Civic Leaders Respond to the Anti-Chinese Expulsions
The Chamber of Commerce and Board of Trade issue formal resolutions condemning the February 1886 mob violence and pledging to support law and order.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Trade of the City of Seattle, in common with the wishes of our fellow citizens on the Pacific Coast, believe that the Chinese are an element of peril in this country and that their presence is an admitted evil. We are opposed to all unlawful force and intimidation as a means to accomplish their removal. It is the paramount duty of all loyal Americans at all times and under all circumstances, of whatever station in life, to support and maintain the Constitution, treaties, and laws of the United States, and to defend upon the institutions and principles upon which government is founded—and above all, the inalienable rights of the people to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We declare that the unlawful assembling of the mob in this city on the 7th and 8th days of February, 1886, was made up of idle, lawless and desperate characters, and that such acted outrage upon the city of Seattle and its law abiding citizens, and sought to annul the sacred Constitution of every honest, loyal man residing in it.
“We are opposed to all unlawful force and intimidation as a means to accomplish their removal.”
This document captures the paradoxical stance of Seattle’s elite in 1886: they publicly advocated for the exclusion of Chinese residents but simultaneously denounced the mob violence used to carry it out, highlighting the tension between systemic racism and the desire for civic stability.
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