Speech #470057696

With all due deference to the Senator. LMr. Dxwxs.] he has not made out his case that the coming of seventyfive Chinese to that States domain was not the occasion of great excitement. of indignation meetings. of precautions to prevent attacks upon them. and. as I shall undertake to show by the political history of the Commonwealth. the formation of political parties and the enunciation of political platforms based upon the distinctive feature of opposition to Chinese immigration. I do not know. except from what my distinguished friend from Massachusetts has said. what his idea is of a state of profound popular tranquility and peace. In my State. accused of being given over to border ruffianism. to the James brothers. to mail robbing and murder upon the highwayeven there when a gentleman employing seventyfive laborers of any sort finds it necessary to use bulldogs. policemen. and reflectors. and says he will spend $50.000 in order to carry out the experiment. we assume that there is not a state of profound tranquility such as the Senator said existed then in the State of Massachusetts. More than that. if the testimony. the contemporaneous testimony. I may say. of the newspapers of that time were manufactured by these editors with mendacious foresight and prophetic lying. and they made the statements as to the Chinese at North Adams knowing at the time that the occasion would afterward arise when it would become pertinent to a discussion in the Senate of the United States. even then. if that be the case. still contemporaneous history shows that there was political excitement in Massachusetts over Chinese immigration. because. as can be found by reference to any political textbook in the same year. in 1870. two conventions were held. and so great was this issue. so salient was this angle in popular opinion which the leaders of those parties sought to reach. that in the two platforms of the two parties were incorporated the planks of opposition to the further immigration of Chinese into the State of Massachusetts. Aye. sir. more than that. at the following elections the two candidates standing upon these platforms received onehalf of the votes of the State of Massachusetts. What other issues were in those platforms it matters not now to inquire. there stood the distinctive issue. because a new issue. not the tariff. not the distribution of the proceeds of public lands. not the United States Bank. none of the Apnw 27. stale. flat. and unprofitable issues of the past created excitement and popular feeling. but a new issue. an issue that in all ages of the world has aroused the passions and inflamed the blood of men. right or wrong. beyond all others. the issue of race.