Julia Sand – Letter 8
Context
This letter references President Arthur’s nomination of Samuel Blatchford to the Supreme Court, but alludes to prior questionable actions on the matter. In fact, Blatchford had not been Arthur’s first choice for this seat – rather, that had been his former political boss, Roscoe Conkling. Though the relationship between the two men had now effectively been severed due to Arthur’s determination to keep Conkling’s influence out of his administration, Arthur was willing to give his former friend the consolation of a seat on the Supreme Court instead – away from influence on the executive branch. Though the Senate confirmed him, Conkling refused the appointment. Senator George Edmunds of Vermont refused the seat as well, leading to the third choice of Blatchford, who accepted.
The rest of this letter focuses on the first Chinese Exclusion Act which, among other provisions, would ban nearly all Chinese immigration to the United States for twenty years. Citizens of many western states saw the Chinese immigrants as a threat to their jobs.
Letter 8
March 1882
Hon. C. A. Arthur.
If you have leisure for such levity, how you must laugh at your out-of-the-world correspondent, who never hears of anything until a fortnight after it has happened, & then takes a week or two more before she can mail a letter scolding you on the subject. Ah, you would value those scoldings, if you only knew how inconvenient they are to her! But, in spite of her deafness, lameness, & other disadvantages, you admit – don’t you? – that she is very often in the right. She certainly is in this, that whenever you make up your mind to the effort, you succeed in doing something excellent. Your Blatchford nomination was all that could be desired. But why not be good always, first, instead of last? That preliminary plunge into naughtiness is so awfully human!
However, the thing weighing on my mind just now is that outrageous Chinese Bill. I am too far under ground to know whether it has passed both houses of Congress, or not – but if it does pass, please give it a most emphatic veto. A congress of ignorant school boys could not devise more idiotic legislation. It is not only behind the age, but behind several ages – not only opposed to the spirit of American institutions, but opposed to the spirit of civilization all the world over. If it becomes a law, it will place our country in a most absurd & contemptible position. What could be more absurd than that we, a civilized nation, should imitate now, what, twenty years ago, we considered intolerable in one only half civilized? And what more contemptible than to bully so fiercely the meekest & most inoffensive of the hordes of foreigners who land on our shores? It is only because the Chinese are so peaceful, that the passage of such a bill seemed a possibility. The men who originated it, would not have dared propose such a measure against any country able to fight. It is mean & cowardly – more than that, it is a step back into barbarism. The only suitable retaliation the Chinese could make, would be for those here to form a conspiracy, burn Washington & cut your head off. They would be quite justified in it, with such an example before them. But it was hardly to be expected that the United States of America would take the lead in a march back to the Dark Ages! So don’t sign that bill, some evening when you are half asleep, & find out the next morning what you have done. Take hold of it when you are wide awake & send it back to Congress, with a message that people will remember. You might recommend an appropriation for a public school in the District of Columbia, where our honored Senators & Representatives might go for an hour or two a day to study history & political science. At all events do not let your Administration be marked by any such disgraceful retrograde movements.
Yours sincerely,
J. I. S.
Letter 9 – Delight at veto of Chinese Exclusion bill; concern over Arthur’s NYC associations