute a theme for 
 Congressional discussion. Believing all this, she 
 reasoned that any overt act on her part tending to 
 resist the will of the majority in the matter of the 
 installation of officers, would be promptly recog- 
 nized at Washington by the march of Federal 
 troops into her territory. She understood the 
 
IQO LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 temper of the government, and reasoned well 
 from her premises. 
 
 This was just the end she sought to attain, and 
 with the least possible delay. Time had become 
 eminently material. She saw that eleven States 
 of the Union had passed over to the Mongolian 
 citizens, in only two of which they had not the 
 absolute control, and that it was only the question 
 of a brief time until many others must follow the 
 example of these. 
 
 She saw that the Administration was politically 
 narcotized, and quite incapable of grasping the 
 situation unless stimulated in that direction by the 
 acts of the people. She saw that even extraor- 
 dinary incentives had already failed to rouse to 
 action, and she now proposed to supply a stimulus 
 that would awaken the slumbering energies of the 
 nation. 
 
 She conjectured, and rightly, that the masses, 
 North as well as South, were ripe for revolution, 
 and that the strife, when once precipitated, would 
 soon regfulate itself as to its direction. 
 
 Accordingly, upon proceedings brought for the 
 purpose, the Supreme Court adjudged the election 
 null and void. This result entitled the present 
 incumbents to hold office until their successors 
 should be elected and should qualify ; but no 
 measures were taken for callinof a new election. 
 Proceedings similar to these, and with like result, 
 were had in North Carolina. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I9I 
 
 No sooner had the information of this proceed- 
 ing reached Washington, and been confirmed, than 
 the President issued his proclamation declaring the 
 States of North and South Carolina in a state of 
 insurrection, and ordering a suspension of the 
 State governments. Military Governors were ap- 
 pointed, who, wnth ten thousand regular troops — 
 more than half the infantry branch of the whole 
 army, at that date — were dispatched to restore 
 order, and assume the reins of the State govern- 
 ments until the rio^hts of the various contendine 
 classes therein should be adjusted by Congress. 
 
 The Governors so constituted were clothed with 
 the most absolute powers, — extending even to the 
 suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the 
 power to arrest and imprison upon suspicion. 
 
 The rebellious States now mustered their militia 
 to the aggregate number of fift}' thousand men ; 
 thirty thousand of which were dispatched to await, 
 at the frontier of the State, the arrival of the mili- 
 tary Governors, with their escort. 
 
 But the contagion of revolution soon spread, 
 and within thirty days after the President's proc- 
 lamation, the Southern States — except only those 
 in which the Mongolian element was supreme — 
 were in open rebellion, and mustering their forces 
 for the impending conflict. This rebellion, how- 
 ever, was against only so much of the Federal 
 government as accorded civil rights to the Mon- 
 
192 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 golian ; with all else the people would have been 
 satisfied. 
 
 But, at this juncture, an incident occurred, which 
 complicated the difficulty, and gave to the war its 
 true character. 
 
 In the States of Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, 
 Alabama, and Georgia, the Mongolian administra- 
 tions not only refused to co-operate with the other 
 States, but the militia, which, it will be remem- 
 bered, was made up of Chinese soldiers, had 
 received orders to suppress all riotous or treason- 
 able gatherings, and to maintain the supremacy 
 of the laws. 
 
 The white inhabitants of these States, havino- 
 determined to support their white fellow-citizens 
 of the whole South, had no sooner learned that 
 the Carolinas had declared in favor of State Sov- 
 ereignty and white supremacy, than they resolved 
 to come to their support, and immediately began 
 to arm and form themselves into military bodies. 
 But, now, for the first time, they were made to 
 feel as well as to see the deep humiliation of their 
 position. The Mongolian Governors of those 
 States, on the same day, issued their proclama- 
 tions, couched in the same language, refusing to 
 aid, counsel, or support the revolutionary party, 
 commanding all armed bodies of men to disperse, 
 and instructing the militia to preserve order; and 
 to that end to use whatever force might be nec- 
 essary. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 93 
 
 The revolutionary party failing to take notice 
 of the proclamations, the militia, to the number 
 of two hundred thousand men, in the five States 
 named, were called out and immediately pro- 
 ceeded to the execution of their orders. This so 
 incensed the whites that they immediately pro- 
 ceeded to organize the white militia, and repelled 
 the Mongolian, or State militia, when, in a few 
 instances, the latter presumed to execute their 
 orders. Thus it was that the race struo-^le beofan; 
 a war of races, rather than a revolution, ensued. 
 
 Upon the arrival at the boundary of North 
 Carolina of the military Governors of the two 
 Carolinas and their warlike escort, they found 
 waiting, to receive them, a militia force of twenty 
 thousand men. This army, the Federal General 
 did not deem it prudent to engage; and so, going 
 into camp, beyond the border, he telegraphed to 
 Washington for further instructions. 
 
 While matters were in this anomalous condition 
 between the State and Federal authorities, the 
 Mongolians throughout the two Carolinas were 
 actively at work arming, and forming themselves 
 into military companies, under the instructions of 
 emissaries from the Imperial deputation at Wash- 
 ington. 
 
 Cat-like, in all their hostile movements, in this 
 one they excelled even themselves, in their pre- 
 vious adventures; and, without attracting very 
 
 general observation, had succeeded in placing 
 13 
 
194 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 themselves in a most dangerously hostile attitude 
 in all parts of these States. They proceeded, in 
 great numbers, to the Capitals of both States 
 during the last days of the term of office of the 
 present incumbents; and, on the first day of the 
 new term the officers elect, at the head of over- 
 whelming forces of their countrymen, seized the 
 archives of the State governments, the public 
 offices and public buildings, and formally installed 
 the Mongolian officers elect. 
 
 On the same day, the new Governors issued 
 their proclamations, similar in most respects to 
 those issued by the Mongolian Governors of the 
 five States already mentioned, declaring martial 
 law and calling upon all good citizens to arm and 
 report for immediate service to their respective 
 commanders, whom they designated, and who 
 were appointed the officers of the new militia. 
 The white militia was declared to be an unlawful 
 and riotous assemblage, and commanded to dis- 
 perse. 
 
 Columbia, S. C, was soon invested by fifty 
 thousand Mongolian troops, and these were now 
 constituted the State militia, while everywhere 
 throughout the State the Coolies were arming, 
 and assembling at designated points. 
 
 The deposed Governor of South Carolina, 
 having escaped from the Capital, fled to Charles- 
 ton, at which point he proceeded to re-establish 
 the State government. This city was strongly 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 95 
 
 garrisoned by the white militia. From this posi- 
 tion he issued his proclamation, in effect, that one 
 hundred thousand Asiatic citizens of the State of 
 South Carolina were now in open rebellion against 
 the State government, and commanding the militia 
 to assemble, to the number of fifty thousand men, 
 forthwith, and take instructions for the promotion 
 of the public safety and the restoration of public 
 order. 
 
 The Mongolian Governors of the Carolinas, 
 resolved not to be outdone in the matter of 
 strategy, convened their Legislatures, and under 
 their auspices, a call was made upon the President 
 for Federal aid to assist the State authority in 
 suppressing the white rebellion. As yet, the 
 Federal government was disposed to co-operate 
 with the Mongolian faction; and perceiving that 
 the latter was in the possession of the State 
 archives and the public buildings, and hence, that 
 the will of the majority, as expressed at the late 
 elections, was vindicated, in both States, recalled 
 the military Governors heretofore appointed — but 
 upon whom, peradventure, the honors never hap- 
 pened to rest — and instructed the troops which 
 had been placed at their disposal, to proceed in 
 equal detachments to the respective Capitals of the 
 rebellious States, and, by acting in concert with 
 the constitutional Governors, to maintain the su- 
 premacy of the laws of the United States and the 
 constitutional rights of all the citizens thereof. 
 
196 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 This recoofnition of the Chinese taction by the 
 President of the United States, settled the last 
 pretensions of the deposed Governors of these 
 States to re-establish themselv^es in that capacity ; 
 but it by no means tranquilized the dissensions 
 among the people. 
 
 The whole South was in open insurrection 
 against the Chinese rule ; and some of the New 
 England States were nearly so. The Federal 
 government feeling itself, as it believed, called 
 upon to maintain the integrit}' of the Constitution 
 as well as of the treaty stipulations, which it had 
 contracted, and more or less influenced by the 
 Imperial delegation at Washington, was disposed 
 to support the claims of the r^Iongolians. 
 
 The partisan broils in the United States Con- 
 gress were now, for the hrst time in half a 
 century, suspended, and the representatives of the 
 people were compelled to grapple with a revolu- 
 tion which their own folly and weakness had fos- 
 tered and encouraged. 
 
 Three conflicting sentiments, or class interests, 
 were now before the people, supported, in each 
 instance, by an armed soldiery, nerved for a 
 struggle, from which all could not reasonabl\- 
 hope to emerge with victory. There must be 
 submission from some two to the other, and it 
 was clearly evident from the bitter, manifest hos- 
 tility that characterized the principal actors, that 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 1 97 
 
 the pending differences were not to be settled by 
 compromise. 
 
 The first of these was represented by the white 
 inhabitants of the South, about three-fourths of the 
 inhabitants of the States of New England, and a 
 large following elsewhere throughout the Middle 
 and Western States. This embraced more than 
 three-fourths of the white population of the United 
 States. The second was the Asiatic element, 
 having a representation of about six millions of 
 men, in the absolute control of the whole Pacific 
 Coast States, a heavy preponderance in the 
 Southern States, and largely represented else- 
 where throughout the Union. The third, and 
 last, was the Federal government, with a follow- 
 ing that might be very powerful to purchase a 
 peace, if such were obtainable for gold, but such, 
 also, as has never conquered a peace in the whole 
 history of the world. 
 
 The first demanded the expulsion of the Asiatics 
 from America, with no other condition than a lim- 
 itation of the time within which their embarkation 
 should begin, and the rate at which it should be 
 conducted. A short time before, they would have 
 been satisfied to retain the complement now in 
 the country, provided they should be deprived 
 of the right of citizenship ; but now, that they felt 
 the strength of their cause, they became more 
 •exacting, and clamored for total extirpation. 
 
 The second element demanded the strict ob- 
 
198 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 servance. on the part of the United States, of their 
 treaty stipulations with the Emperor of China, as 
 also of the Act of Congress entitled "An Act to 
 amend the naturalization laws of the United States, 
 and for other purposes," under which they were 
 clothed with the prerogative of citizenship ; and 
 they further demanded the right to the full and 
 free enjoyment of whatsoever privileges the exer- 
 cise of the prerogative of citizenship might confer. 
 
 In obedience to the proclamation of the deposed 
 Governor of South Carolina, the white militia rap- 
 idly assembled at Charleston, which was now 
 constituted the basis of their operations. 
 
 Meanwhile, the Federal troops, to the number 
 of five thousand men, reached Columbia, where 
 they found fifty thousand Asiatics under arms, 
 and as many more awaiting the issuance of arms 
 and equipments. With this force, the Mongolian 
 Governor declared his purpose to crush the rebel- 
 lion. The officer in command of the regular 
 troops, in obedience to his orders, united his force 
 with the State militia, and, after a few days spent 
 in preparation, an army of sixty thousand men,, 
 consisting of fifty-five thousand Mongolian or 
 State militia, and five thousand Federal soldiers,, 
 received orders to march against the rioters 
 assembled at Charleston. The white militia, to 
 the number of twenty thousand men, upon 
 receivine information that the combined State 
 and Federal troops were marching against them. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. I99 
 
 advanced without the city, and taking up a favor- 
 able position, awaited their arrival. 
 
 The two armies were soon face to face, within 
 a few miles of Charleston. The commander of the 
 Federal detachment, as ex officio commander of 
 the expedition, immediately despatched his order 
 to the white militia to disperse, and to deliver up 
 the ex- Governor and the commander of the 
 rioters. To this order and demand the latter 
 replied by sending back the messenger, instructed 
 to inform his commander that he would disband 
 his forces "after the last Chinaman in America 
 should be buried, or embarked for China or ." 
 
 The government forces immediately formed in 
 line of battle, with the regular troops on the 
 extreme right, and at some distance from the 
 main line of the State forces. At the extreme 
 left, and to the rear, the commander of the Mon- 
 golian militia took his position, with a reserve 
 often thousand men. The main body of the State 
 forces moved forward to the attack. 
 
 Neither army had provided itself with cannon — 
 the white militia, because they had convinced them- 
 selves that an army of Chinamen could not stand 
 more than a single volley of musketry ; and the 
 Asiatics, because they did not expect any decided 
 resistance. But both armies were quickly unde- 
 ceived. 
 
 The first volley came from the advance line 
 of the white militia, which proved exceedingly 
 
200 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 destructive ; but the State forces, reserving their 
 fire, simply closed up their ranks and advanced at 
 a. double-quick upon the enemy. 
 
 At this point, the regulars were ordered forward 
 to attack the white militia on their left ; but, with 
 one accord, both officers and men refused to fire 
 upon their countrymen. 
 
 The main column of the Asiatics now swept 
 down and concentrated their fire upon the centre 
 of the enemy, broke through their ranks, and 
 succeeded in turning both wings of the army. 
 Following up their advantage, they were merci- 
 lessly slaughtering the now thoroughly disordered 
 masses of the whites ; but the rank and file of the 
 regular troops, no longer able to brook the scene 
 before them, broke through the restraint of those 
 of their officers who sought to prevent them, and 
 engaged the Asiatics in the rear. 
 
 The commander of the State militia, taking in 
 the whole situation, at a glance, ordered his re- 
 serve forward to cut off the regulars. By a rapid 
 movement the reserve gained a position to the 
 left and a little to the rear of that which the regu- 
 lars had advanced, and poured a deadly, oblique 
 fire into their lines. Before the regular troop had 
 recovered from the confusion that was necessarily 
 occasioned, a strong detachment of the attacking 
 column in front, which had formed to resist their 
 further advance, taking advantage of the confu- 
 sion, rushed in a solid column into their shattered 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 20I 
 
 ranks, and by the co-operation of the reserve, 
 which prevented their retreat, killed or captured 
 the entire detachment. 
 
 At the principal point of conflict, the Asiatics 
 were not less successful. The white militia fought 
 with the most determined ferocity. They rallied 
 on either side, and made the most desperate and 
 repeated efforts to effect a junction of the two 
 wings of their army; but the main body of the 
 State troops was thrown between, and the efforts 
 were fruitless. This division, of course, prevented 
 all possible concert of action, and every stand 
 taken, or made, by the struggling divisions was 
 swept down before the impetuous charge and 
 overwhelming numbers of the Asiatics. The 
 slaughter soon became general. 
 
 The white militia, overpowered by superior 
 numbers and opposed by the most consummate 
 military skill, fought to the last, proposing no 
 terms of capitulation and refusing to accept any 
 terms of surrender, and were shot down or bayo- 
 neted in great numbers; so that out of a force of 
 twenty thousand men who marched out of Charles- 
 ton, twenty-four hours before, less than seven 
 thousand survived. The detachment of Federal 
 troops was not more fortunate, for it seems to 
 have suffered complete annihilation. 
 
 The State militia, having disposed of their 
 wounded and buried their dead, marched into 
 Charleston and demanded the surrender of the 
 
202 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 late Governor; but upon the refusal of the city 
 authorities to interest themselves in procuring his 
 surrender, the immediate arrest of the Mayor and 
 City Marshal was ordered, and their removal, to 
 the Capital, for imprisonment. While the prelim- 
 inaries of this command were beingf executed, the 
 ex-Governor presented himself and offered to 
 surrender, upon which occurrence the city officers 
 were released. The victorious militia then took 
 up its line of march for the Capital, leaving a gar- 
 rison of fifteen thousand men, to prevent any 
 further uprising at Charleston; and leaving the 
 city to dispose of the dead and wounded of the 
 white troops as she might elect. 
 
 The first orreat battle of the revolution had 
 been fouofht, and the result was most alarminof 
 and unexpected. At least, eighteen thousand 
 white American citizens had been ruthlesssly mas- 
 sacred. 
 
 Whatever might have been the provocation, 
 there was found no one to justify this terrible 
 sacrifice of life — particularly that the victims were 
 native born Americans, and their adversaries a 
 race alien alike to every sentiment and associa- 
 tion of American life. 
 
 The voice of the people rang from every quar- 
 ter of the Union, demandincr an investiiration of 
 the Charleston massacre. Reprisals upon the 
 Chinese inhabitants of cities far removed from the 
 scene of the late engagement grew, daily, more 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 2O3 
 
 frequent, until the latter were roused to oro-anize 
 for defense in all parts of the Union. 
 
 The pressure of public opinion at length com- 
 pelled Congress to adopt speedy measures for the 
 purpose of obtaining some basis upon which to 
 prosecute any violation of law or order that might 
 be properly authenticated in connection with the 
 Charleston tragedy. 
 
 A committee of Congress was accordingly ap- 
 pointed, and in due time proceeded to Columbia, 
 S. C. After some weeks spent in examination 
 and investigation of the massacre, the committee 
 became satisfied of the atrocity of the massacre, 
 and the unnecessary extent to which it had been 
 prosecuted, and recommended the arrest of the 
 Governor and the commander of the State militia 
 of South Carolina. 
 
 No sooner had the nature of this recommenda- 
 tion been communicated to the latter, than they 
 immediately caused the committee and their at- 
 tendants, as they were about to return to Washing- 
 ton, to be seized and thrown into prison, remind- 
 ing them, as they did so, that martial law was in force 
 in South Carolina. The officer who shordy after- 
 wards presented himself, armed with a warrant, to 
 the commander of the militia, and informed him of 
 his arrest, was yet more grossly outraged, by hav- 
 ing his clothes stripped from his back, and, in that 
 condition, being flogged, at the order of the com- 
 mander, after which he was permitted to depart. 
 
204 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 The conflict, in its true character, was now fairly 
 beo^un. Throuo^hout the whole of the South the 
 Chinese arose simultaneously, seized the torts and 
 arsenals, confiscated all private property readily 
 convertible into army supplies, as well as all the 
 funds of National, State and private banks. In 
 the opposition which they encountered, they in- 
 dulged a most cruel and savage rapacity, by the 
 indiscriminate slauo-hter of the white inhabitants of 
 whatsoever age or sex. They openly disavowed 
 their allegiance to the government of the United 
 States ; and, as if to remove the last suspicion of 
 their purpose from the minds of the people, they 
 raised the standard of China to every eminence, 
 whence they dragged down the national banner. 
 
 The whole territory south of the thirty-seventh 
 parallel of latitude was declared to be a province 
 of the Chinese empire. State subdivisions were 
 no longer to be recognized. Columbia, South 
 Carolina, was constituted the seat of the new gov- 
 ernment, and a Mandarin of high rank was installed 
 as the Viceroy of America, under the Emperor of 
 China. 
 
 So thoroughly had every element of this gigan- 
 tic conspiracy rehearsed its part, and so perfect 
 the subordination of each to its immediate super- 
 ior, that the mere formal feature of the subversion 
 of the South was accomplished without the slight- 
 est clash of authority or conflict of interest among 
 the Mongolians, and without the presence of those 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 2O5 
 
 perilous misunderstandings which so often prove 
 fatal to the execution of the best laid schemes. 
 
 Yet, the practical execution of this scheme, so 
 admirably planned, was by no means unattended 
 by difficulties. The American population of the 
 South imm^ediately organized for resistance. Form- 
 ing themselves into companies, with such arms as. 
 they were enabled to procure they defended with 
 the utmost heroic valor every point of attack. 
 But being vastly outnumbered, poorly armed, and 
 incumbered with the defence, or protection, of their 
 women and children, their opposition was quickly 
 overcome, themselves ruthlessly slaughtered, their 
 children left homeless, to perish of destitution, and 
 their wives and daughters carried off by the sol- 
 diery. Thus, the occupation of the whole South 
 was speedily effected. 
 
 Upon receipt of the information at Washington 
 that the whole Consfressional Committee had been 
 thrown into prison by the Governor of South 
 Carolina, and the almost simultaneous report to 
 the effect that the flag of the Chinese Empire was 
 floating from all the public buildings and the forti- 
 fications of the South, the proclamation of the 
 President was issued, calling out five hundred 
 thousand men for one hundred days' service. 
 
 This was the first popular measure adopted by 
 the government in the period of twenty years. 
 The people began to think that the vigor of bet- 
 ter days was returning to bless the nation with 
 
205 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 contentment and equality again. Their patriotism 
 was aroused at the prospect, and they pressed for- 
 ward at the call of duty. 
 
 Recruiting offices, wherever established, were 
 thronged with applicants, so that within a few 
 weeks an immense army of brave, but inexperi- 
 enced and untrained soldiers, was under arms and 
 distributed to drive back the swarm of Asiatics 
 which was fast pouring into the Middle States and 
 sweeping down every opposition. 
 
 For the first time, it now began to dawn upon 
 the nation at large, that the aim of the Asiatics 
 was, indeed, conquest ; and that, already, the 
 country was in imminent danger. Additional calls 
 for troops were rapidly made, until the whole 
 Republic had assumed the character of a vast 
 encampment. 
 
 The distribution of the hostile elements was 
 particularly unfavorable to the American troops. 
 It was not the relation of the people to an invad- 
 ing army, confined to territorial limits. The hos- 
 tile forces were intreminorled throuo-hout the entire 
 country, save only in those States lying south of 
 the northern boundary line of North Carolina and 
 Tennessee, and east of the Mississippi River, 
 which was wholly in the hands of the Chinese 
 before an American army could be organized; and 
 the whole white population of which, that had es- 
 caped the massacre of the occupation, were either 
 refugees, or prisoners in the hands of the enemy. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 20/ 
 
 In the Middle and Western States, the Ameri- 
 cans were largely in the majority. The Asiatics, 
 in these districts, after a series of engagements, in 
 which they were opposed by equal numbers, were 
 compelled to sue for terms, which were granted. 
 Notwithstanding their high military training, they 
 were totally unable to withstand the incomparable 
 bravery and matchless prowess of the American 
 troops. But their compact military organizations 
 fouofht with stubborn couragfe and ereat judsfnient, 
 so that the victories gained were dearly bought. 
 After a struggle of less than a 3'ear in duration, 
 the strength of the American arms prevailed 
 throughout the Middle and Western States; and 
 three hundred and twenty thousand Asiatics, in 
 several detachments, surrendered themselves as 
 prisoners of war. 
 
 While these States had thus successfully prose- 
 cuted their local struggle, the contest in New 
 England had assumed a most gloomy aspect. 
 New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and 
 Rhode Island were virtually conquered by the 
 Asiatics, some of their chief cities in ashes, their 
 fortifications dismantled, and a victorious army 
 of seven hundred and fifty thousand men prepar- 
 ing to march into Vermont and New York, 
 
 The forces, at this period, under arms, pre- 
 sented, in point of magnitude, the most imposing 
 military establishment that the world has ever 
 witnessed; and perhaps no such spectacle will 
 
208 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 ever again be presented while time shall endure. 
 The main body of the American army, to the 
 number of a million and a half of men, stretched 
 east from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay to the 
 confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. 
 To the northward of this was an additional force 
 of nearly a million of men, who were placed to 
 Cfuard the West from the Pacific Coast invasion, 
 and the Middle States from New England. 
 
 In front of the main body of the Americans was 
 the great bulk of the Mongolian army, numbering, 
 it was estimated, about three and a half millions 
 of armed men, while their force in New Enofland 
 consisted of an army of occupation to the number 
 of five hundred thousand men, besides an aQ-crres- 
 sive force of seven hundred and fifty thousand. 
 Toward the West, the Pacific States were sus- 
 taining a large force, and constantly receiving 
 recruits. 
 
 As we look back, to-day, upon the picture pre- 
 sented at this stage of the conflict, we are enabled 
 to see, more clearly than could the actors in this 
 terrible drama, how desperate was the cause of 
 liberty. Of the Americans, every available sol- 
 dier was under arms, while the aged, the women 
 and children were left, of necessity, to struggle 
 for subsistence and sustain an army of non-com- 
 battant refugees from the South and from New 
 Eno-land, besides. 
 
 Upon three sides, great armies were pressing 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 2O9 
 
 forward, determined to occupy this retreat of the 
 nation's wards and refugees. The fathers, hus- 
 bands and brothers of these, under arms, were 
 still a living wall between those helpless millions 
 and the swarmino; horde that souo;ht to invade 
 their retreat; but the terrible apprehension would 
 not be assuaged, that those brave defenders might 
 be swept away, at any moment, before the march 
 of irresistible numbers. 
 
 The very life of the nation was in deadly peril. 
 Human freedom was indeed struororling^ in the 
 clutch of the destroyer. The country felt its dan- 
 ger, saw the gathering shadows of doom, and 
 called to its kindred beyond the Atlantic to hasten 
 to its aid. 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Eqotpment of the Hostile ForvCEs Trans-Pacific Co-opera- 
 tion Arrival of the Chinese Fleet Naval Engage- 
 ment Importation of Troops and Munitions of War 
 
 The Atlantic Coast Conquest of the Pacific States 
 
 Prevailing Laws, Customs and Institutions Abolished 
 
 The Imperial Edict. 
 
 The act of raising the Imperial standard of 
 China, upon the soil of America, was, by pre-ar- 
 rangement, fixed to mark the inauguration of an 
 aggressive war by the Asiatics. At this signal, 
 the toiling millions of the Southern States were 
 hurried from their various humble and peaceful 
 occupations, and, having arms placed in their 
 hands, were marched, at once, to take possession 
 of fortifications and all depositories of military 
 stores. Owing to the almost entire absence of 
 United States troops, this they were enabled to 
 do against only such opposition as a poorly-armed 
 people, infinitely inferior to themselves in num- 
 bers, and without discipline, were able to offer. 
 
 The Chinese were in possession of the State 
 arms of most of the States which they sought to 
 occupy, added to which, they had immense accu- 
 mulations of arms and munitions of war that had 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 211 
 
 been forwarded from the Pacific Coast during sev- 
 eral years, consigned to the Governors of Louisi- 
 ana, Florida and Mississippi. 
 
 Ere yet the first soldier had been recruited 
 under the President's proclamation, there was an 
 army of more than a million Mongolians ready 
 for the field, throughout the Southern States. 
 Nor did they stop to estimate the number of sol- 
 diers that might be required to meet the contin- 
 gencies likely to arise. They had resolved to 
 crush down every opposition by the weight of 
 overwhelming numbers. They had, practically, 
 an inexhaustible source from which to draw their 
 supplies; and they proceeded to avail themselves 
 of the advantage thus afforded, by transporting 
 the armed millions of China to our shores. 
 
 No sooner had the information been flashed to 
 China, that her faithful subjects had unfurled the 
 flag of empire over the most fertile and product- 
 ive regions of the New World, than she called 
 into active service all the wonderful energies of 
 her empire, to carry to a successful issue the 
 work so daringly begun. 
 
 A fleet of transports, loaded with troops and 
 munitions of war, and flanked by a dozen power- 
 ful ironclads, was immediately despatched to San 
 Francisco, the former to return immediately, with- 
 out cargo, with sufficient escort to secure their 
 safety, and leaving the remaining war vessels to 
 await orders from the Viceroy. 
 
212 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 At the Sandwich Islands, the expedition learned 
 that a fleet of American vessels of war had block- 
 aded the harbor of San Francisco. Thinking it 
 important to avoid the risk of an engagement 
 that might endanger the object of the expedition, 
 the commander altered his course and reached 
 San Diego, there discharged his troops and cargo ; 
 whence half a million of the best troops of the 
 Chinese empire were transferred by rail to rein- 
 force the main army. The transports were then 
 escorted out to sea and placed in charge ot two 
 war vessels, to proceed to China, while the re- 
 maining vessels, excepting only three, which were 
 ordered to cruise off the bay of San Diego, 
 headed for San Francisco. 
 
 The American squadron in these waters con- 
 sisted of two iron-clad frigates and two gun-boats. 
 The enemy having secured the entry to the har- 
 bor by torpedoes, these vessels were unable to 
 effect an entrance, and were compelled to cruise 
 outside the harbor, in maintaining the blockade. 
 
 Seven large ironclads, floating the flag of the 
 Chinese empire, were at length discovered by the 
 Americans, who immediately cleared for action 
 Affecting to despise the apparentl)' insignificant 
 gun-boats, the enemy, as they drew near, deliv- 
 ered their whole fire against the frigates, which the 
 latter returned with energy, for a brief time, but 
 were soon dismantled and unmanageable. But 
 the gun-boats, meanwhile, steamed into the very 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 213 
 
 midst of the Asiatic fleet, dealing their terrible 
 blows under the guns of the enemy. The de- 
 struction of the latter's vessels seemed complete. 
 Five were sunk and two so seriously damaged 
 that they struck their colors and surrendered. An 
 explosion occurring on board one of the gun- 
 boats, she went to the bottom, but not until after 
 the victory was complete. The remaining boat 
 sustained but trifling injury. 
 
 By this time the demolition of both the Ameri- 
 can frigates was complete, and a gale setting in, 
 they were driven helplessly against the shore and 
 became a total wreck. 
 
 News of the disaster to the Chinese fleet was 
 quickly despatched to San Diego, whereupon the 
 three vessels cruisino- there headed at once for the 
 bay of San F"rancisco. The commander, having 
 been duly apprised of the formidable nature of the 
 remaining vessel of the blockade, and of its mode 
 of assault, quickly determined upon a plan of 
 attack which he soon afterwards carried to a suc- 
 cessful prosecution. Keeping beyond the reach 
 of her guns, he brought his heaviest pieces to 
 bear upon the gun-boat, and soon destroyed her 
 turret and dismounted her turret gun. The com- 
 mander of the latter now saw that his fate was 
 sealed, and concluded to employ what time was 
 still left him in completing the destruction of the 
 previous engagement. The two iron-clads that 
 had surrendered and which he had hoped to util- 
 
2 14 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 ize, were now speedily rammed and sunk. But 
 the condition of the gun-boat becoming more des- 
 perate, by the increased fury of the attack, per- 
 haps, suggested its destruction to prevent it from 
 falling into the hands of the enemy. In any 
 event, whether by accident or design, she ex- 
 ploded her magazine and disappeared beneath the 
 waves. 
 
 This engagement was decisive of the fate of the 
 American navy on the Pacific. A powerful fleet 
 soon afterwards arrived from China, which was 
 appointed to guard the whole coast, from British 
 Columbia to the Isthmus. 
 
 The direct importation of troops and munitions 
 of war from China was now continued without in- 
 terruption or fear of molestation ; and within a 
 year from the date of this engagement more than 
 a million of Chinese, soldiers were landed upon 
 our shores. 
 
 Upon the Atlantic, however, the American navy 
 continued supreme, and, for a time, seriously em- 
 barrassed the proceedings of the enemy in the 
 coast cities. It soon became apparent to the 
 Chinese that without a strongf naval force on the 
 Atlantic nothing could be done to protect the 
 coast from the assaults of the American vessels. 
 The shore batteries could do but little, and that 
 little purely defensive. 
 
 But, to their purpose, the blockade of every 
 harbor of the Atlantic was, after all, a matter of 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 215 
 
 secondary importance. Unable to protect them, 
 they resolved to leave the coast cities to their 
 fate for the present, leaving sufficient force, how- 
 ever, to cut off any troops that might be landed 
 at such of the southern ports as they had not 
 secured by torpedoes and other explosives ; and, 
 in the meantime, to devote their energies to the 
 vigorous prosecution of the campaign at the in- 
 terior. Their communication with the Pacific was 
 uninterrupted. A line of railroad, connecting with 
 all the principal ports of the Pacific, and having its 
 eastern terminus at New Orleans, was entirely 
 under their control ; and as this was the avenue 
 by which they obtained supplies, it was necessarily 
 a matter of but little moment to the success of 
 their cause whether the Atlantic ports were free 
 or otherwise. 
 
 The Pacific States having been the first in 
 which the Chinese citizens succeeded in obtaining 
 control of the public affairs, their condition was, of 
 course, eminently favorable for successful rebel- 
 lion. There were no Federal troops to interfere 
 with the prosecution of their interested motives, 
 and, with the exception of a few judicial ol^ces, 
 there was not at the opening of the revolution, 
 between Washington Territory and Mexico, a 
 public position presided over by a native born 
 American. Hence it was, that at the first note of 
 the rebellion these States quietly transferred their 
 allegiance to the Chinese empire, by deliberately 
 
2l6 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 hauling down the American flag and raising in its 
 stead the banner of their mother country. Here, 
 too, as at the South, the poh'tical subdivisions 
 ceased to be recognized ; and for the whole terri- 
 tory thus occupied a single Governor was ap- 
 pointed by the Board, at Peking, to act under the 
 supervision of the Viceroy. 
 
 This new establishment met with no resistance, 
 for the reason that the American population had 
 become too few for resistance. Further chancres 
 and modifications were, accordingly, soon effected, 
 the first of these havinof relation to the adminis- 
 tration of justice. 
 
 The Common Law system of jurisprudence was 
 by far too subtle in its distinctions and too nice in 
 its discriminations to dispense the quality of justice 
 which was necessary to the regulation of Asiatic 
 society. During the many years that the affairs 
 of the country in which they were sojourners had 
 been administered under its application the Asiatic 
 mind had never become trained to grasp the causes 
 which so often seemed to work the grossest in- 
 justice. They had seen felons of every grade 
 upon trial, the proofs of whose guilt were con- 
 clusive ; heard read the verdicts of the juries de- 
 claring them guilty ; watched the Judges as they 
 pronounced sentence with all-becoming gravity, 
 and reasonably supposed that nothing was left but 
 to carry the sentence into execution, with no 
 thought that this grave and expensive proceeding 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 217 
 
 was a mere farce to all purposes, if not so to all 
 intents. They were quite unprepared to learn, a 
 few weeks subsequently, that the felon of whose 
 trial, conviction and sentence they had been wit- 
 nesses, was free, and that his conviction was purely 
 a mistake. If, upon inquir)-, they should seek to 
 ascertain in what the mistake consisted, they were 
 very imperfectly satisfied with the explanation 
 given, which might be, in effect, that the Judge 
 had instructed the jury that a "reasonable doubt" 
 meant such an one as excludes every hypothesis 
 except that of the innocence of the prisoner ; or 
 that the Judge had made a few remarks to the 
 jury, by way of defining legal terms, which were 
 not submitted in writinof nor recorded. The Mon- 
 golians neither understood nor respected refine- 
 ments like these, which, in their judgment, did not 
 rise even to the dignity of a Chinese farce, but 
 belonged more properly to the dominion of patent 
 absurdity. 
 
 A system thus abounding in metaphysical ab- 
 stractions was not an instrument of justice which 
 the Asiatic mind could utilize. Not only was it 
 insufficient to settle even their civil differences, in 
 ^ accordance with their standard of justice, but they 
 deemed it inadequate for the purpose of public 
 protection even from violence. They reasoned 
 that if through its meshes a criminal could escape 
 punishment, of whose guilt there was no doubt, 
 simply because the Judge did not happen to under- 
 
2 1 8 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 Stand the force of a distinction which he presumed 
 to interpret, there was no power left in Asiatic 
 morals that could step in to protect the people 
 from murder or pillage. It was therefore decreed, 
 immediately upon the transfer of their allegiance, 
 that the laws and the language of China should be 
 the laws and the language of this province of her 
 empire ; and that the code of laws under which 
 the atfairs of the country had been administered 
 in the past be forever abrogated and repealed. 
 
 Having thus annihilated the last vestige of rep- 
 resentative government within this territory, and 
 erected upon its ruins the will of an individual, the 
 new government turned its attention to the regu- 
 lation of its political institutions. 
 
 First, under this head, the religion of Chris- 
 tianity, practiced by the native barbarians, was 
 declared unlawful in most of its teachings, inas- 
 much as it conflicted with the religion of Con- 
 fucius. Both its precepts and its forms were 
 odious. On the whole, it was determined that as 
 an institution it was neither conducive to the well- 
 beino- of the barbarians themselves nor to the 
 welfare of the faithful subjects of His Majesty the 
 Emperor. These suggestions being submitted to 
 the Emperor, at Peking, were disposed of with 
 the brevity peculiar to the edicts of that august 
 monarch, as follows : 
 
 " The Governor of our Pacific province, in 
 America, reasons well. Let the religion of the 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 219 
 
 native barbarians in our said province be sup- 
 pressed. This from the Emperor," 
 
 The promulgation of this edict was accompanied 
 by a statement of the penalty for its non-observ- 
 ance. This latter recited, that as the edict was, 
 and conveyed the direct expression of, the Imperial 
 will, any violation was an act of resistance to the 
 Imperial pleasure, and punishable with death. 
 
 This had the desired effect. If there were 
 those among the Asiatics who had imbibed the 
 doctrines preached to them by the Christian 
 zealots, or among the remnant of the American 
 population who still loved and cherished those 
 precepts, that were among the first their infant 
 lips had learned to utter, and which were doubly 
 sanctified by every association of home and kin- 
 dred, they have left no record to show that they 
 resisted the decree, and the weight of their conse- 
 quent trials and persecutions. Martyrs there may 
 have been, and doubtless were, under the cruel 
 obligation of this edict, but neither their names 
 nor the story of their martyrdom has survived 
 the wreck of war and the ruins of conquest. 
 
 The subjugation was complete. The sceptre 
 had passed from the hand of a free, enlightened 
 and generous people. In the matter of territory, 
 a mighty empire had been lost and won ; for that 
 which once comprised the Pacific States of the 
 great American Republic, was now, in every ele- 
 ment of fact, as well as in theory, a dependency of 
 the Chinese Empire. ^ 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Americans and Europeans from an Asiatic Standpoint In- 
 trigue AGAINST European Intervention Russia and Eng- 
 land in Central Asia The Struggle Transferreh to 
 
 Europe The Eastern Question Austria and Germany 
 
 The "Plains of Mursa " Small Causes and Great 
 
 Effects The Balance of Power France Another 
 
 Bonaparte A Mexican Revolution Analyzed How the 
 
 South American Republics Fight. 
 
 In the conception as well as in the execution of 
 their scheme of conquest, it would seem as though 
 the wise heads of the Chinese administration had 
 prepared for every possible contingency. 
 
 They had long had correct information of the 
 affairs of the government of the United States, 
 through means of their agents, who, as we have 
 already seen, had not only ascended to the posi- 
 tions of Governors of States, at an early stage of 
 the conquest, but had likewise obtained large re- 
 presentation in the halls of Congress. 
 
 Of the power of China, to crush down, by force 
 of superior numbers, the most formidable arm)- 
 that the United States could possibly raise, she 
 was fully satisfied ; but she was by no means satis- 
 fied that Europe would remain an indifferent spec- 
 tator of the struggle. She reflected that the peo- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 221 
 
 pie on both sides of the Atlantic were not only of 
 the same race, but that their civilization, their liter- 
 ature, their religion, their customs and manners, 
 and even their domestic habits of daily life were 
 the same — that their langruages were common to 
 the educated classes, and their sympathies identi- 
 cal. She concluded that the United States would 
 endeavor to obtain European co-operation as soon 
 as they should discover that their national inde- 
 pendence was imperilled; and the statesmen of 
 China were disposed to believe that unless the 
 European nations were furnished sufificient em- 
 ployment at home, their co-operation would surely 
 be extended. It was, therefore, determined, on 
 the part of China, to furnish them such employ- 
 ment as would call into active play all their war- 
 like energies, and secure their non-intervention in 
 trans-Atlantic affairs. 
 
 To carry out this purpose, she cast about to 
 discover the most expeditious and effectual method 
 to carry discord into Europe, and soon discovered 
 a garden spot in which to plant the unholy seed 
 that was destined to drench the soil of Europe 
 with the blood of her people. She discovered, at 
 her very door, the little principality of Afghanis- 
 tan, which had been thrice overrun by British sol- 
 diers, and which had the prerogative of independ- 
 ence wrested from its crown, although the shadow 
 was permitted to remain. The Afghanistans are 
 a brave people, untrained to war and inured to all 
 
22 2 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the habits of peace. Eminently proud of their 
 antiquity, as a people, they felt keenly the degra- 
 dation of their political relation with the British 
 empire, and longed for an opportunity to throw- 
 off the galling yoke. 
 
 This little principality was the humble instru- 
 ment throuofh which China now resolved to in- 
 volve Europe in a flame of war. 
 
 What mattered it that the little State might be 
 blotted out from the sisterhood of nations, or that 
 it might be selected as the battle ground for two 
 of the most powerful empires of the earth. 
 Considerations like these have never curbed the 
 ambitious designs of conscious power. She pro- 
 cured the Afghanistans to turn against their dic- 
 tators, to call in the aid of their southern neigh- 
 bor, raise the standard of revolt and establish 
 themselves as a protectorate under the Russian 
 empire. She had already prepared Russia to ac- 
 cept the trust; and she reasoned rightly that Eng- 
 land would never relinquish, without an obstinate 
 struggle, this advantage to her formidable rival. 
 
 A sudden revolt and a widespread massacre of 
 the English throughout the whole of Afghanistan, 
 were the first fruits borne by this sprouting in- 
 trigue. As erst, an army of Sepoys, officered by 
 Englishmen, was soon upon the Indian frontier 
 of Afghanistan, but only to find its further pro- 
 gress opposed by a powerful army of Russian 
 veterans. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 223 
 
 But it is not the province of this work to enter 
 into the details of the Anglo- Russian struggle 
 which ensued, any further than to show the man- 
 ner in which the torch of war was communicated 
 to Europe, and there fostered and maintained. 
 
 No doubt but that the history of this conflict 
 would be highly interesting and instructive; but 
 a digression here that would lay the details before 
 the reader, although it might be excused, on gen- 
 eral principles, would be outside the purpose of 
 this volume, and hence unwarrantable. I will, 
 therefore, leave the details of the Asiatic question 
 for the historian of that conflict, and proceed to 
 show how the contagion was imparted to every 
 portion of Europe. 
 
 The success of the Russian arms in Asia, com- 
 pelled England to carry the w^ar into Europe, 
 where, through the instrumentality of her power- 
 ful fleet she might repair her losses upon the land. 
 
 Russia had anticipated the presence of an En- 
 glish squadron in the Black Sea, and expecting 
 that this would be likely to lead to complications 
 between herself and hei*ancient enemy at Constan- 
 tinople, concluded a treaty with Germany, one of 
 the provisions of which was that the latter, in the 
 event of Russian complications with Turkey, would 
 guarantee the neutrality of Austria. 
 
 The disposition of Turkey toward the contend- 
 inor forces was not lonor a matter of doubt, for the 
 Sultan freely declared his purpose to make com- 
 
2 24 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 mon cause with England. The Eastern question 
 was therefore once more at issue, and the con- 
 tending parties were making the most gigantic 
 preparations — preparations that were destined to 
 result in the removal of an ulcer that for four 
 centuries had inflamed and irritated the peace of 
 Europe. 
 
 Once more the Russian columns were on the 
 south bank of the Danube, and taking up their 
 several lines of march for Constantinople. The 
 Slavonic peoples throughout their course of march 
 were enthusiastic, and so far from protesting 
 aofainst the violation of their territories, offered 
 their great champion free transit, and attached 
 themselves by thousands to the Russian armies. 
 This demonstration it was that particularly aroused 
 the jealousy of Austria. She dreaded the en- 
 croachments of her powerful neighbor, for she 
 well understood the unquenchable ambition of the 
 House of Romanoff. The possession by Russia 
 of territory contigyous to her own, on the south 
 of the Danube, would be a standing menace to the 
 power, if not, indeed, to the very independence of 
 Austria. She therefore resolved to strike at a 
 time when Russia was engaged in her struggle 
 with the allied powers of England and Turkey, 
 under the well-grounded conviction that the com- 
 bined strength of the three powers would settle 
 forever the pretensions of Russia to dictate the 
 policy of the Slavonic peoples, as well as her pros- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 225 
 
 pects of territorial acquisition among the Danubian 
 principalities. 
 
 This determination appealed to Germany for the 
 enforcement of her guarantees to Russia, under 
 the treaty ratified by the two governments. The 
 German note had been received by the Austrian 
 government, clearly implying that Germany must 
 regard any act of interference by Austria, in the 
 Anglo- Russian contest, as endangering the peace 
 of Europe; and that further perseverance in her 
 present course would be followed by a suspension 
 of diplomatic relations between Austria and her- 
 self. Austria, however, relying upon the attitude 
 of the French republic toward the German em 
 pire, readily justified herself in disregarding the 
 latter's admonition. She believed that France 
 awaited only a favorable opportunity to reclaim 
 her Rhenish provinces; and that Germany would 
 not hazard an active interference in the Eastern 
 difficulty at the risk of so great a contingency. 
 She, therefore, continued to arm and to concen- 
 trate her forces along the frontier of Servia, de- 
 termined to struggle for the autonomy of Turkey 
 as the most likely means of curbing the danger- 
 ous ambition of Russia. 
 
 Meantime, the principal actors in the tragedy 
 had determined upon their several courses of 
 action. 
 
 The British fleet was before Constantinople and 
 
 its defenses, manned by British and Austrian sol- 
 15 
 
2 26 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 diers, while the grandest army ever equipped by 
 a Russian sovereign approached from behind. 
 This latter had already routed the allied forces of 
 Austria and Turkey in two engagements near the 
 Servian frontier, and was now enjoying an unin- 
 terrupted march toward Adrianople, where a still 
 more powerful combination of all the allies was 
 formed to check its further progress. 
 
 But, the moment had arrived when Germany 
 felt herself called upon to act. She had guaran- 
 teed the neutrality of Austria, and that guarantee 
 had been violated. 
 
 She could have brooked the warlike prepara- 
 tions of Austria, and looked with composure upon 
 the marshallinof of her armies within her own ter- 
 ritory. While her demonstrations were confined 
 to acts like these, she considered that her inter- 
 ference would be dictatorial and unwarrantable; 
 but, now that she had penetrated beyond her own 
 boundaries, violated the neutrality of a defenseless 
 state, and actually participated in a battle upon the 
 soil of Turkey, Germany could no longer hesitate. 
 
 With that characteristic expedition which has 
 made the troops of Germany invincible in the 
 late European wars, she now commenced the mo- 
 bilization of her immense armies. 
 
 " On, to Vienna!" once more became the bat- 
 tle-cry; and her legions soon penetrated to Vienna 
 and far beyond; for, experiencing unexpected dif- 
 ficulty in reducing the capital, her armies swept 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 22/ 
 
 southward, until once more the ancient plains of 
 Mursa echoed to the thunders of war; and a 
 mightier army than that of Magnentius reddened 
 with its blood the sacred waters of the Drave. 
 Here the power of Austria was overthrown in a 
 general engagement. 
 
 Thus, sixteen centuries after the factions of 
 Rome had crippled, forever, the power of the 
 Western Empire, the scene of that fratricide wit- 
 nessed another struggle — one that led directly to 
 the annihilation of the power which swept the last 
 monument of Roman majesty from the face of 
 Europe. At Mursa, the first great spasm of ad- 
 vancinof dissolution shook the frame-work of the 
 Roman Empire ; at Mursa (now Esseck) the last 
 of the Byzantine Caesars was, at last, avenged. 
 
 Had Germany remained satisfied with her vic- 
 tory, not only might the Eastern question have 
 been localized and settled without further disturb- 
 ance, but Europe might have returned to the con- 
 templation of her peaceful pursuits without appre- 
 hension ; the United States miofht have obtained 
 the assistance which their great extremity de- 
 manded, and thus have emero-ed from their o^reat 
 peril purified by suffering and ripened in wisdom 
 by the terrible experience through which they had 
 passed. But the inscrutable things of destiny had 
 not been fulfilled, and Fate clamored for their ful- 
 fillment. Circumstances, insiofnificant in them- 
 selves, have ever been liable to lead to results of 
 
228 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the greatest magnitude and importance ; and 
 human actions, thousfhts and associations are so 
 interwoven, without our recognition, that even 
 the willful pleasure of an individual, reduced to 
 action, in an obscure corner of the globe, may 
 lead to revolutions and the overthrow of empires. 
 Indeed, the august representatives who consti- 
 tuted the Berlin Congress were called together 
 pursuant to a circumstance so ignoble as the law- 
 less gratification of his baser passions by a Turk- 
 ish Bey, at a remote hamlet in Herzogovinia. 
 
 In the present controversy, Germany would 
 not suffer to pass, without full recognition, so fair 
 an opportunity to add to the power and wealth of 
 her empire. While her army was quartered in 
 the capital of Austria, she was in a position to 
 dictate her terms. She had placed herself in a 
 similar position once before, and her success in 
 that instance lent force to her present audacity. 
 The war indemnity which she sought to exact was 
 so absurdly extravagant that Austria, even in her 
 humiliation, could not entertain a thought of acqui- 
 escence in the condition proposed. This sug- 
 gested the dismemberment of the Austrian em- 
 pire, Germany claiming the right to indemnity by 
 the appropriation of sufficient Austrian territory to 
 give symmetr)' and compactness to her south- 
 eastern boundary. 
 
 Up to this time France had remained a passive 
 spectator of the struggle going on among her 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 229 
 
 eastern neighbors. This last attempt, however, 
 was aimed at the balance of power in Europe, 
 and hence a menace even to France. She there- 
 fore simply declared that France would remon- 
 strate against any dismemberment of the conquered 
 State. 
 
 But Germany had already apportioned to her- 
 self the indemnity territory, and it required more 
 than a simple remonstrance to change her pur- 
 pose. Already her armies were mustering on the 
 Rhine in anticipation of a yet more forcible pro- 
 test from France ; nor was she disappointed. 
 Another Bonaparte, upon whom had descended 
 the military spirit and genius of his great ancestor, 
 led the legions of the French republic, and once 
 more that wonderful people carried victory to her 
 arms beyond the Rhine. 
 
 By this very condensed review of the intrigues 
 of China, of the status of the Eastern question, 
 and that other intanc^ible thinor which has hungf 
 like a nightmare over the peace of Europe, and is 
 known as the " Balance of Power," I have shown, 
 although somewhat imperfectly, yet sufficiently for 
 my purpose, the condition of Europe at the time 
 when America so urgently demanded her sym- 
 pathy and support. All her first-class powers 
 were engaged in the prosecution of the most 
 destructive general war that had visited Europe 
 since the age of the French Revolution. 
 
 It necessarily followed that the appeal which 
 
230 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 rang out from America fell among peoples too 
 immediately occupied to harken to its voice. 
 Their own liberties were either threatened or 
 actually invaded, and demanded their first and 
 undivided attention. They had been forced by 
 circumstances upon a career of war, and they had 
 no guarantee that any one of them should emerge 
 from its rigorous discipline with her national inde- 
 pendence secured. 
 
 So far as Europe was concerned, therefore, the 
 intriofue of China had borne the fullest measure of 
 success, and America must fight her battles alone. 
 
 At home it were vain to expect any valuable 
 assistance or support. Her neighbors were already 
 marked for doom, and only suffered to enjoy their 
 independence while the one power of America 
 that miofht be considered formidable was under- 
 going the process of subjugation. 
 
 Mexico, in a condition of happy thoughtless- 
 ness upon matters of national regeneration, was 
 indulging in the enjoyment of her chronic rebel- 
 lion. Pronunciamento and counter-pronunciamento 
 were hurled backward and forward between her 
 rival factions with the most reckless abandon. 
 Presidents elected, appointed, created, proclaimed, 
 were deposed and succeeded by others holding 
 under a like precarious tenure, as one faction or 
 the other happened to hold possession of the 
 capital. Ministers of State, untrained to diplo- 
 macy, succeeded others more or less ignorant. 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 23I 
 
 and were in turn supplanted, at each succession, 
 while an army of sycophants flanked every public 
 functionary, and, by a successful course of flattery, 
 obtained unnumbered chartered privileges to plun- 
 der the beggarly remnant of the people. 
 
 Mexico was, indeed, in her glory. Her ambi- 
 tious men were bedecked (as were their horses) 
 with gold and silver, lace and embroidery, plun- 
 dered from whomsoever dared to be enterorisinof 
 and industrious. Her middle class was clothed in 
 rags, and her poor class, thanks to her genial 
 climate and spontaneous productions, were en- 
 abled to go naked and subsist on the bounties 
 which Nature had provided. 
 
 The Viceroy contemplated this picture with a 
 sense of gloating satisfaction. There, where once 
 arose the stately architecture of a people with 
 whom he claimed race, and, perhaps, national, 
 kindred, ere yet the avarice of the Spanish con- 
 querors had become inflamed by the contempla- 
 tion of the fabulous treasures of the Aztec Princes 
 — there his augfust sovereiorn would found another 
 empire, greater by far than that which the vandal 
 armies of Spain had blotted from the earth. 
 
 The republics of South America were likewise 
 luxuriating in their wonted struggles. Their treas- 
 uries exhausted ; their national credit no longer 
 negotiable either at home or in the markets of the 
 world, they were unable to maintain even a de- 
 fensive war, except of that emasculated character 
 
232 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 peculiar to themselves. To engage in any man- 
 ner ill the prosecution of a foreign war was an 
 enterprise illimitably beyond the reach of any 
 South American State, or even of them all com- 
 bined. 
 
 It was plain that the struggle of the North 
 American Republic with the Asiatic invader must 
 be determined by the superior prowess of the im- 
 mediate parties themselves. She had called 
 upon Europe, and found her kindred there in a 
 condition of uncertainity and peril almost as im- 
 minent as her own. She had scanned the sister- 
 hood of States throughout both Americas, only to 
 discover a chain of governments revelling in an- 
 archy and the indulgence of every species of 
 licentiousness. 
 
 From the contemplation of those pictures she 
 turned aijain to her own. Millions of brave hearts 
 there still remained ; millions of hands that dared, 
 defended ; the cause of liberty trembling in the 
 balance, and a circumfluous tide of invasion on 
 every hand. But another scene was there ; for 
 above the armed hosts of the Republic the Spirit 
 of Freedom fanned with celestial wing the spark 
 of hope that nerved to whatsoever might befall — 
 whether it be the cheerful acclaim of the nation's 
 glory or the dismal sentence of a nation's doom. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Army Characteristics The Struggle for Existence Glory 
 
 AND Gold Mongolian Reverses Supplies Begin to Fail 
 
 Negative Success Practical Infinitude The Bound- 
 aries OF Freedom The Spirit of Colonial Days The 
 
 Women of America Famine : Its Progress and its Victims 
 
 Material Exhaustion. 
 
 Having stationed large detachments of troops 
 along the coast in order to protect the rear of the 
 army, the Chinese now began a series of vigorous 
 movements in front of the American lines. But 
 in these aesfressive demonstrations there was no 
 rashness, but the systematic manoeuvring of an 
 army thoroughly trained to the work in hand. 
 In this case, as in all else to which the Asiatic 
 has devoted his endeavors, his course was marked 
 by the same passiveness and patient perseverance 
 that might have characterized it had every step of 
 its progress been the order of a specific calcula- 
 tion. 
 
 The army which now mustered at the interior 
 was such an one as a Frenchman would expect to 
 see dissolve from a gradual course of disintegra- 
 tion, by reason of an insufficiency of the vital prin- 
 ciple to give motion, or even cohesion, to its pon- 
 
2 34 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 derous bulk. No sounds of enthusiasm bespoke 
 the fervor of its spirit or lightened the weighty- 
 majesty of its purpose ; no martial music quick- 
 ened its slugfo^ard circulation ; but cold blooded as 
 the serpent that inhabits the land whence it 
 sprang, its very torpor was suggestive of its native 
 hideousness, its latent venom and its cruel power. 
 
 Let them that would interpret the possibilities 
 of an army from a contemplation of its esprit de 
 corps remember the while, that the consideration 
 of race becomes an important factor. 
 
 The buoyant disposition of the Caucasian will 
 not suffer a restraint that would aim to stifle the 
 exuberance of his spirits, and with particular 
 emphasis will this remark apply when military 
 glory is the promised reward of daring military 
 adventure. With the Mongolian, the case is dif- 
 ferent. He is indifferent to glory ; he is partial 
 to peace, and he loves luxury. But, above and 
 beyond all these, he worships gold, and will im- 
 peril all else that will fairly promise its acquisition 
 as an alternative. This is the individual char- 
 acteristic of the Mongolian in this particular, and 
 it is doubly intensified by individual aggregation. 
 
 That which enthusiasm gives to the European 
 soldier this sordid prepossession gives to the 
 Monsfolian, and under its stimulus he becomes the 
 instrument of a stolid daring- that renders him 
 oblivious alike to the passions that might impel a 
 rude nature to acts of cruelty, or the emotions that 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 235 
 
 a gentle nature might experience to save. The 
 victory for which he struggles has that one object 
 — acquisition — in the pursuit of which he coolly 
 and deliberately hurls defiance into the face of 
 death, and pressess onward to conquest and the 
 Of rave. 
 
 It demanded the exercise of all this stolid per- 
 sistence, even supported as it was by unlimited 
 numbers, to withstand the reverses that the armies 
 of China encountered at the opening of the last 
 struggle with the organized armies of the United 
 States. 
 
 While her comparatively compact soldiery were 
 sweeping through the South, or devastating New 
 England, opposed only by a poorly-organized, 
 poorly-armed and thoroughly demoralized people, 
 encumbered by the care of their women and 
 children, and tied to localities by those that forged 
 around them the chains of natural affection, the 
 work of conquest seemed almost simple. But the 
 aspect of the conflict had begun to present a wide- 
 ly different front. The American intellect had 
 improvised new engines of war, new methods of 
 destruction, the operation of which seemed des- 
 tined to challenge the fullest capacity of speedy 
 reinforcement by the mother country. By num- 
 bers vastly inferior to their own, the Asiatics were 
 swept down at every engagement, and it soon 
 became evident to the Viceroy that nothing short 
 of complete and absolute exhaustion of the Amer- 
 
236 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 leans, by prolonging the period of conflict, would 
 ever avail to crown the Asiatic cause with victory. 
 He saw that his losses in killed at each engage- 
 ment, notwithstanding the vast superiority in num- 
 ber of his troops, were more than double the losses 
 sustained by the Americans from the like cause, 
 while the inferior surgical skill of the Hospital 
 Department of his own army could save but a 
 comparatively trifling proportion of the wounded. 
 From local causes, however, the mortality in camp 
 occurring among the Mongolians was less in pro- 
 portion to their numbers than in the camps of the 
 Americans. 
 
 Unfortunately for the American cause, as well 
 as for the comfort and availability of the Ameri- 
 can armies, the struggle originated in a surprise. 
 The war had assumed the proportions of an irre- 
 pressible rebellion in the brief space of a few 
 months after its indications first became manifest. 
 Up to that hour the quarrels and contentions of 
 the political factions had so occupied the country's 
 attention that the contingency of war was one for 
 which no provision had been made. The country 
 was, therefore, to the last degree unprepared for 
 this emergency. Of munitions of war there was 
 an abundance, partly from the fact that these could 
 be manufactured to supply any demand, while the 
 materials for their composition were abundant. 
 But the supplies of provisions and clothing suf- 
 ficient for an immense army were fast becoming 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 237 
 
 exhausted, and there was nowhere from which to 
 expect a fresh supply. 
 
 Not only the army, but what remained of the 
 once proud population of the United States must 
 be sustained. Of this latter one-third had been 
 sent abroad to escape the horrors of war and the 
 still greater horrors of a peace that might bring 
 with it the practical vassalage of a conquered 
 people. Many were scattered over the Western 
 Territories, or were refugees in the British pos- 
 sessions ; while the numbers that were still held 
 as prisoners in the South, their condition and their 
 final disposition, were matters wrapped in the 
 most impenetrable mystery. 
 
 For two years the struggle had been protracted, 
 and victory after victory had crowned the cause of 
 Freedom. But they were victories that carried 
 within them the germ of ultimate defeat. They 
 were only victories in the field — the victory of an 
 army over another army with which it happened 
 to become engaged. They extinguished no en- 
 thusiastic fire in the ranks of the mutilated armies 
 of the foe, nor led to panic nor rout ; for neither 
 enthusiasm nor the spirit that impels to panic was 
 ever enthroned upon its standards. It might be 
 said of those victories in the field that they tended 
 toward the exhaustion of the enemy ; but the 
 vapors that arise from the bosom of the sea may 
 suQfSfest the transmutation of the ocean itself into 
 the ether whence it came. But this recognition of 
 
238 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 the attribute of potentiality is the most that could 
 be assumed. In like manner might the victories 
 of the patriots suggest to the contemplative mind 
 the annihilation of the whole human race by the 
 power of a single arm constantly destroying, but 
 indestructible by human strength or human artifice 
 in itself; but the principle is not applicable to 
 practical life, and could give no hope nor encour- 
 agement to the defenders of their country, beset 
 by a practically inexhaustible foe. 
 
 As yet, less than half a million of the invaders 
 had been slain, and behind was a reservoir of 
 nearly five hundred millions to supply the devas- 
 tation of war, while the fallen soldiers of the Re- 
 public left behind them no source of substitution. 
 
 Another Winter was approaching ; and this 
 time to find the army of the Republic destitute 
 of even the rude comforts of army life, and con- 
 fined to a latitude where the rigor of Winter is 
 unassuaged by either sunshine or calm for a period 
 of many months. Within its martial circle, and 
 comprising the territory over which the flag of the 
 Union was still permitted to wave, were sixteen 
 States, including New Jersey, on the east, and 
 Iowa, on the west. Within these limits was con- 
 centrated all that remained of American independ- 
 ence, republican freedom, and the nationality of 
 the union of States — all that remained of the 
 people, of their wealth, and of the proud inheri- 
 tance of their fathers. But not alone those ves- 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 239 
 
 tiges of national greatness, for there was present, 
 besides, enough to recall those gloomy narratives 
 of history that picture war's sullen desolation, or 
 the active horrors of a siege. Here, too, was the 
 abode of disease, of famine, of human suffering. 
 
 The class distinctions which once divided the 
 people had long since disappeared, and American 
 life returned, first, to the simplicity of colonial 
 days, then to a condition of common distress, un- 
 paralleled by the experience of Revolutionary 
 times. 
 
 The women of America, whom wealth and all 
 its attendant advantages, its fascinations and its 
 allurements, had unfitted for purposes of general 
 utility in the brighter days of the Republic, under 
 the new discipline of adversity soon reasserted the 
 inherent divinity of their nature. Untrained to 
 labor, yet they soon learned to toil ; unaccus- 
 tomed to want, yet they bore, without complain- 
 ing, the hardships of destitution. Theirs were the 
 hands that cultivated the fields ; theirs the labor 
 that supplied the army with raiment. Their lively 
 sympathy readily anticipated the myriad vicissi- 
 tudes of the soldier's career, and were ever ready 
 to meet new emergencies by new sacrifices. They 
 had learned to discard the common comforts of 
 life, having long since denied themselves its luxu- 
 ries, that both these might be made to subserve 
 the common purpose of defence and contribute to 
 the availability of the army. 
 
240 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 But the burden could not longer be borne. Fx- 
 hausted nature is imperative when she demands 
 repose, and if the demand be too long denied her, 
 in the usual method of its enjoyment, the quiet of 
 death becomes a last and unfailing refuge 
 
 Thus fared it with the maidens and matrons of 
 America. Their self-denial, alone, had availed to 
 maintain an army long after it must have fallen, 
 exhausted, without their aid. But the effort had 
 made them martyrs. They chose to perish, that 
 the army might survive to emancipate their coun- 
 try. The courage which was far too human and 
 too generous to hurl destruction from the can- 
 non's mouth into the ranks of a foe, and far too 
 gentle to withstand the brutal carnage of battle, 
 was yet so fearless of the visitation of death that 
 it shrank not even from the agonies of death by 
 famine, when the dictates of duty seemed to de- 
 mand the sacrifice. 
 
 And famine was at lenQfth abroad, and the 
 tidings of its ravages were afloat on every rumor. 
 Before it the aged and the youth were alike pow- 
 erless, the while gentle allies of the begrimed sol- 
 dier of the camp were falling by thousands before 
 a foe more deadly in its onslaughts than even the 
 myriad horde of the invaders. Death by starva- 
 tion, with all its countless delusions and its name- 
 less horrors, had begun to add new torments to 
 the terrors of the siesfe. Some there were that 
 sank by the highways or in the snow-clad fields, 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 24 1 
 
 whither, in their delirium, they had strayed to feast 
 upon the bounties which a disordered imagination 
 had spread before them ; others there were that 
 sought relief in the refuge of the suicide. As the 
 mirage, that rises from the desert to mock the 
 thirst of the wanderer lost upon its arid expanse, 
 so started into being whole armies and proces- 
 sions of phantoms from this waste of woe to mock 
 with visions of profusion and luxury the one con- 
 suming necessity of life. Every unattainable desire 
 became individualized and personified, and the im- 
 apfination reveled in scenes that often served to 
 neutralize the pangs of suffering, and to smooth 
 the pathway to the grave. 
 
 How pitiless becomes the demon of Famine 
 when once the conditions for its sway have been 
 attained ; but how well adapted to soothe the tor- 
 ments which it inflicts are those munificent treas- 
 ures of the imaorination, that gfrow brigfhter and 
 more apparently real as the system totters to ruin! 
 Feasts, spread out with all the luxuries ever pic- 
 tured b)' fact or by fable, are ever in view, as the 
 body proceeds to pre}' upon its own tissue. Portly 
 waiters and lively guests come and go, laugh and 
 chat, dine and assist others to dine ; the wine 
 sparkles in the goblets ; song resounds ; toasts go 
 round ; and the quests retire, and others succeed 
 them in one eternal round. The famishing dream- 
 er sees all, and to him all is real. Only happy 
 faces are there ; all are strangfers ; but in their 
 
 16 
 
242 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 conversation were mentioned the names of those 
 he had known. Occasionally a glance wanders to 
 his retreat, but is again calmly diverted or with- 
 drawn. He might have mingled with the throng, 
 but forever some trifling obstacle intervened. 
 New scenes present themselves if he turn from 
 this, and abundance marks every festival. 
 
 Another victim of the same cruel lot gazes upon 
 illimitable forests hung with golden fruits that 
 stretch out before her vision, far as the eye can 
 reach. Groping crowds wander listlessly among 
 its shadows, or settle themselves upon rustic 
 benches to feast upon its bounties, pendant from 
 every branch. Now she wishes to pass unnoticed 
 into the throng, and partake of this abundance that 
 seems spread for all ; but ever some obstacle, tri- 
 fling in itself, but quite insuperable, under the cir- 
 cumstances, is interposed. In chagrin the dreamer 
 turns from the contemplation of the scene. But 
 now she is observed. A few individuals have di- 
 vided themselves from the rest, and approach the 
 spot where she sits. Her first impulse is to fly ; 
 but no ! There is the impress of serious purpose 
 upon each kindly face. Again her alarm increases 
 as the visitors draw yet nearer ; but it were now 
 useless to retreat. They have come, they say, to 
 remove all those obstacles to her enjoyment; and, 
 returning again, they beckon her to follow. She 
 hesitates, but is drifted forward by some myster- 
 ious impulse of command. The last obstacle is 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 243 
 
 removed ; she passes to newer scenes — the dream- 
 er's record is closed forever. Another corse has 
 fallen by the way ; the earth her couch ; the beau- 
 tiful snow her winding sheet — a fitting emblem of 
 the soul that has fled. 
 
 From boundary to boundary the country is 
 wasted. The granaries are empty ; the store- 
 houses reprove, by their empty walls, the vaunted 
 productiveness of the soil. The farm-yard no 
 longer echoes to the noisy hum of domestication; 
 the roar of the citv and its bustlinof thrones have 
 alike vanished. The sounds of labor are hushed, 
 and scenes that erst had run^ with the thousfhtless 
 revelry of youth are noiseless now, except as they 
 give tongues to the driving storms that proclaim 
 the reign of Winter. Dismantled buildings, whose 
 timbers have furnished fuel to comfort, with artifi- 
 cial warmth, the last hours of noble lives, stand 
 like the ruins of another age. Ghastly human fig- 
 ures drag themselves from place to place, aimless- 
 ly directing their tottering footsteps onward and 
 still onward, they know not whither. Some are 
 crouched upon the earth ; and, having stripped 
 the snow from its bosom, with bloodless hands, 
 struggle with the frost-bound soil for the posses- 
 sion of roots or grasses. Others strive to subsist 
 upon the twigs and branches of trees ; but one by 
 one they sink down exhausted ; night sets in, and 
 his dusky mantle shuts out the last glimmering 
 of day, as it noiselessly falls upon this drama of 
 
244 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 death. Another hearth is desolate ; another day- 
 has folded up its round of mortality. 
 
 But how fared it with the army, meantime ? By 
 a slow, but certain process, the country had given 
 up all — even its very life — to maintain in the field 
 an army capable of repelling the enemy at what- 
 ever direction he might attempt to advance. The 
 army had done its duty. The expectant invader, 
 still, after the struggle had been prolonged for 
 years, saw before him yet, the bristling lines of 
 the enemy. He knew nothing of the condition of 
 that army ; it was sufficient that it was still as 
 menacing in its appearance as it had been in any 
 period of the past. But, worse than this, it was 
 invincible. Of that he was satisfied ; for as yet 
 he had not obtained his first victory, although he 
 had chronicled a hundred battles. 
 
 But famine first, and after that, disease, found 
 its way into the ranks of the army, and then this 
 last bulwark of liberty began to totter. Having 
 exhausted the country, the army now began to 
 exhaust itself. First, the cavalry horses were 
 slauehtered to furnish food to the soldiers ; then 
 followed the slaughter of all draught animals ; and, 
 lastly, even the vagabond dogs, that subsisted 
 upon the refuse of the camps, were killed and 
 eaten, that the soldier might live to defend his 
 country, yet another day. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 National and Army Diet War and Agriculture at the 
 
 South Occupation of American Prisoners of War 
 
 The Chinese Army in New England Hunger and its 
 
 Influence The Beginning of the End The First Mon- 
 
 GOLiAN Victory Pillage March of the Conqueror 
 
 Washington in Danger The Soldiers' Reflection The 
 
 Last Stronghold. 
 
 Owing in some degree to the comparatively 
 simple wants of the Asiatic soldier, considered in 
 connection with those of the American, but chiefly 
 to the fact of the existence of an uninterrupted 
 communication between the army and China, and 
 to the productiveness of the rice fields of the 
 Southern States, the invading army suffered but 
 little inconvenience from the lack of the usual and 
 necessary supply of food. 
 
 Among the Chinese, animal food cannot prop- 
 erly be said to be a part of the national diet ; so 
 that subsistence with them is in no degree con- 
 tingent upon the extent of their flocks and herds. 
 And yet, these people are capable of enduring the 
 utmost toil and the most unremitting labor, with- 
 out manifesting the usual symptoms of exhaustion. 
 
 Compared with the ordinary associations of life 
 
246 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 among the Chinese, the hardships incident to the 
 life of the soldier are inconsiderable. Then, too, 
 there was nothing- in the climate of the Southern 
 States so essentially different from that of China 
 as to render any change of the national diet neces- 
 sary ; so that rice and tea were about the only 
 articles of iood furnished the Mongolian army, and 
 of the former nearly every pound consumed was 
 produced in the conquered territory, only the tea 
 and necessary clothing having to be imported from 
 abroad. 
 
 The government of the Viceroy had been care- 
 ful that no opportunity should be lost in a matter 
 of so much importance as the maintenance of his 
 armies. With a view to the most economic and 
 effective manner of securing this end, a full com- 
 plement of laborers was kept constantly at work 
 producing such articles of consumption as might 
 be necessary for the use of the army and the 
 maintenance of the prisoners which he still re- 
 tained. Of these latter, the men were compelled 
 to work, side by side, with the ordinary Coolie 
 laborer, at whatsoever drudgery the latter might 
 have in hand, while their health or strength per- 
 mitted, which was usually a very brief period at 
 certain unfavorable seasons, and never at any sea- 
 son a period of great duration. 
 
 The simplicity of the diet furnished to the 
 Asiatic soldiery, and its adaptability to the hered- 
 itary physical constitution of the Chinese people 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 247 
 
 had the most salutary effect upon the heahh of 
 the army, so that while disease and famine were 
 devastating the ranks of the Americans, the Mon- 
 golian forces were in the enjoyment of health and 
 abundance. 
 
 This condition is, however, subject to one quali- 
 fication which will apply solely to those of the 
 Chinese troops in the occupation of the New 
 England States. These had subsisted upon stores 
 captured at the opening of the rebellion, together 
 with such supplies as were subsequently surrepti- 
 tiously forwarded to them by fictitious consign- 
 ments from the ports of Georgia and South Caro- 
 lina, and before the American navy had been 
 fitted up for coast service, and afterwards, before 
 the true nature of the traffic had been detected. 
 But those supplies were at length becoming scarce, 
 while all communication with the South was cut 
 off by the troops of the Republic by land, and by 
 her navy by sea. This circumstance, by bringino- 
 to the surface the true nature of the individual 
 Mongolian, infused a new spirit into the Mon- 
 golian army at the east, and introduced a new 
 element into the strueele. 
 
 The same causes that operated to enervate the 
 martial spirit of the European race, produced the 
 directly opposite effect upon the Asiatic. No 
 sooner had it become necessary to place a re- 
 stricted limit upon the quantity of food furnished 
 to the American soldier than the result became 
 
248 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 plainly apparent in his lack of ambition and his 
 waning efficiency. But in the ranks of the Asiatics 
 the first effect of hunger was to kindle the native 
 ferocity of the soldier into a furious and ungovern- 
 able flame of action. 
 
 In this will appear the essentially different at- 
 tributes of the contending races. With the former 
 the principle for which he contends is the highest 
 incentive to endeavor, and his efforts fail only as 
 fail the physical powers by which they are sus- 
 tained. With the latter, the whole endeavor of 
 which he is capable is liberated only by an un- 
 answerable appeal to his animal nature. 
 
 Thus it was that the New England army of oc- 
 cupation, finding its supplies approaching an ex- 
 tremity, determined to effect a junction with the 
 main body of the army of the south. To do this it 
 was determined to march directly from New York 
 along the eastern slope of the Alleghanies, and 
 connect with the main army in Virginia. 
 
 This resolution was taken at a time when famine 
 and disease had begun to devastate the soldiers of 
 the Republic. The commander in New England 
 found means of communicating his purpose to the 
 army of the south, and the latter at once took 
 upon itself the work of co-operation. 
 
 At the appointed time the aggressive force of 
 the New England army, numbering more than half 
 a million of men, moved forward and engaged the 
 American lines, extending from the northeastern 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 249 
 
 boundary line of Pennsylvania northward through 
 the State of New York. About the same time 
 the southern army once more advanced and en- 
 gaged the Americans, this time near Petersburg, 
 in Virginia. Here an obstinate and bloody strug- 
 gle resulted in the withdrawal of the attacking 
 columns, to make preparations for a renewal of 
 the attack. But the induced ferocity of the north- 
 ern, or New England, army had accomplished 
 what neither superior numbers nor the skill nor 
 courage of the best armies of China had heretofore 
 at any point etlected. The eastern division of 
 the Republican guardsmen was cut to pieces, and 
 the first victory in the held had at length rewarded 
 the obstinate purpose of the invaders. No pris- 
 oners were taken, as no man surrendered. It was 
 a victory which carried with it the extermination 
 of an army. 
 
 The victorious troops now took up their line of 
 march toward the south, leavinof the whole eastern 
 frontier of the hitherto unconquered States open 
 to the ravages of the soldiery, which was now in 
 the occupation of the newly-conquered territory. 
 But little, indeed, was presented to arouse the 
 cupidity of the Asiatic soldiery. The wretched 
 inhabitants \vho had thus far escaped the ravages 
 of famine and disease, fled to the interior, regard- 
 less of whatever dangers or hardships might befall, 
 and intent only upon escaping from the unknown 
 horrors of capture. Fortunately for those defence- 
 
2.50 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 less fugitives, however, the demand for food had 
 stifled all the more brutal passions of the con- 
 querors, so that little or no effort was put forth 
 to procure their capture. But the work of pillage 
 was prosecuted with spirit. All articles of cloth- 
 ing, as well as all articles convertible into food, 
 that came within the reach of the soldiers, were 
 confiscated and carried to their encampment. 
 
 The victorious army now enjoyed an uninter- 
 rupted march through Penns3dvania to the borders 
 of Maryland. At Philadelphia the Chinese pris- 
 oners of war, taken at the opening of the contest, 
 were liberated, and served to reinforce the advan- 
 cinof columns. 
 
 The news of the defeat and annihilation of the 
 Republican army of the east was scattered, in a 
 brief period of time, throughout the whole of the 
 American forces, and spread the greatest dismay 
 and apprehension. The capital was a scene of the 
 wildest confusion, which was further intensified by 
 the reports that the victorious army was marching 
 southward, and even now approaching the borders 
 of Maryland, on its way to Washington. Al- 
 though garrisoned by a large army, yet additional 
 troops were immediately ordered from all points, 
 to proceed, by forced marches, to the relief of the 
 city. The army of central Virginia began imme- 
 diately to fall back, in obedience to orders from 
 Washington, but pressed so closely by the enemy 
 that the commander was compelled to abandon 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 25 1 
 
 his heavier artillery, which was first spiked and 
 then left to fall into the hands of the enemy. The 
 retreat continued several days, until a large part of 
 the army had crossed the Potomac. 
 
 Meantime their success at the east had begun 
 to stimulate the whole Chinese army. Every part 
 began to vie with every other in prosecuting a vig- 
 orous campaign against the now famishing forces 
 of the Republic. Of these latter the shattered 
 remnant that was left was no longer a match for 
 
 o 
 
 the innumerable swarm that now swept in upon 
 them from every side. 
 
 The character of the war had underofone a 
 change. It was no longer a succession of battles, 
 but a slaughter — or more properly a war of exter- 
 mination. The soldiers of the Republic refused all 
 terms of capitulation. They saw, with a feeling 
 that finds no expression in the poverty of uttered 
 language, the land that their fathers had wrested 
 from the primeval forests and inhospitable wilder- 
 ness of the New World, and erected into the most 
 glorious, and one among the most powerful, inde- 
 pendencies upon the globe — a land whose liber- 
 ties, whose power, whose wealth, whose enlight- 
 enment, were theirs by creation, and which had 
 known no civilization other than their own — saw 
 all this already hurled beneath the tread of the 
 rude conquerer. They saw their holy flag, no 
 longer the emblem of a nation, and as powerless 
 to protect as it was impotent to save, supplanted 
 
252 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 by a barbarous device of a barbarous age. They 
 had never feh the yoke of the conquerer, and the 
 experiment was too degrading to be entertained. 
 Their loss was irreparable. Kindred, as well as 
 country, had gone ; the one swept by famine, the 
 other by the sword. The destruction was com- 
 plete. It only remained for the soldier of the Re- 
 public to show the world how a patriot could die. 
 
 There was no longer a Republican army of the 
 west. It had fallen and become engulfed in the 
 irresistible torrent of numbers ; and the last of the 
 States so lately free were opened up to the march 
 of conquest. But the Capital remained, and there 
 the whole American army was now concentrated. 
 On the north the lines of the enemy extended 
 from Baltimore to Harper's Ferry, and on the 
 southeast they had reached the Potomac. On the 
 southwest they pressed forward within a few miles 
 of Washington City. 
 
 To this small area were now confined all of the 
 territory that remained, and all that remained of 
 the independence and the nationality of the Amer- 
 ican Republic ; and to this were likewise circum- 
 scribed all the passions, emotions, vices, virtues 
 and suffering, precipitated by the most destructive 
 war that ever stained the records of the human 
 race. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The New Government An Imperial Edict Mongolian Con- 
 servatism Aid to the Sufferers The Last Combat 
 
 A Programme that failed of Execution The Western 
 
 Empire Farewell Reflections The End. 
 
 The same wise conservatism in the affairs of 
 government which has ever marked the adminis- 
 tration of the Emperors of China, and which 
 clothed the Chinese people with the advantages 
 of civilization while Europe was yet a wilderness, 
 was made the policy of the conquerors in America, 
 now that the success of their arms had been as- 
 sured, and the Republic had begun to yield to the 
 pressure of the invasion. 
 
 The tidings of the first Mongolian victory and 
 its immediate consequences had no sooner reached 
 the Viceroy, than he put forth his decree, in the 
 name of the Emperor, commanding, in effect, that 
 no subject of the Empire, under pain of death, 
 should commit any acts of violence upon the per 
 son or against the property of anyone heretofore 
 a subject of the United States, and not now under 
 arms ; and further commanding, that in every case 
 in which property had been confiscated by the 
 army, in ignorance of the Imperial pleasure, as 
 
2 54 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 herein first promulgated, that the same, or its 
 equivalent, should be restored to the owner. It 
 was further ordered that this decree be proclaimed 
 throughout the whole of His Majesty's Western 
 Empire, and translated into all the languages 
 thereof. 
 
 The publication of this order was most oppor- 
 tune. Unlike the decrees emanatino- from the 
 Republican government, in the past — which were 
 often made the playthings of courts of justice, and 
 even of individuals whose wealth, and consequent 
 influence, had so often elevated them above the 
 laws — the decrees of the Emperor of China were 
 as inexorable as those of Destiny. Of the con- 
 sequences and the penalty of an infraction, there 
 was no evasion possible. Of its language all were 
 compelled to take due notice and make proper 
 construction at their peril. There were no refine- 
 ments of procedure through the meshes of which 
 the guilty might escape, and no *' reasonable 
 doubts " to bewilder the understanding of a Judge 
 or jury. As a rule of enforcement, the generous 
 maxims of our humane system of jurisprudence 
 were often reversed ; for, with them, it were better 
 that ten innocent persons should suffer than that 
 the lawful decrees of the sovereign should fail of 
 enforcement. 
 
 The government of a people under laws of this 
 character, and who have been educated to recog- 
 nize the temper, becomes a matter of obvious 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 255 
 
 easiness ; and the conduct of the army in its rela- 
 tions with those of the inhabitants who had sur- 
 vived the vicissitudes of the war, showed how 
 well, even the humblest Coolie understood the 
 imperative nature of the Imperial command. 
 
 No sooner had unrestricted inter-communication 
 between the north and the south been estab- 
 lished, by the destruction of the western army 
 of the Republic, and the fact of the general desti- 
 tution of the country been ascertained, than the 
 Viceroy ordered the immediate transmittal of pro- 
 visions to the north, and their free distribution 
 among the people. Numerous supply depots were 
 established at the most available points for distri- 
 bution, and the proud Causcasian was at length 
 compelled to accept the necessaries of life, as a 
 charitable donation, from the hands of the Monofo- 
 lian ; or, failing to do so, choose the alternative of 
 starvation. These measures of relief havine been 
 at length carried to practical perfection, the new 
 government turned its attention to the unfinished 
 work of conquest. 
 
 A trace of the Republic still remained in the 
 defiant attitude of the Capital. For the purpose 
 of reducing this last stronghold, it was deemed in- 
 expedient as well as unnecessary to involve a 
 further destruction of life by any further conflict of 
 arms; and hence it was resolved to await a pro- 
 posal to surrender, when famine should have so 
 far completed the conquest that arms had begun. 
 
256 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 All communication with the outside having been 
 cut off by the investing army, the fate of the 
 army of the west had not been made known at 
 the Capital ; otherwise, it might have proposed, 
 or accepted terms of capitulation. But, believing 
 that the west was still protected, and finding the 
 supplies of army stores and provisions about ex- 
 hausted, it was determined to abandon the Capital 
 to its fate, cut through the lines of the enemy, and 
 effect a junction with the western division. 
 
 Accordingly, in reply to a summons to surren- 
 der the city, the besieged contracted their lines on 
 the south and east, and engaged the investing 
 army on the west. But the mistake was fatal to 
 the life of the army, as well as to its already hope- 
 less cause. Once removed from the protection of 
 their fortifications, the troops became exposed to 
 the fire of overwhelming numbers on every side. 
 Half the army had fallen, and the work of de- 
 struction continued. The veteran Generals in 
 command refused to surrender, and not until the 
 President, placing himself at the head of the army, 
 raised the insignia of capitulation, and commanded 
 the surrender, did the troops lay down their arms. 
 
 Meantime the conquerors had entered the Capi- 
 tal. The Republic had fought its last battle; and 
 the Imperial Dragon of China already floated from 
 the dome of the Capitol. 
 
 The very name of the United States of America 
 was thus blotted from the record of nations and 
 
LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 257 
 
 peoples, as unworthy the poor boon of existence. 
 Where once the proud domain of forty States, be- 
 sides milhons of miles of unorganized territory, 
 cultivated the arts of peace and gave to the world 
 its brightest gems of literature, art and scientific 
 discovery, the Temple of Liberty had crumbled ; 
 and above its ruins was reared the colossal fabric 
 of barbaric splendor known as the Western Em- 
 pire of his August Majesty the Emperor of China 
 and Ruler of all lands. 
 
 Forever occupied and diverted by its factions 
 and its politicians, in their local intrigues for the 
 acquisition of political power, the Ship of State 
 sailed proudly on, too blinded by her preoccupa- 
 tion and too reliant in her strength to bestow a 
 thought upon the perils of the sea. She sighted 
 afar the foam of the maelstrom, and tossed her 
 haughty pennants in sovereign disdain of its 
 power. But its current was around her, and she 
 glided unconsciously to her doom. In vain the 
 exercise of her giant strength ; in vain that her 
 factions, in happy forgetfulness of their petty an- 
 tipathies, united their powers to save ! Too late ! 
 She was hurled, helpless and struggling, to ruin 
 and annihilation ; and as she sank, engulfed, she 
 carried with her the prestige of a race ; for in 
 America the representatives of the one race of 
 man, which, in its relation to the family of men, 
 had borne upon its crest the emblem of sovereign 
 power since the dawn of history, saw now the an- 
 
 '7 
 
258 LAST DAYS OF THE REPUBLIC. 
 
 cestral diadem plucked from its proud repose, to 
 shed its lustre upon an alien crown. Thus passed 
 away the glory of the Union of States, at the 
 dawn of the Twentieth Century. 
 
 THE END.