From 60 Miles to the East, A Newspaper Foreshadows Emperor Norton's Role as Defender of the Chinese
In the Wake of an Anti-Chinese Riot in San Francisco, a Stockton, Calif., Paper Imagined the Emperor as a Leader on the Chinese Question a Year Before He Weighed In Publicly
IN SAN FRANCISCO, early on the morning of 12 February 1867, two gangs of white laborers — apparently coordinating their movements — arrived at a work site on Townsend Street near Second Street, in South Beach, where some 30 Chinese workers had been employed for a grading project on private property.
The day before, the Chinese workers had completed construction of a small building where they would live for the duration of the project.
In a sequence of events initially reported in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin on the 12th — under the headline “A Disgraceful Riot” — and corroborated in the next morning’s Daily Alta California, the white mob that coalesced at the work site, according to the Bulletin
commenced throwing stones and bricks, assaulting and beating the Chinamen in the most cruel and outrageous manner. The poor creatures attempted to escape, some in one direction and some in another, but to no purpose. They were surrounded by the crowd, and beaten in the most brutal manner….One Chinaman was so severely injured that that he was subsequently taken away in a wagon, being unable to walk. His skull was supposed to be fractured. Others sustained serious though not fatal injuries heads and limbs. One of them had his face almost beaten to a jelly.
With the Chinese at the site eventually having escaped and dispersed, the mob tore down their temporary house and set it — and all the food, clothing, and provisions inside — on fire.
By this time, the mob — “increasing in numbers and ferocity,” according to the Alta — was between 400 and 500 members strong. The rioters “commenced to look out for other fields whereon to distinguish themselves,” heading toward a rope factory at Hunter’s Point and hoping ultimately to reach the Mission Woolen Mills, on Folsom Street between 15th and 16th Streets, which employed about 100 Chinese workers.
Ad for Mission Woolen Mills, Langley’s San Francisco Directory for 1867, p. xxxviii. Collection of the San Francisco Public Library. Source: Internet Archive
The Alta recounts what happened next:
On the way over to the [rope factory], the mob fell upon an inoffensive Chinaman, who was passing quietly along the road, having no connection with the work at South Beach, or at the Rope Walk, and beat him near to death, merely to demonstrate their manliness, mental superiority, and contempt for "foreigners."
By the time the mob reached the rope factory, the Chinese workers there had been warned what was afoot — and, they were well clear of the area.
So, the mob did at Hunter’s Point what it had done at South Beach: burned down the Chinese lodgings.
Finally, while the mob was on its way to the Mission Woolen Mills, it was intercepted by Police Chief Patrick Crowley, who arrived with a large force and told the mob to leave.
The mob divided itself into groups of 10 to 50 that retreated to different locations, so as to maintain the threat — and the option — of reconstituting itself at a moment’s notice.
But, in effect, the mob called it a morning.
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THE ALTA, for its part, was under no delusion that there would be justice for the Chinese victims of the morning’s attacks — concluding its article this way:
Three of the rioters engaged in the cowardly work at Townsend street, who gave their names as John Stock, Gat Jones and Henry Martin, were arrested by the police and lodged in the Calaboose. but were liberated on bail, ranging from $30 to $100 each, by order of Judge Rix. Unfortunately for the cause of Justice, the laws of California are such that the most intelligent Chinaman in the community could not testify against a white assailant, even if he were the vilest cutthroat who ever disgraced San Quentin with his presence, and it is not probable that the comrades of the parties arrested will allow them to be convicted. Men who will sink their manhood and humanity so low as to engage in such demonstrations against the lives of a helpless and unprotected people, are not likely to stop at trifles in clearing their comrades.
In its lead editorial the same evening (“Mob Violence and the Chinese,” 13 February 1867), the Bulletin pressed the point, writing, in part:
While the savage attack on the Chinese laborers at South Beach reveals the same imbruted instinct, born of ignorance, oppression and prejudice, which led to the anti-negro riots in New York and Memphis, we recognize in it also a natural result of that general indifference to the rights of the Chinese which disgraces our whole state.
Maltreatment of these people is shamefully frequent. They are considered fair game for every practical joker or reckless rowdy, and the very children are permitted — more from thoughtlessness than from cruelty we would fain believe — to plague and annoy them as they pass, to stone them, or to set dogs upon them....
A portion of the press and politicians of the State have persistently alluded to them as a pest and a nuisance, and have raised a needless excitement by charging that their employment degraded and cheapened white labor. At the same time that they have been abused with impunity and forbid to testify against their persecutors, they have been heavily taxed, and alone have saved several of our counties from bankruptcy. They have actually widened instead of narrowing the field for white labor, by building up manufactures and railroads that without them would still be lacking. Their traffic employs our ships, shipyards, foundries and workshops, and contributes its share to the growth of the city as well as the general prosperity of the State....
It is time that we discussed the Chinese question rationally, and learned to treat the Chinese themselves with common justice. For the credit of the State, if not for the sake of humanity, there out to be a public sentiment that will compel the authorities to afford them protection. While we insist that a number of States shall not be readmitted to a share in the Government until they have conceded equal protection for the negroes, let us not refuse the same concession to the pariah within our own boundaries, whom we have permitted to be abused as much as the freedmen of the South.
Whatever differences of opinion there may be as to the propriety of employing Chinese labor at all or of limiting it strictly to those occupations in which it is least likely to compete offensively with white labor, there can be no question that they have a right to protection, and that it is the duty of the authorities to defend their weakness against the wrath of the strong. The mob attack on them yesterday was not a bit more cowardly and cruel than the prevalent sentiment which has tolerated and made sport of their torments at other hands. Popular prejudice is no excuse for popular injustice.
The Chinese themselves, in their own country, probably have as strong a prejudice against "outside barbarians" as we have against them; yet an American who behaves himself can travel alone in their country unmolested; and if in some of the seaports a foreigner is abused, the Imperial Government itself is held accountable for redress. Here, where the Chinese are powerless to exact redress for wrongs, it is baser to inflict wrongs, and to withhold that protection which they can expect only from our sense of justice and our chivalry.
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FOUR DAYS after the riot, on 16 February 1867, a newspaper 60 miles to the east of San Francisco — the Stockton Daily Evening Herald — registered its own disgust and anger, by publishing the letter of its San Francisco correspondent. The letter’s opening section, addressing the riot, carried the headline “Mother Goose.”
Writing over the pen name “Linn C. Doyle” (no doubt, a play on “linseed oil”), the Herald’s correspondent — presumably the Herald’s editors. too, given the prominent placement of the letter — page 2, with the opening section at the top of the first column — laid much of the blame for the riot at the feet of San Francisco’s mayor, Henry Perrin Coon (1822–1884).
Henry Perrin Coon (1822–1884), undated. Coon was Mayor of San Francisco from July 1863 to December 1867. Source: Wikipedia
From the letter:
A man chosen as Chief Magistrate of a city should, at least be possessed of the ordinary quantity of brains; sufficient to give him foresight and activity to all that appertains the city's welfare he presides over.
Since Mayor Coon has occupied that dignified position, he has done but little to benefit the city; and, when his term of office shall have expired, the citizens will feel that one has "gone from their gaze," they can willingly part with without a sigh of regret.
This last riot has stamped him as a man inefficient for the duties he has assumed. It is thought by many that the riot of 1865 was owing to his neglect, and rather stimulated than suppressed by him as an officer. Every dollar of damage done by the riot of '65 and the one of the 12th inst., should be forced from his private purse for he had the power to stop them, and did not do it.
The Chief of Police is allowed only the body of men under his charge, while the Mayor has the military under his command for the suppression of such violence.
Independent of what our individual opinion may be, the Chinese have a right to the protection of the law, and when a body of men prepare themselves for a raid upon them, the Mayor should take prompt measures to check their intentions and design of injury; we do hope, for the future honor of our city, that an active Mayor will be chosen at the coming election.
What especially interests us here is how the letter begins:
Excerpt from “Mother Goose,” lead section of Letter from San Francisco by “Linn C. Doyle,” Stockton Daily Evening Herald, 16 February 1867, p. 2. Source: Newspapers.com
If Emperor Norton had been chosen to the position of Mayor, he could have — he would have — filled it with more dignity and promptitude than has the one who slumbers so easily in that luxurious seat.
Given what immediately follows this — the excoriation of Mayor Coon — it may be that “Doyle” drew the comparison between between Emperor Norton and Mother Goose mainly to set up the point that it wouldn’t be difficult to find a more effective Mayor than Henry Coon.
And yet — and yet…
It seems a little uncanny that “Doyle” would choose to invoke the Emperor Norton on this particular issue — anti-Chinese violence and “the Chinese question” more broadly — when it appears that the Emperor himself did not formally and publicly engage the question until he issued the following Proclamation a year later, in February 1868:
Proclamation of Emperor Norton, San Francisco Daily Examiner, 24 February 1868. Source: San Francisco Public Library
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MIGHT “LINN C. DOYLE” have had occasion to be made privy to Emperor Norton’s thinking on the Chinese question in the weeks, months, even years leading up to the February 1867 riot?
The short answer is Yes.
Before unpacking this a little, we fast-forward nearly a year to the lead section of “Doyle’s” letter published in the Stockton Herald of 24 January 1868 — exactly a month before the publication of Emperor Norton’s proclamation that February. The section is titled “White and Black” — and, it’s one of the staunchest, most unapologetic statements of anti-racism that I’ve seen from a white person in San Francisco during this period:
“White and Black,” from Letter from San Francisco by “Linn C. Doyle,” Stockton Daily Evening Herald, 24 January 1868, p. 2. Source: Newspapers.com
This war upon the Blacks, Chinese, and copper colored races, will breed a religious siding too destructive to be thought of. The cry on their side will be, “This is a [Protestant] country.” On which side then will be found the vast majority of Americans? The answer comes readily, “on the side of those who are opposed to the belief, that this is exclusively a white man’s country.” Every ism breeds another wilder than itself. It is well that this country is not given to superstition, or these isms would destroy us sooner than an entailment law could build up an aristocracy. The sooner that destructive war cry of “This is a white man’s country,” is crushed by the press, and the people, the sooner will pass a growing cloud, portentious of a gathering storm.
“Linn C. Doyle” was the pen name of Charles Edward Bishop Howe (1825–1872). In addition to writing for newspapers, Howe — usually identified as “C.E.B.” — was known as the author of historical plays on themes of California and the American West.
C.E.B. Howe also — key to our story — was a founder and one-time Vice President of the Dashaway Association, one of the more prominent of San Francisco’s temperance societies during this period.
Established in January 1859, the Dashaways — named for founding members’ pledge to “dash away the cup” — built and dedicated this beautiful hall, in March 1862, at 139 Post Street (south side) between Kearny and Grant:
Dashaway Hall, 139 Post Street, San Francisco, 1867. Photograph by Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904). Collection of King Library, San Jose State University. Source: SJSU
Dashaway Hall was rented out to numerous organizations and clubs. One of these was the Lyceum for Self-Culture, a reform-minded lecture and discussion group that counted the Emperor Norton as a weekly attendee and participant from 1869 to 1880 — including from 1869 to 1874, when the Lyceum held its meetings at this hall.
In connection with his leadership role at the Dashaway Association, C.E.B. Howe often attended meetings held at Dashaway Hall. Moreover, he was a frequent lecturer there himself. It’s hard to imagine that the Emperor would have missed a lecture at any venue on the subject that Howe addressed at the hall on 26 October 1865:
Ad for lecture by C.E.B. Howe, “The Commercial Importance of San Francisco,” at Dashaway Hall, San Francisco, on 26 October 1865, Daily Alta California, 23 October 1865, p. 4. Source: California Digital Newspaper Collection
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THE POINT, of course, is this:
It seems likely that, during the five years from March 1862 to February 1867…
the period between the dedication of Dashaway Hall and the publication of C.E.B. Howe’s Stockton Herald letter (signed “Linn C. Doyle”) commending Emperor Norton as more trustworthy on the Chinese question than the San Francisco mayor
…both the Emperor and Howe were in and out of Dashaway Hall.
During this period, i.e., the period before February 1867, the Emperor Norton and C.E.B. Howe/”Linn C. Doyle” had opportunities to befriend one another — and to discuss, and compare notes, on the Chinese question.
Did they?
If so, did the Emperor’s influence on Howe play out in Howe’s letters of February 1867 and January 1868?
Did Howe’s influence on the Emperor play out in Emperor Norton’s proclamation of February 1868?
Fascinating to contemplate.
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