CHAPTER VIII

THE SEAL OF CONDEMNATION

In his opening message, Democratic Speaker George H. Rogers (San Francisco) set the tone for the eighteenth session of the California legislature when he bluntly told his fellow assemblymen that the people of the state had elected them “to keep from our shores the hordes of Mongolians who are swarming upon us, and to place their seal of condemnation upon the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.” With Barclay Henley of Sonoma as chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations, the House leadership was firmly in the hands of men possessing what was called an “unreconstructed disposition.” Henley, son of Democratic “war horse” Thomas J. Henley, had exiled himself to Mexico during the Civil War and assumed Mexican citizenship. Henley’s brother, George, also had won an Assembly seat (Mendocino) in the 1869 election. Lieutenant-Governor William Holden, a Democrat who had voted to reject the Thirteenth Amendment, presided in the Senate. Senators John S. Hager (San Francisco) and William M. Gwin, Jr. (Calaveras) vied for the sponsorship of the resolution rejecting the Fifteenth Amendment. Gwin’s father, one of California’s first United States senators, also had gone to Mexico during the Civil War.[1]

When debate on the Fifteenth Amendment began in mid-January 1870, both houses delayed voting so that the legislators could deliver speeches, as Assembly Pro Tem Charles Gildea (Democrat, El Dorado) remarked, “for the record and for the country.” The subject gave veterans and neophytes alike an opportunity to display their rhetorical flourishes. The speeches reflected a number of different influences and motivations. Barclay Henley and William Gwin’s speeches clearly showed the influence of family background and origin. Politically ambitious George C. Perkins (Butte) very probably voted against the amendment because he, though Republican, represented a strongly Democratic district. Wealthy Independent Edward Tompkins (Alameda), an ex-Democrat, was free to offer liberal views differing markedly from those of his former fellow party members. Republican Charles A. Tweed (Placer) spoke for the amendment although he came from what had been a prosperous mining district, but which now had a somewhat different constituency, and had sent three Republicans to the Assembly. His own independent temperament must have influenced the speeches of Seldon J. Finney (San Mateo), the chief Republican spokesman in the Assembly. His district included 984 Irish-born and 258 German-born residents in an aggregate population of 6,635. In addition to the speeches, several resolutions condemning the federal government’s actions in forcing the Fifteenth Amendment on the Southern states also occupied the legislators’ time and attention.[2]

In 1867 Governor Henry H. Haight wrote a letter to the New York World—the nation’s leading Democratic newspaper—that sheds light on the former Missourian’s energetic attempt to defeat the Fifteenth Amendment in California. Haight explained that his purpose in running for governor was to help stop the Radical Republican program. “For one I will never consent to let negroes make laws for me,” Haight asserted, “nor to let men legislate for me who are elected by negro votes.” The governor added that he hoped no New York politician would sanction black suffrage “in any shape whatever,” because it would, “if forced on the Southern people, result in a war of the races, and in the destruction of the Government.” Haight declared that by becoming governor he had accomplished what he set out to do, which was to “revolutionize” California, Oregon, and Nevada, and thus, in his opinion, help the Middle West overthrow Radicalism. The governor said he would leave political life if he could. In spite of this assertion, Haight ran (unsuccessfully) for re-election in 1871, but he evidently did so reluctantly and his racism appears to have been genuine rather than adopted as a means of winning office.[3]

Governor Henry H. Haight

(Courtesy of the California State Library)

Believing the Fifteenth Amendment important enough to warrant a special, separate message, Haight did not dwell on it in his first biennial message. He indicated to the legislature the direction he thought their efforts ought to take in regard to the Chinese. As the people of the state had “so emphatically expressed their hostility to the importation of Chinese laborers,” Haight said, their representatives would “doubtless leave no legitimate means untried to execute the popular will in this respect.” The governor suggested that it was “of vital importance, also, that the infamous business of importing Chinese females by the hundred, for the vilest purposes, should be arrested at once by stringent measures.” Calling public sentiment unanimous on the Chinese question, Haight declared:

The Legislature have power, without doubt, to make such provisions as will secure the people of the State against the stream of filth and prostitution that has been pouring in from Asia for the past twelve months, and at the same time secure the working people of the State against the importation of a class whose servile competition tends directly to cheapen and degrade labor.

Haight suggested, however, that the Chinese be given the right to testify in court because the people of California did not approve of ill usage of them or “any other class within our borders.” He observed that giving the Chinese testimony rights would be not only a measure of justice, but of “sound policy” because crimes against whites sometimes went unpunished for lack of witnesses. As the same time, Haight called Chinese testimony “so utterly unreliable as in many cases hardly to afford a basis for conjecture.” With recommendations such as these to guide them, the legislators declined to change the testimony laws.[4]

Attorney General Jo Hamilton may have given Haight the idea that the state could exclude Chinese on its own initiative. In his biennial report, Hamilton argued that whether or not the Fifteenth Amendment enfranchised the Chinese, it was still “within the power of the Legislature to place the State independent of the danger which may be apprehended from this class of people, . . . .” How the legislature could take any such action in light of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Burlingame Treaty, neither Haight nor Hamilton explained.[5]

On January 5, 1870, Haight transmitted the text of the Fifteenth Amendment to the legislature together with a lengthy message stating his opinions. The governor’s arguments leaned heavily on the reserved powers and states’ rights doctrines. He opened by saying the issue was not whether race should or should not prevent anyone from voting. Making a traditional states’ rights argument, he insisted the issue was whether each state could control suffrage independently, or whether Congress alone “controlled, enlarged and restricted” voting. Haight saw two questions involved in the issue—power and policy. If Congress lacked the power to take away a right reserved by the Tenth Amendment then the Fifteenth Amendment “must be rejected.” If the amendment conflicted with sound policy, the legislature ought to reject it on that ground as well.[6]

Haight first took up the question of power. He argued that the Constitution did not represent the whole sovereign power of the people, but was a delegation of certain powers to a constituted federal authority. “The simple truth of history is, “he asserted, “that the Constitution was not the work of the people of the United States in their aggregate capacity, but was the work of the States acting as distinct and independent bodies.” According to Haight, the clause providing for amendment of the Constitution meant simply amendment of the powers delegated to the federal authority. “The States can amend the ‘Constitution,’ that is, the ‘powers delegated,’ . . . but farther than this, the right of amendment cannot go.” In other words, the powers reserved to the states could not be amended. In Haight’s view, “The very idea of amendment . . . involves the pre-existence of something which is to be amended, and, in this case, the proposition is to amend the powers originally delegated by depriving the States of a right reserved. . . . it cannot be said that a power which has no existence in the Federal Constitution can, by amendment, be either enlarged or abridged.”[7]

Haight next took up the limits on the amending power, saying, “This right to amend either has a limit or it has none.” No rational man, he declared, “would have the hardihood to content that by an amendment a hereditary monarchy could be established, . . .” The governor argued that the right of amendment must have some limit because “It is not an unlimited license to deprive any state of a right which it refused to surrender at the time it entered the Union, but in its spirit and essence has relation to the mass of delegated powers which compose what we call ‘the Federal Constitution.’”[8]

Haight also objected to the Fifteenth Amendment on the grounds of policy: “To say that the people of California should tie their hands upon this subject, is to charge upon them either incompetency to comprehend what is expedient and just to those within her jurisdiction, or unwillingness to be governed by justice and sound policy.” He asserted that if the Fifteenth Amendment were adopted, “. . . the most degraded Digger Indian within our borders becomes at once an elector and, so far, a ruler. . . . In this event, also, by a slight amendment to the naturalization laws, the Chinese population could be made electors.” According to Haight, suffrage was not a right, “but a privilege, to be conferred upon such classes only as can exercise it for the general good.” In his inaugural address, the governor had made it plain that he thought the “aid of Africans and Asiatics would be an evil, and . . . would introduce the antipathy of race into our political contests, and lead to strife and bloodshed.”[9]

The governor’s major objection, however, was that “The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, so called, have a direct design and tendency to centralize the Government and to deprive each State of any control over its local affairs.” The states would not let the right to control their local affairs be taken from them, Haight declared, because “They are not blind to the fact that it is this control which is but another name for liberty, and which is liberty.” Haight took his arguments from the standard Democratic textbooks of the day; politicians had used them before and would do so again. Haight and others like him tried to deny the results of the Civil War—his involved and sometimes opaque language indicated the difficulties the governor labored under.[10]

The Union decided that “If Haight’s arguments are good against the Fifteenth Amendment, there is an end of amendments, even if but one State is disposed to set up a complaint that it is wronged, or that its old-time privileges are touched and hedged about.” The governor’s proposition, the paper remarked, “appears to be that no future amendment will be good unless all the States ratify it.” The San Francisco Alta California observed:

Governor Haight attempts to establish that the Fifteenth Amendment ought not to be adopted—that it would not be an amendment even if it were adopted, and finally that it is impossible to adopt it. To sustain himself the Governor lays down the astonishing proposition that the men who met at Philadelphia nearly a century ago proceeded to tie the hands of the people of American on certain points for all time to come.

Pointing out that the writers of the Constitution could not have anticipated all the future needs of the country, the paper admitted, “We are at a loss to properly characterize an assumption so extraordinary as this. It appears to be Bourbonism of the most obtuse and wooden description.” If anything, the paper added, the control of suffrage is not a reserved right, but a joint right, “for the Constitution confers upon Congress the power to establish an uniform rule of naturalization.” The Sacramento Bee told its readers that the New York Tribune had called Haight’s message “a fatuous and fogeyish protest against the spirit of the times.” The Bee commented that this estimate was “pretty near the truth,” and that many of the governor’s friends saw the message and regretted that he had written it.[11]

Haight’s views received a warmer welcome in the legislature, and several of the Democratic speakers used his themes in their orations. His message also may have inspired the introduction of at least two resolutions. Democratic Assemblyman Thomas W. Hudson (Sonoma) authored Assembly Concurrent Resolution No. 20, which observed that a crisis had arrived in the affairs of the American government and accused Congress, “in carrying out its so-called reconstruction measures,” of “exhibiting a spirit of unparalleled partisan malignity, intense selfishness, and ignoble fanaticism at war with every sentiment of justice, humanity, brotherly love, and enlightened statesmanship.” Hudson added that in attempting to force the Fifteenth Amendment on unwilling states Congress was “clothing the most ignorant and degraded races with the highest prerogatives of American citizenship.” Hudson especially was concerned by the “tyrannical coercion” of Georgia and foresaw the destruction of state governments in the Congressional reconstruction plan. Hudson’s resolution was read the first and second times and then referred to the Committee on Federal Relations.[12]

On January 13 Democratic Assemblyman T. A. Slicer’s resolution congratulating Tennessee for rejecting the “enormity” called the Fifteenth Amendment was read a third time and passed. Addressing the Assembly, Slicer labeled the amendment “a high-handed attack on the Constitution, and the rights of the States, . . .” and said, “its enforcement will amount to no less than a most unjustifiable and tyrannical usurpation of power.” Describing Californians as “deeply interested” in defeating the Fifteenth Amendment, Slicer added, “We have in our midst an alien, barbarous and pagan race—a race utterly depraved and thoroughly corrupt—which the radical leaders, fearing the negroes will abandon them for the guidance of their natural protectors, have taken under their protection and patronage.” Repeating the oft-heard charges, Slicer declared Chinese suffrage would “commit the whole future destiny of our race, on this coast, to the venal discretion of the vilest, most impure, and dishonest people now on God’s footstool.” Although the Assembly approved the Slicer resolution, the Senate referred it to the Committee on Federal Relations.[13]

The day the Senate received Haight’s message, William Gwin, Jr. introduced a resolution stating that Congress lacked the power to propose an amendment like the Fifteenth and the states lacked the authority to ratify such a measure. Gwin quoted the Tenth Amendment and declared that as California had not surrendered the right to designate who could vote within its boundaries, Congress could not make such a decision for the state. Not to be outdone, Barclay Henley asked that 10,000 copies of Haight’s message be printed and announced, “It should be known that we, speaking through our Executive, will not submit to the adoption of an amendment to the Federal Constitution which is forced upon us in the manner in which this is sought to be.”[14]

Henley, who was twenty-seven, came to California from his native state of Indiana at the age of ten. He attended Hanover College in Indiana and later practiced law in Sonoma County for many years. His father had represented Indiana in Congress for twelve years before coming to California. The Henleys shared the white supremacy feelings of a number of men—Burnett, Haight, and Hager, for example—who came from the Border States, from southern states, or from northern states with relatively large black populations. The southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, New York, and most of Pennsylvania and New Jersey were vehemently racist.[15]

Young Henley’s belligerence stirred some newspaper comment, and he was accused of instigating another rebellion. But, unintimidated, he repeated his stand a few days later, asserting, “I take this occasion to say that we will not submit to this Fifteenth Amendment, if it is passed in the manner proposed; that we will not submit to it anyhow, but we will fight it incessantly, resolutely and all the time.” Henley denied that he advocated going to war to resist the amendment saying, “We, sir, have other ways of settling this difficulty; and we have as many ways, I give warning, as the various and ever-shifting and changing policies of the Republican party.” Henley had in mind an appeal to the courts, another amendment, or even violence, remarking:

It may be possible that we will resist it in this way; that when it becomes a part of the Federal Constitution, and a Chinaman comes up to vote, or a negro either, the friends of white suffrage may be so numerous that we will make it rather warm for them. Or we may resist it in the manner in which the Plug Uglies resisted the Irishmen and Dutchmen in Baltimore. We may provide ourselves possibly with pegging awls, and when a negro or a Chinaman, or possibly a Republican comes up to vote, we will prig him a little.

On January 12, Henley, chairman of the Committee on Federal Relations, formally recommended that the legislature reject the Fifteenth Amendment.[16]

Spectators, “among whom were many ladies,” crowded the new Capitol’s Senate Chamber at noon on January 13, the date set for discussion of the Fifteenth Amendment. The first order of business was to decide how the Senate resolution should be worded. Gwin had amended his original resolution, but it failed to win the approval of veteran Senator Hager, who wanted a joint resolution with the Assembly. Hager recalled the Senate’s experience in wording the resolution to reject the Fourteenth Amendment and warned, “If we do not adopt the right mode of rejecting it some future Legislature may bring up the question and ratify the amendment.” A native of New Jersey, Hager’s ancestors on both sides were German Protestants. Hager was a graduate of the College of New Jersey at Princeton and studied law in Morristown, New Jersey. He came to California in the spring of 1849 and worked in mining and merchandising until January 1850 when he began a law practice in San Francisco. In 1855 Hager was elected to a six-year term as a district judge. He served as a state senator for six years, much of the time as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. An experienced parliamentarian, Hager suggested that Gwin withdraw his resolution and that a joint resolution be substituted. The Senate acceded to Hager and tabled the Gwin measure on January 21. The original copy of Hager’s version, handwritten in purple ink, stated the text of the Fifteenth Amendment and succinctly declared, “Be it resolved by the Senate and Assembly of the State of California that the said proposed amendment be and the same is hereby disapproved of and rejected by the Legislature of the State of California.”[17]

Following a decision that the proposed amendment was before the Senate, Gwin, speaking so low as to “tantalize” his listeners, gave his views on the measure. He first used the states’ rights argument, saying, “No one can doubt who investigates the subject that the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment will be destructive to the spirit of the Constitution. It takes from the states the control of suffrage—one of the great leading principles of the Federal Compact.” Furthermore, Gwin argued, the amendment would admit to citizenship people who did not come from Christian nations. But the heart of Gwin’s protest was that the “African and Mongolian will stand side by side with the Caucasian; and this will degenerate into a government of mixed races.” In Gwin’s opinion the Republican Party was a “revolutionary” party whose “chief glory, and that for which it will be most noted in history, will be the degradation of the white race to the political level of the negro; its next greatest achievement will be to assert the equality of the Mongolian.” Describing the Chinese Empire as “essentially a decaying civilization,” Gwin declared, “The condition of its people is most abject. There we find all that is darkest in human nature. Vice and misery prevail to a fearful extent and this is the country from which we must receive American citizens and free men.” Gwin predicted that the Chinese would come in the familiar “hordes.” Perhaps he was thinking of Calaveras County’s declining revenues when he warned his listeners “Where the negroes or Chinese form large communities, they will destroy all equilibrium between the property taxpayer and the poll taxpayer.” He feared that “The Chinaman, made a citizen and a voter, . . .” would “clamor for extravagant internal improvements, for being a laborer, he will be benefited by such expenditures. He will urge profligate legislation.” Gwin concluded by saying although the Fifteenth Amendment might not be defeated, the legislators ought to do their duty and show their disapproval of “so destructive a measure.”[18]

Some political observers in Calaveras surmised that the younger Gwin’s election to the Senate was “only the first move in a game” looking to the election of his father to the United States Senate when Cornelius Cole’s term expired. Before the Civil War the senior Gwin had owned extensive plantation lands and numerous slaves in Mississippi. Though born in Tennessee, the senior Gwin lived in Mississippi in his youth and had been active in economic and political affairs in the Gulf area. On Gwin’s return to California, he and his son bought a gold-bearing quartz mine near Mokelumne Hill. The younger Gwin’s speech directly reflected his family background and probably the views of the majority of his constituents as well. As a quartz mine owner, Gwin might have used Chinese labor to his advantage; but it seems likely that his own strong opinions about the Chinese would have prevented him from hiring them, at least while he occupied a Senate seat.[19]

The next day Assemblyman Robert M. Martin (Siskiyou) concentrated on the perils of black suffrage. He termed the Fifteenth Amendment “one of the most extraordinary propositions that has ever emanated from the central power to control the people.” If adopted, in his opinion the amendment would “so disintegrate these States as to destroy the last vestige of our republican form of Government.” The only plausible reason he could see for the measure was one he claimed Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens offered—that the amendment would help the Republican Party in New York and Pennsylvania where African American voters might make the difference between defeat and victory. Martin denied black suffrage would benefit the people of the United States because “the negro is not my equal physically, politically, or otherwise. I am persuaded that history gives no example where the negro has ever shown himself capable of self-government.” Martin told his audience that whites had been raped and murdered in Jamaica when blacks received political power there. Following an insurrection on that island in 1865, Democratic newspapers printed many articles describing the alleged atrocities and predicting similar events in the United States. Threats of racial violence always stirred a white audience, both in the North and the South. Intermarriage was another effective subject. In Mexico, Martin said, “they finally gave way to this iniquitous and disgusting system of amalgamation and miscegenation.” What followed, according to Martin, was “a war of races, resulting in the well known instability of government in that country.” Should the Fifteenth Amendment become law, he warned, the United States would suffer the same problems as Mexico. “It is a recognized fact, Mr. Speaker, he asserted, “that the Caucasian race, or, as we are sometimes called, the Anglo-Saxon, constitutes the most superior and intelligent race on this earth. It is also an admitted fact, I believe, that the negro race is the most inferior.” In Martin’s view a measure that allowed African Americans to vote was “too unnatural, too unjust, too preposterous to merit any consideration whatever.” Martin ended by saying he would consider it “one of the proudest acts” of his life to vote against the Fifteenth Amendment.[20]

The Democrats’ rhetoric failed to impress the Union. “If ever a party had reason to fear destruction by its friends,” the newspaper said, “it is the Democracy of this country.” Describing the speeches on the amendment as the “merest froth,” the Union scathingly commented, “A generation of school-boys has risen up in defense of errors condemned by the universal judgment of the civilized world, hacked to pieces by the sword and put to shame a thousand times in the last five years by the ablest intellects of every enlightened country.” “Fate,” the paper declared, “is not more certain than the final ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment.” The Alta commented that Barclay Henley was “certainly kind” to assure his listeners that the national Democratic Party would not organize another rebellion if the amendment became law. The paper objected to Henley’s appeal to violence, remarking, “Henley’s implied threat of rebellion was mere fustian; his proposition to fight the laws of the land with detached squads of fellow partisans is a gratuitous exhibition of a spirit of lawlessness.” The Alta also thought the Democrats ought to stop raising the possibility of Chinese naturalization. The newspaper pointed out that Congress had the power to naturalize the Chinese at once but had not done so, and, the Alta implied, would not in the future. “If we are to have discussion,” the paper requested, “let it at least be of the character that is suitable to intelligent men.”[21]

The Elevator kept its readers informed about the amendment’s progress and announced in November that twenty-one states had approved the measure. The African American newspaper optimistically predicted, “The Fifteenth Amendment, a beacon of our hopes, will ere long be confirmed, and the boon of suffrage . . . ours.” Realistically assessing the amendment, the paper said, “It is a mistaken idea to suppose that the passage of this Amendment will at once open the Halls of Legislation, place our children in Public Schools and Universities, confer upon us offices of State and municipal government, and immediately bring us wealth, power, and the influence and importance which accompany wealth and political power.” The Elevator explained, however, that the amendment “gives us political freedom without which the personal freedom which the Emancipation Proclamation conferred on the Freedmen is a myth.”[22]

Undaunted by newspaper criticism, Barclay Henley again attacked the Fifteenth Amendment. He declared that whites who had approved the measure in other states had proved themselves incapable of self-government. Blacks did not merit political equality, because, in his opinion, they were inferior in morality and intelligence. The possibility of race war also troubled Henley. “It is against all human experience and our knowledge of man’s nature,” he said, “for any two races of people to live together harmoniously and peaceably under a republican form of government in the equal enjoyment of political rights, unless they intermarry or amalgamate. That we cannot do, and therefore, peace is impossible.” Henley thought the Chinese would be as difficult to assimilate as African Americans because they differed from whites “in every conceivable particular; a difference that neither time nor clime nor education can obliterate; . . .” He feared that “when whites are driven from the market places and the marts of labor by the overwhelming competition of these Asiatics—then will come that most unrelenting of wars—a war of races.” “There can be no admixture, no assimilation, no amalgamation of these two races,” Henley stated, “Hence, I believe, if this measure prevails, war will ensue.” One of the reasons for the Sonoma County legislator’s hostility to the Fifteenth Amendment (in addition to family background) was the competition between Irish and Chinese agricultural workers. Sonoma County’s Chinese population had increased from 51 to 473 between 1860 and 1870, but the county’s Irish-born population of 1,281 was its largest foreign group. Vineyard owners increasingly used Chinese workers at $1 per day for grape picking and to build roads, bridges, wine cellars, and irrigation ditches.[23]

On January 18 another young Democrat, James E. Murphy (Del Norte, Klamath), rose to tell the Assembly he believed the Fifteenth Amendment would “throw us into the abyss of irretrievable ruin and infamy.” A native of Maine, Murphy, who was twenty-four, had attended St. Thomas Seminary in San Francisco and read law between 1866 and 1867. Taking Haight’s arguments as his model, Murphy stated that the Fifteenth Amendment conflicted with the Tenth Amendment and deprived Californians “of the power to say whether the countless hordes of Chinese which, locust-like, infect our Golden State, shall or shall not become voters, and enjoy the highest prerogatives of American citizenship.” He reminded the Assemblymen each of them had been elected on this “very issue,” the “hydra-headed monster which radical tyranny tries to force on an unwilling people.” Between 1860 and 1870 Del Norte County’s Chinese population had decreased by more than 199 and numbered 216 out of a total population of 2,022. In the same period, Klamath County’s Chinese population had stayed approximately the same and in the 1870 Census totaled 542 out of a total population of 1,686. The Chinese, however, outnumbered the Irish in both counties.[24]

There is little doubt that Murphy’s hostility to the Chinese came from his Irish Catholic background. He may also have received pressure from his constituents. In May 1869 the Alta quoted a correspondent for the Boston Advertiser, who said, “the opposition to the Chinese does not come, in the first place, from political managers, but from Jesuits or at any rate from the leaders of the Catholic Church.” In the early 1870s, open controversy over the Chinese issue flared between the pro-Chinese Protestant clergymen on one side and the Catholic priesthood on the other. And following the 1867 election the editor of the San Francisco Daily Examiner remarked that he was proud because the Germans and the Irish had defeated the Unionists, who were mostly “Anglo-Saxons.” The Chinese and the Fifteenth Amendment were the most conspicuous and controversial issues in California at this time, but religious and ethnic sub-conflicts also created tensions.[25]

Thus far the Republican Assemblymen had remained silent. But on January 18, forty-two-year old Seldon J. Finney (San Mateo) rose to reply to Henley’s speeches. “For vigor of intellect, depth of research, general acquirements, and power of exposition, he led his compeers in the Legislature,” the Union declared on Finney’s death. Finney possessed “many statesmanlike qualities,” the newspaper added, and was “emphatically a seeker after the truth.” A leading Republican farmer of San Mateo County, Finney was also “an active Spiritualist, and an ardent believer in the right of women to vote and hold office, both of which militated somewhat against a brilliant political career.” Despite these handicaps, Finney served as a state senator in the next two sessions of the legislature, the 19th and 20th.[26]

Finney began his speech by saying that when men who professed allegiance to democratic principles deprecated the doctrines of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men he wondered whether he “was living in the middle of the nineteenth century in America, or the fourteenth century in Spain.” He asserted that he believed the great principles of American liberty were an expression of God’s laws, and his answer to Henley’s “whole picture of ruin in consequence of the logical application of these principles is that I dare, and the American people dare, to take the risk.” Rebutting Haight and Henley’s legal arguments, Finney quoted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story’s opinion that the Constitution was an “act of the people, and not of the States in their political capacity.” Finney denied the governor’s contention that only the powers delegated to the Constitution can be amended, saying, “Sir, the question is not whether Congress can amend the Constitution—it is whether the people can amend their own Constitution. “When Henley asked Finney if Congress had the power to establish a monarchy, Finney replied, “no” however, and the Union, though praising his speech, wrote that Finney logically ought to have answered “yes.” Finney argued that because African Americans were taxed they ought to be allowed to vote. He said that all the talk about the inferiority of the black race meant “nothing,” and added, “Unless this Fifteenth amendment were adopted you would have to assert all this inferiority of race by sheer force of political or armed power, and transport them out of this country, or you would continue to give the lie to the fundamental principle of American Government.” He told the Assemblymen it was easy to call Africans incapable of self-government, but reminded them, “Gentlemen, our forefathers wore chains of iron, as slaves, around their necks less than one thousand years ago.” As for black uprisings in Santo Domingo and Jamaica, Finney called whatever murders resulted “a drop in the bucket” compared to “those enacted by Christian nations and even under Christian direction.”[27]

In the Senate Charles A. Tweed (Placer) eloquently presented his ideas as both a Republican and a former slave owner. Tweed had lived in what he called the “backward” South for fourteen years. He drew on his experiences there to make a comparison between the 4,000,000 ex-slaves and 5 to 6,000,000 “white serfs,” whom he described as being in “just such a condition as cannot be found among white men anywhere else on the habitable globe . . . . In some material respects infinitely worse than that of slavery, sir.” According to Tweed, African Americans were better qualified to vote than poor whites, who he asserted the Thirteenth Amendment had also freed. He declared himself ashamed that blacks had to be given the vote, “not as a matter of justice, as it ought to be done, but as a means of affording them protection against outrage.” But he added, “That it is necessary to confer this right and for this reason, I fully believe, sir.” Tweed protested against the Fifteenth Amendment—“so simple, so manfully right, and just in itself”—being treated with “contumely and contempt” by the Democratic speakers and used to cast “odium and derision on 4,000,000 of American citizens.” “Mr. President,” Tweed prophetically stated, “the time will come when some representative of this despised race will stand where I stand now and speak for his fellows and for mankind.” Tweed admitted that education benefited a man who was a voter, but said, “if he has no love of human freedom and of justice in his heart, . . . if he does not recognize the good that is in every man, he is unfit to vote in such a government as ours.” Regarding the Chinese, Tweed said if he were in Congress he would change the naturalization laws “without hesitancy,” because it was a shame “to make the question of color have anything to do with the qualifications of a man for American citizenship.”[28]

Equally forceful in presenting his views was Senator Edward Tompkins (Independent, Alameda) who spoke after Tweed’s two-hour oration. According to the Union, Tompkins possessed “considerable intellectual ability and power of speech.” The Alta described Tompkins’ address as “the most powerful and brilliant speech that has ever disturbed the acoustical properties of the Senate Chamber.” The senator, 55, was a native of New York. A wealthy lawyer and lifelong Democrat, he was a Regent of the University of California and an advocate of the State Geologic Survey.[29]

Tompkins first explained his political status, saying, “By education, training, by faith and confidence, I was, through all the earlier years of my life, a Democrat.” But, said Tompkins, “I was a Constitutional Democrat, . . . I believed that whoever took up arms against the Constitution was a traitor. . . . I was a Union man, first, last, and always.” Tompkins believed the Democrats had “so to speak, gone forward backward.” Tompkins thought men should be judged by what they “say and do,” and not by the color of their skin. He believed the Fifteenth Amendment simply meant “Every citizen of the United States is a citizen of every State; and it is only fanaticism or madness that would seek to draw the line that would keep him from that right.” Tompkins denied he favored Chinese immigration, but said, “I detest and abhor the injustice and the wrong with which they have been treated in California.” He asserted the Chinese did all the work “that men here are too prosperous and too proud to do themselves,” and added, “The very men who are the most severe in their denunciations of the Chinese are elevated up in the plane of society by this foundation of cheap labor that is put under them.” In conclusion, Tompkins told the Democrats, “Wherever you have fought the battle against the rights of classes or individuals, in the long run you have been beaten, and you always will be.” His wealth and class may have influenced Tompkins’ attitude toward the Chinese, still quite evidently he was that rare individual for this period in California, an independent politician who was not afraid to put his views on record, no matter how unpopular they might be.[30]

In contrast to Tompkins, Republican Senator George C. Perkins (Butte) refused to support the Fifteenth Amendment—probably because he represented a strongly Democratic district and was serving his first term. Born in Maine in 1839, Perkins ran away to sea at the age of 12 and came to California in the 1850s. A self-made man, he was one of the founders of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company and in 1870 he was a partner in the Bank of Butte County. Perkins served six years as a state senator, one term as governor, and 22 years as a United States senator.[31]

During his speech Perkins admitted he would have voted “silently” to reject the amendment except “for the peculiar reasons adduced against it by his Excellency the Governor in his message presenting it to the Legislature.” Perkins agreed with Haight that the amendment was not good policy, but he disagreed that the measure was illegal and unconstitutional. In Perkins’ opinion, if three-quarters of the states ratified the amendment, it would be binding on all of them. He quoted John C. Calhoun—“the Magna Apollo of States’ Rights”—to the effect that the amending power was an important concession by each state to all of the states as a portion of the original right of self-government. All of Calhoun’s writings opposed Haight’s arguments, Perkins said. The senator deemed the adoption of the amendment as “impolitic,” but said California was “bound to bow in submission to that fundamental principle that has made us the leading nation of the world.” Perkins followed through on his opposition to the amendment and voted for the resolution rejecting it, just as Tompkins continued his support to the last by voting against that resolution.[32]

Although he represented a mining area, Perkins’ speech lacked racist references and showed independent thought. In contrast, Senator John Hager repeated the standard demagogic arguments the Democrats had used so often in the previous four years. Hager chose his chose his words well to appeal to his Irish-American and German-American constituents in San Francisco. One of the last to speak on the amendment, Hager told the Senate, “The storm breath of Democracy guided by a more virtuous, a more enlightened public opinion, has swept over the State.” Hager said the Republicans would find the answer for this change “in the aggressions of Congress and popular sentiment on this suffrage question.” The usual unjust, exaggerated, and misleading statements of the Democratic politician of the day were scattered throughout the senator’s speech. He declared:

The purpose of this amendment then is to ratify the illegal Acts of the Congress: to vest in the Congress and divest the States of all control of the elective franchise; to give to the Congress the constitutional right to establish negro supremacy, and through negro suffrage the supremacy of the Republican party in the late insurgent States; to exchange the white race and its civilization for the dominion of the black race, just emerged from the condition of slaves, and which as a race has never exhibited any administrative capacity for self-government.[33]

Of course, Hager failed to mention that blacks in America possessed few, if any, opportunities to demonstrate such a capacity. “There have been various forms of high civilization in Japan, in China, India, Persia, and Arabia,” he admitted, “but the African negro in his native Africa remains as unchanged this day as the African baboon.” The senator conceded, “he is susceptible of some education and some improvement along side of the white man,” but asked, “Who ever heard of a negro philosopher, statesman, mathematician, astronomer, political economist or civil engineer?” Hager denied he was prejudiced against blacks on the grounds of color, saying, “on the contrary humanity demands we should protect them. . . . but neither humanity nor justice demands we should extend to them social or political equality.” Hager thought suffrage would have to be given to the Chinese if it were given to African Americans. The Chinese had maintained a government and attained a degree of civilization, Hager said, “But God forbid—God forbid that we should either amalgamate with or extend this invitation [to immigrate] to the barbarous tribes of Africa, or to the semi-civilized hordes of Asia.” In a few years, Hager warned, California might be completely dominated by the Chinese, and “whilst our brothers in the Southern States may be rejoicing over such high sounding names as Senator Caesar or Congressman Pompey we may have to content ourselves with less illustrious but no less euphonious names, such as Senator Chy Lung and Congressman Tong Achick.” The senator stated the Fifteenth Amendment would give Congress complete control of voting and “thus break down the only barrier between the Congress and absolute power.” In Hager’s opinion the amendment not only extended suffrage rights to men of all races, but also stripped the states “of all power to legislate upon the subject.”[34]

Two other speakers who showed the importance of place of origin and political ambition in determining attitudes toward the Fifteenth Amendment were Senator William Irwin (Democrat, Siskiyou) and Senator William Pendegast (Democrat, Napa). Irwin was born in Ohio, one of the strongly anti-black Northern states, and he had taught school in Mississippi for a year. A graduate of Marietta College and a lawyer, he came to California in 1852. He served two terms in both the Assembly and the Senate before his election as governor in 1875. During his incumbency the legislature passed an act to take a popular vote on Chinese immigration. In his speech on the Fifteenth Amendment, Irwin described the Republicans as being composed of three classes, “First the fanatics; second the demagogues; and third, moneyed men.” He warned the Senate the amendment would give political power to “inferior races,” and that “they would be brought up at will.” Pendegast, the 27-year-old son of a wealthy farmer, was born in Kentucky, but grew up in Yolo County. He practiced law in Napa, was a “zealous” Democrat, and served as a senator during four sessions of the legislature. Napa County vineyard owners had also begun to use Chinese workers, but there were fewer in that county than in Sonoma, and the Irish outnumbered them, as they did in the other two counties Pendegast represented, Lake and Mendocino. Pendegast told his fellow senators, “This heritage of freedom and liberty, and local self-government, is too dear and sacred to us to be given away to any party.” In California, the senator boasted, “We are building up our grand and noble, and promising young State in hope and harmony; and doing it by the strength of Anglo-Saxon people and virtues.” And, he added, “We are doing it without the aid or assistance of the Federal Government or of the inferior races.”[35]

On January 28 Seldon Finney made a final attempt to sway the Assembly. Finney declared he “approached the Chinese question without the least hesitation; gentlemen would find him on that as square as the square itself, and straight as the poles of the earth.” Defending the Chinese against the charges of immorality brought against them, Finney asserted that the Chinese committed fewer crimes in proportion to their numbers than whites. He told the assemblymen, “In seven months the balance of trade had been in our favor between San Francisco and China to the extent of five million dollars,” and informed them with some Republican exaggeration, that there was scarcely any invention in the United States that had not existed for centuries in China. Finney affirmed that “His political policy was not so narrow as to exclude any of God’s people from our midst,” and according to the Union, he ended “with an eloquent assertion of the destinies of liberty and republicanism, and was applauded at the conclusion.”[36]

When Democrats Marion Biggs of Butte County and E.A. Rockwell of San Francisco threatened to give two-hour speeches if the Assembly did not vote, Senate Joint Resolution No. 3 was read a third time and approved by a vote of fifty-one to eight on January 28, 1870. Except for two Independents voting with the Democrats and one with the Republicans, the Assembly vote was strictly along party lines. On January 27, the Senate resolution rejecting the Fifteenth Amendment was approved by a vote of twenty-three to eight. Republican George C. Perkins crossed party lines to support the resolution and Independent Edward Tompkins cast a “nay” vote, thus opposing his former party’s policy.[37]

On February 4 the Bee announced that twenty-eight states had ratified the Fifteenth Amendment and said, “Let us congratulate the public that this question is settled beyond cavil, and forever. . . . Let us have peace.” The amendment did not actually become part of the Constitution until March 30, 1870, but the Elevator could not restrain its enthusiasm and exulted, “Gloria Triumphe! We are free!” Professing to find no fault with the legislature, the newspaper explained:

We expected nothing else. We do, however, seriously object to the sophistry and illogical reasoning used on the occasion. It would be beneath the dignity of any respectable body of men, who had any thought or care for their future reputation, but from men who look not beyond the present hour, whose chief and only interest is blended with the success of the Democratic party we must not feel disappointment nor chagrin at their antics.

The Elevator termed Haight’s message on the Fifteenth Amendment “enough to stamp him as a falsifier of history, . . .” and added that it was “an act of special pleading of which any fifth rate lawyer would be ashamed, . . .”[38]

Bitterly predicting that the next constitutional amendment would allow the President to appoint governors, the Reporter stated, “Each new manoever [sic] toward monarchy is to be conducted by the same line of tactical policy, until the final coup d’etat can be accomplished.” The Democratic newspaper declared, “There is but a single hope in all this; that the revolution of radicalism may exhaust itself and a counter revolution set in in time to save our institutions.” Speaker George H. Rogers kept his “unreconstructed disposition” to the final hour of the eighteenth session, which he closed at midnight on April 4, 1870, saying, “We have sent on our protest against the so-called fifteenth amendment, but, despite our efforts, it has been promulgated as a part of the supreme law of the land.” He emphasized that he considered the Fifteenth to be “a radical change in the constitution itself,” not an amendment. He protested that many of the states ratifying the amendment has been “forced to do so by congress [sic] at the point of a bayonet—a power used and a consent given which was not contemplated by the constitution which our fathers made.” “Free and independent states were never created for such a purpose,” Rogers added, “and, when the centralized power absorbs all the rights which the states now possess, then will our liberties end or a new struggle begin.”[39]

Initially, a few county clerks refused to register black voters, citing the Fifteenth Amendment’s rejection by the governor and the legislature as justification for their actions. But when the county clerks of San Francisco and Sacramento counties announced that all citizens could register regardless of color, most of the resisting counties complied with the new amendment. Even before its ratification, California’s blacks prepared to greet the measure with appropriate celebrations. The Executive Committee set April 4 as the official “Day of Celebration,” and the African American communities of a number of cities and towns saluted the ratification with parades, speeches, and gunfire. The Pacific Appeal noted later in the year, “this measure was celebrated in the grandest style . . . and the grandeur was lavished regardless of expense.”[40]

A wide variety of motives influenced the speakers who joined the legislative debate on the Fifteenth Amendment. Family background and place of origin were the most important factors, with political ambition and/or a need to please constituents both close seconds. Religion also played a part in forming attitudes, and was most obvious in the case of Democrat James E. Murphy. Almost any group, no matter how homogeneous, contains a few individualists. Republicans Seldon J. Finney, Charles A. Tweed, and Independent Edward Tompkins were all very much their own men.

William M. Gwin, Jr. exemplified the influence of a Southern family background. Political ambition was an element in his case as well. It is also likely that his anti-Chinese views conveniently coincided with those of most of the voters in Calaveras County. Although raised in Yolo County, William Pendegast was born in Kentucky, It seems likely that his background influenced his ideology more than his constituents did, as the Chinese populations of the three counties he represented were small. Pendegast served in the nineteenth and twentieth legislative sessions before his death in 1876 at the age of thirty-four.[41]

Barclay Henley showed the effects of being a native, and the son of a native, of Indiana, one of a number of strongly racist Midwestern, Border, and Eastern states. Henley also probably needed to take into account the increasing competition in Sonoma County between Chinese and Irish agricultural workers. Henley did not serve in the legislature again, but was elected as a Democrat to the 48th and 49th Congresses during the period March 4, 1883 to March 3, 1887. William Irwin was born in Ohio, parts of which also were strongly anti-black. Nearly one-quarter of Siskiyou County’s population was Chinese—1,440 out of an aggregate of 6,848. The Chinese were the largest foreign-born group in the county, followed by the Irish and the Germans with 246 and 241 respectively. Given his interest in political life, Irwin surely would have responded to pressure concerning the Chinese.[42]

Democrat James E. Murphy represented small counties in which the Chinese population, though not large, outnumbered the Irish population and other foreign groups. Murphy was of Irish descent, a Roman Catholic who had attended a Catholic seminary in San Francisco. If a typical anti-Chinese legislator could be found in the varied backgrounds of these men, Murphy might well be the model. Considering his background, he would have indeed been unusual if he were not anti-Chinese.[43]

Unusual in a different way was Republican Seldon J. Finney, of Irish descent, but who by no means resembled Murphy. Finney was more like Willliam Shannon, the New Yorker who, during the first Constitutional Convention, defended the blacks in his state and introduced the section prohibiting slavery in California. The Irish outnumbered the Chinese in San Mateo County and if they pressured him, Finney chose to ignore them when he made his speech. Another independent thinker was Edward Tompkins, a native of New York and a former Democrat. In his county, Alameda, the largest foreign-born groups were the 2,657 Irish, the 1,934 Chinese, and the 1,292 Germans. Independent by wealth as well as temperament, Tompkins could afford to express his true thoughts and feelings about the Fifteenth Amendment. In 1872 death cut short his political career.[44]

Republican Charles A. Tweed, whose bill to allow African Americans to practice law in California had been tabled at Senator Hager’s suggestion, proved to be a sensitive observer of the Southern scene. Tweed’s experience as a slave owner lent his speech depth and authenticity not found in many of the other orations. Although Placer County contained a relatively large Chinese population of 2,410 out of an aggregate population of 11,357 the county also had sent three Republicans to the Assembly. Apparently, the Chinese were not as much of an issue in Placer County as in many others.[45]

Republican George C. Perkins, for example, rejected Governor Haight’s arguments against the Fifteenth Amendment. He did not stoop to open racism, but nevertheless he abandoned his party’s principles by voting against the measure. Perkins was a freshman senator and his action can best be understood as a concession to his heavily Democratic district and to his political ambition. In an aggregate population of 11,403, Butte County had 2,082 Chinese, 492 Irish, and 430 Germans. These were figures that any aspiring politician in California would have to take into account.[46]

Senator John Hager’s speech reflected an obvious desire to please the San Francisco Democrats who elected him. San Francisco contained the largest Irish (25,864), German (13,602), and Chinese (12,022) groups in the state. Hager said more than was necessary, and no one who read or heard the New Jersey-born senator’s address could have any doubts about where he stood on the issues of black suffrage and Chinese citizenship and immigration. Many of the Democrats took their cue from Governor Haight, whose messages to the legislature contained extremely racist statements. Considering that Haight was, or said he was, reluctant to run for a second term, his racism has to be accepted as genuine, perhaps as a result of his years in Missouri. Yet an odd sidelight on Haight comes from another letter he wrote, this one in 1876. Addressing a state committee formed to arouse anti-Chinese sentiment, Haight said the number of Chinese present at that time might not have injured, but benefited white labor. He also added the incredible remark, in light of his previous hostility to African Americans and the Chinese, that it was unfortunate that the Chinese issue had been the subject of so much prejudice and passion instead of reasonable discussion.[47]

In the California legislature Democratic arguments against the Fifteenth Amendment relied heavily on the doctrine of white supremacy, bitter criticism of the political capabilities of blacks and Chinese, and on the states’ right to regulate suffrage. The Republicans concentrated on the ideology of equal rights, regardless of color, the need to protect the freedmen, and the need to establish uniform citizenship in all the states.

In California the black population (4,272 in a total white population of 499,424), was small enough to be insignificant in creating white resistance to the Fifteenth Amendment. Although the Irish immigrants had been hostile to African Americans in Eastern and Midwestern states, it was with the Chinese whom they competed most fiercely in California. And it was the irrational, but fear-arousing campaigns waged by the Democrats against the Chinese in 1867 and 1869 that ensured the Democracy’s political success and a legislature that emphatically put its “seal of condemnation” on the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.[48]

Notes: Chapter VIII