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Article Excerpt
He was the consummate nineteenth-century California politician: bold, energetic, shrewd, partisan, sarcastic, and, as one account put it, "with sufficient pugnacious proclivities to back up his moral suasion by all his physical force." (1) He made plenty of friends during his career, but also many enemies.
Despite losing every popular election above the level of State Assembly, he used a powerful but precarious political machine to rise to one of the most influential positions in the state and nation, the United States Senate, and for a time, he enjoyed supreme authority. His single Senate term bridged the turmoil of the last years of the Civil War and the chaos of the early years of Reconstruction. During the war, he faithfully represented his constituents' opposition to secession and rebellion, but he broke ways with them during Reconstruction, when he became a fierce advocate of Chinese immigration and civil rights.
His fragile coalition of anti-Southern Democrats and Republicans crumbled as old rivalries resurfaced after the war and the anti-Chinese movement blossomed in his home state. By the end of his Senate term in I869, he was an outcast, abandoned by his allies and constituents--a consequence of his inclusionary racial ideas that, while they may be considered progressive today, did not represent late-nineteenth-century California.
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John Conness entered California's legislative arena in the 1850s--a time of great political instability. The hundreds of thousands of people who arrived during the Gold Rush had brought with them a variety of political opinions and beliefs. The Democratic Party was the only established partisan organization in California until the late 1850s and therefore was forced to incorporate the widely disparate ideologies of its constituents--including liberals and conservatives, antislavery and proslavery partisans, and workers and business owners--who often contradicted each other or the policies of the national Democratic Party. This invariably led to conflicts within the party, which was under constant threat of disintegration until its final collapse during the secession crisis and Civil War. Conness attempted to navigate this minefield of intrigue and ideology but more often than not found himself allied with the wrong faction in a party increasingly strained by the diverging interests of its members. (2)
At first glance, Conness's political career might be judged a failure. Yet, a closer look reveals that Conness was a faithful representative of California's interests in Washington during his Senate term and a man whose opposition to exclusionary policies was not only a guiding force in his political aspirations but also a beacon for likeminded individuals at a time when the country's union itself was a fragile entity.
STATE ASSEMBLYMAN
Before entering politics, Conness's life story resembled that of many Gold Rush Californians. An immigrant to the United States, he was born in Abbey, County Galway, Ireland, on September 22, 1821, the youngest of fourteen children. His father was Walter Conness, whom John described as "a very dignified and intellectual man, one whom men of all positions came to for counsel: being also a man of rare courage and independence." (3) His mother, Mary Conness, nee Williams, "possessed great energy and industry" and "was generous to a fault and those who sought help never went by her empty-handed."
In 1836, the family immigrated to the United States and settled in New York City, where John was apprenticed to a piano maker and, for a time, attended public school. He treasured his seven-month school career and his interest in free public education never waned. Late in life, he responded to critics of free education by stating that "there are those who do not sufficiently estimate this means of developing good citizenship; but considering the load of ignorance thrown steadily upon the republic from abroad we must estimate the quickening morally and intellectually of our citizen mass by education."
In July 1849, the hope of riches drew him to California. After passing through Panama and San Francisco, Conness mined for gold at Growler's Gulch, Mormon Island, and the middle fork of the American River in El Dorado County. In 1854, he settled in the new community of Georgetown, where he established a profitable merchandising business selling provisions to other miners. Contemporary accounts do not record how successful Conness was at mining, but by 1852, he enjoyed enough standing in the county's mining communities to be elected to the State Assembly, where he would serve during four sessions between 1853 and 1861. (4) He later credited slavery with prompting him to enter politics. "It was never my purpose to seek public office or public life and until later when there were such efforts to ally California with proslavery, I never dreamed of, nor had ambition to fill public place," Conness wrote in 1904. He was particularly incensed by what he saw as increasing pro-Southern and proslavery sentiments among certain state politicians, whom the local press dubbed the Chivalry, during California's formative years.
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During his first Assembly session, Conness "soon acquired the reputation of a fine parliamentarian, became a shrewd debater and an able tactician," in the words of the Sacramento Bee. His legislative record, however, was undistinguished except for two aspects: his antislavery sentiments and his alliance with California State Senator David C. Broderick. (5)
California had outlawed slavery upon achieving statehood in 1850, but because many Southerners had brought slaves with them to work in the gold mines or in agriculture, the sympathetic Chivalry in the new state legislature granted four one-year extensions to slave owners to remove their property from the state. Conness, whose antislavery sentiments were among the strongest in the legislature, was one of twelve lawmakers--dubbed by the press "the twelve Apostles"--who unsuccessfully opposed the extension in 1853. (6)
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Although these politicians were excited over the slavery issue, the relatively small number of blacks in the state did not concern most Californians as much as did the importation of Chinese laborers under contract, who were paid much less than white laborers. (7) Under "coolie labor" contracts, associations of white and Chinese business owners and earlier immigrants brought Chinese laborers to the state to work for a certain amount of time for wages that were considered high by China's standards but low by California's. These contracts angered white Californians because the presence of such a large workforce that was willing to work for lower wages threatened to depress wages for everybody. To many Californians, the arrangement also recalled the issue of slavery, which was illegal in California. Finally, many whites believed that the Chinese laborers had neither the ability nor the intention to assimilate fully into white society. (8)
Assemblyman Conness also equated the contracts with slavery, and one of the first resolutions he introduced into the Assembly called for the invalidation of all labor contracts made outside the state. (9) In contrast to the majority of Californians, however, he opposed only the importation of Chinese laborers under contract, not the free immigration of Chinese settlers. His political career would suffer from this distinction as a strong anti-Chinese movement developed in California during the 1860s.
Senator Broderick, the son of a fellow Irish immigrant and a moderate Democrat, had built a powerful political machine in San Francisco on his opposition to the pro-Southern Chivalry wing of the state Democratic Party and exerted considerable influence in the State Senate. He successfully blocked Chivalry proposals to split the state into two halves, one free and one slave, and to enact a state-level fugitive slave law. (10) In the process, he helped to widen the divisions within the Democratic Party, which finally erupted into violence during the party convention at a Sacramento Baptist church on July 18, 1854. While attempting to nominate their representatives to leadership positions, both factions rushed the stage. As historian Winfield Davis described the melee, "one of the officers was seized, and at that point a pistol exploded in the densely crowded room. A mad rush was made to the doors, and a portion of the delegates made a precipitate retreat through the windows to the ground--a distance of some fifteen feet." (11) A Chivalry supporter held a gun to Broderick's head, and a spectator claimed to have been shot, though the blood he felt running down his pants was, in fact, urine. After collecting five dollars from each delegate for repairs to the church, the two sides established new conventions in separate locations to nominate congressional candidates. The Chivalry and much of the press blamed Broderick for the intraparty conflicts and his candidates earned barely 10 percent of the vote. (12)
Although Conness had left public life upon the expiration of his second term earlier that year, the Sacramento Daily Union credited him with playing an unspecified "prominent role in the great battle between the Chivalry and anti-Chivalry wings of the party in the Baptist Church." (13) Two years later, having lost his mercantile business in a fire that destroyed most of Georgetown, Conness attempted to reenter the political arena by running for Congress on the anti-Chivalry ticket. Broderick, however, threw his support behind the Chivalry candidates in order to present a united Democratic front against the upstart Republican Party and...
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