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in my life,” Conness quipped, accusing Cowan of conjuring
imaginary Gypsy hordes “so that hereafter the negro alone
shall not claim our entire attention.”
Cowan, who claimed to be “as liberal as anybody toward
the rights of all people,” saved his strongest acid for the
Chinese. “[I]s it proposed that the people of California are
to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of
immigration of the Mongol race?” he asked. “Are they to be
immigrated out of house and home by Chinese?” Conness
mocked Cowan’s argument. “It may be very good capital in
an electioneering campaign to declaim against the Chinese,”
the California senator told his colleague, adding that Cowan
should “give himself no further trouble on account of the
Chinese in California.”
Cowan had a loud voice but few votes. On June 8, 1866,
the Senate passed the 14th Amendment 33-11, well exceed-
ing the required two-thirds majority. On June 13, the House
approved 120-32. The president’s signature was not needed
to amend the Constitution, and the 14th Amendment went
to the states for ratification. Ratification required approval
by three quarters of the states. The amendment’s conten-
tiousness rendered the process rough. Besides recognizing
birthright citizenship, the instrument guaranteed due pro-
cess and equal protection for all, meanwhile permanently
barring certain former Confederate
officials from federal office. The 11
former Confederate states, still not
back in Congress, did count for ratifi-
cation purposes, meaning for the
amendment to become law, 28 of the 37 states had to
approve. When the former rebel states balked, Congress
threatened to withhold readmission to Congress. On July 9,
1868, South Carolina, the first state to secede from the
Union, became the 28th to ratify the amendment.
However, there was a bump. After ratifying the amend-
ment, New Jersey and Ohio had rescinded their ratifications
“Columbia’s Unwelcome Guests”
In an 1885 image, cartoonist Frank
Beard savaged European arrivals
as anarchists, Reds, and gangsters.
Nothing New
In 1870 Thomas
Nast was all for
excluding Chinese.