Victims
In the summer of 1862, a group of US missionaries on Tanna in the South Pacific barricaded themselves in their home. They were terrified. Their Canadian colleagues had just been murdered by a group of islanders, and the Americans feared that they would be next. They hid in their home for ten days, praying for salvation before escaping to the bush, where they nearly starved waiting for rescue. Finally, they were able to signal a passing ship and leave for Sydney, where they would wait for a while. Soon, they hoped, they would be able to return. The US press described their story as “the perils of missionaries.”1
Ten years later, another missionary murder captured American attention. ABCFM missionary John L. Stephens was killed in Mexico just three months after he began his work in Ahualulco, a town some sixty miles from Guadalajara. Stephens had had been invited to the town by a group of Catholics who had been reading the Bible and wanted instruction in Protestant doctrines. In his short time in the town, Stephens established schools and preached to growing congregations who gathered from the nearby ranchos and pueblos. But he also generated fierce opposition.2
The day before Stephens died, the local Catholic priest preached a fiery sermon. In it, he told the crowd that “it is necessary to cut down even to the roots the tree that bears bad fruit. You may interpret these words as you please.” The New York Times informed its readers that in so doing, he had “advocated the extermination of the Protestants.” That night, a crowd of two hundred armed men surrounded Stephens’s home, shouting “Long live the priests!” and “Death to the Protestants!”3 Though there were Mexican soldiers nearby, they did not protect him. Stephens attempted to hide in a hayloft but was soon found by the crowd. He was shot in the face and the chest, after which he was stabbed with swords and knives and his skull was divided into pieces. His dead body was robbed of its clothing, and his books, including his English Bible, were burned in the public plaza.4
The Mexican government reacted swiftly. On the same day as the attack, the governor sent soldiers to quiet the mob and arrest the guilty. Upward of thirty were arrested and brought to trial, and the governor sent police protection for the remaining missionaries. They remained nervous. Missionary Daniel Watkins was convinced that “the priests are intent on killing us.” He claimed the priests could activate criminals to rise against the Protestant missionaries at any time.5
One of Watkins’s first actions after the murder had been to cable John Foster, the US minister to Mexico, for help. Foster jumped to action, calling in person on the Mexican minister of foreign affairs. It was, Foster summarized, a “brutal” murder with “revolting barbarities.” He attributed its cause to “religious fanaticism.” He expected the Mexican government to investigate the crime and punish the offenders, and in this he was not disappointed. By the time he met with the minister of foreign affairs, order had already been restored. Two priests and the “principal assassins” had been arrested. A judge was in place and ready to conduct a speedy trial. But no one could predict how the trial would progress.6
Stephens’s missionary board, too, reached out to the State Department to ensure that the perpetrators were punished. After hearing from Secretary of State Hamilton Fish that the murderers had been arrested and at least seven had been condemned to death, the ABCFM secretary expressed the board’s thanks for the actions of both the US minister to Mexico and the Mexican government. He fully expected the execution of the assassins to “do much to secure protection to the lives and property of US citizens in that country.”7 Several months later, five of the condemned had been executed.8 But missionary supporters grumbled that others awaited appeal and one had even been set free by a jury.9
At the time of his death, Rev. Stephens was hard at work managing day and evening schools. His fellow missionaries reported that he was gaining both students and congregants, and had earned the affectionate nickname Don Juanito.10 After his death, the missionaries reported a new atmosphere of great fear and religious intolerance. Protestants claimed that Catholics were issuing death threats to anyone attending Protestant worship. School attendance dropped as a result, with only eight or ten students in the classroom each day.11
The American Protestant press was explicit in their anti-Catholic coverage of this case. This was a “brutal murder” committed by a “mob frenzied by priestly harangues and denunciations” that ought to indicate “what ideas of religious liberty are entertained by the Roman Catholic Church” in Mexico.12 Earlier in the century, US Protestant missionaries had been reluctant to send missionaries to Latin America, fully expecting that the well-established Catholicism there would not allow for successful Protestant evangelism. But Mexican law promised religious liberty. Stephens should have been within his rights to publicly exercise his Protestant religion, they insisted. Within the United States and Mexico, the murder was condemned as a violation of this principle.13
Stephens was far from the only missionary victim of physical violence in these decades, and not all governments would be as responsive to US appeals for justice as Mexico had been. By the early 1880s, discussions of “missionary troubles” began to appear regularly in the State Department’s correspondence when missionaries and their US supporters requested government assistance in confronting the various perils that they faced. The phrase appeared in dispatches about Turkey, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Egypt, the Caroline Islands, Russia, China, Mexico, Liberia, Colombia, Persia, Portugal, Turkey, Belgium, Haiti, Ecuador, and Japan.14 In all of these places, missionaries worried about their physical safety and the protection they could expect from the US government. Difficulties seemed to follow the missionaries wherever they went. In some places, they faced violent attack. In others, they came into conflict with local governments. Their evangelism could put them at odds with those in power. None of these conflicts were new. With several decades of experience behind them, missionary organizations after the Civil War could be pretty sure that they could call on the US government for support in their troubles. And call on them they did.
Between the US Civil War and the Boxer Uprising, missionaries appealed to the government with ever more frequency. In part, this was due to the increasing presence of consuls that missionaries could reach out to. More help was available, and missionaries took it. But if there were more consuls in the world, there were also more missionaries. After the Civil War, the numbers of missionary organizations and the missionaries they sponsored grew. Perhaps trusting that the government would follow in their wake to protect them, they went to new communities, faced new risks, and confronted more resistance. Over these decades, the State Department and the foreign mission movement negotiated a new relationship. Missionary diplomacy shifted its form in these years as the professionalization and expansion of the diplomatic corps allowed for missionaries to approach their government more frequently as citizens in need rather than partners in shaping the US presence overseas.
Missionary Murders in Turkey
The troubles in the Ottoman Empire began almost as soon as missionaries had arrived there. Questions of religious tolerance, liberty, and freedom—what these various terms meant and how far the US government ought to go to protect missionaries’ ability to work wherever they went—had been relentless. After the Civil War, the government had not reached any answers. But these were not the only problems missionaries faced. The far graver issues, and the ones that had a much clearer call to action for US diplomats, were physical attacks. Missionaries reported thefts, beatings, and even murder in the late 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s. Even when the perpetrators were identified and arrested, there seemed to be no response from local officials. To American observers, this seemed to create a pernicious cycle. If punishments were not enforced, more crimes would be committed. American diplomats called for harsh punishments against perpetrators to bring about a “wholesome terror” throughout the Ottoman Empire that, they hoped, would protect Americans.15
This violent language was a direct response to the missionaries’ understanding that they were under threat in the Ottoman Empire. These attacks were generally not a response to missionary activities. Instead, missionaries, like many other foreigners, fell victim to brigands while traveling throughout the region. The first of these cases was Jackson G. Coffing, an ABCFM missionary at Hadjin (Saimbeyli, Turkey) who was murdered in 1862 as he traveled to Aleppo to attend the annual meeting of the mission. After he and his servant were shot, they were attended by the English vice consul, who was also a physician, and taken to the home of the US vice consul. In spite of the consuls’ best efforts, they did not survive.
Observers believed the murder to have been premeditated. As the obituary in the Missionary Herald explained, it was believed to be the work of Armenians who “were known to be exceedingly bitter against him, or rather . . . against the gospel which he preached.” The Herald praised the consul at Beirut, Mr. Johnson, for his energetic efforts to bring the killers to justice. Coffing’s fellow missionaries refused to be afraid. After all, they reflected, they had been in the region for years and this was the first time a missionary had been attacked.16
Two months later, though, another missionary was killed. The Reverend William Meriam, of the Western Turkey mission, was murdered in July as he returned from the annual meeting of the mission. The missionaries had been warned of violent gangs on several of the roads, so Meriam and his family took what they believed to be a safer route. But soon they heard that armed horsemen were on the road. Meriam refused to delay. He was armed with “one of Colt’s best revolvers, and expressed no fear,” as his obituary would later report. Robbers stopped the Meriam family’s wagon train and killed three of the travelers. Meriam was shot twice and, eyewitnesses claimed, one of the robbers then jumped forward and “stamped on his face and head.” Meriam’s death did not seem to be premeditated, and it did not seem to be at all motivated by enmity toward the mission. Rather, the missionaries understood it to be the effect of a much broader story of violence and criminality in the region. One of Meriam’s brethren, in fact, hoped that the death “may prove a public good” in drawing attention to the issue. “If these murderers are apprehended and brought to speedy justice—executed—we may hope for immunity in traveling.” Anything short of that, however, and the surviving missionaries felt travel would be unwise.17
The missionary societies in the United States were accordingly quite interested in the outcome of these cases. Here were two Americans killed within a single summer. The ABCFM, the sponsor of both Coffing and Meriam, demanded swift action. When nothing had yet been accomplished by August, the ABCFM complained to the State Department about Mr. Morus, the minister at Constantinople.18 The ABCFM had more praise for the consul at Smyrna, whom the missionaries appreciated for his faithful support of their work.19
Secretary of State William Seward had worried that the murders would lead to alarm and “disturb the growing kindness of sentiment which exists, and the confidence and faith which are everywhere entertained in this country toward the government of Turkey, as administered by the new, humane, and enlightened head of the empire.” He had, accordingly, urged the US minister at Constantinople and the consul at Beirut to do their utmost to work with the Turkish authorities to seek justice.20 By October, the consular agent at Adana was happy to report that justice had been done in the Coffing case. He witnessed the beheading of one of Coffing’s killers alongside consular agents from France, Russia, and Italy, the governor of the province, and a crowd of at least five thousand observers. It was an event, he hoped, that would “make a lasting impression on the public mind.”21
Merriam’s killers, meanwhile, were still at large, and the Americans blamed this on the “delinquency” of Turkish police. But Seward understood that US diplomats were in a “very peculiar and trying” position as they navigated conflicts between missionaries and the Turkish government.22 For years, US officials had complained that the promises of religious toleration and protection from Constantinople were nearly meaningless in provinces where the governors were unsympathetic. Corruption, crime, and robberies were, Minister Morris explained, the result of this order of things.23
Morris, Seward, and the men who followed them in their roles responded to this situation with bloodlust. The only way to make it clear that Americans should be protected from violence was to respond with violence in turn. Two of the brigands who had murdered Merriam were never arrested, but Morris was “gratified to be able to inform” Seward that they had “both met violent deaths” through other means.24 In 1880, the US minister argued that life in prison, rather than execution, was “virtually an acquittal” in a case involving the death of a Russian military attaché. For all observers, these events were revealing of Islamic-Christian relations in the region.25
In July 1880, another US missionary was murdered on the road. J. W. Parsons had been itinerating and distributing religious texts when he stopped for the night to make camp under the trees with a servant. While they were sleeping, a group of men came upon them, shot them, stole their belongings, and hid their bodies. When the corpses were discovered a few days later, officials had very little trouble in locating the criminals. The three men were quickly arrested and confessed. Yet US diplomats found themselves still discussing the case months and years later, frustrated by what they described as the failure to act on the part of the Ottoman government. Justice, they fumed, had not been done.26
Missionary supporters at home were horrified by the danger that missionaries seemed to be facing and turned to their government. The cause of the danger, some articles were careful to acknowledge, was not “religious fanaticism” or opposition to missionaries, but rather “wholly different causes, for which the [Turkish] government is mainly responsible.”27 Mission boards in the United States wrote to the secretary of state over the summer of 1880 to call for US efforts to ensure that justice was done.28 The Chicago Daily Tribune called for a US fleet to “take position off the Sultan’s Palace in Constantinople and blow it into flinders if instant reparation is not made for the infamously brutal murder of the American missionary, the Rev. Mr. Parsons.” In order to defend its missionary citizens, the government needed to act. Summarizing the arguments of missionary Henry Dwight, the paper explained that the case for intervention was really quite simple. The law in Turkey was insufficient to protect US citizens there: “To kill a Christian in Turkey is no more an offense than to kill a sheep or a dog. In this case the Christian who has been killed is an American.” It was time, they argued, for the United States to respond.29
By the fall, the ABCFM reported their pleasure with the response of the State Department in the pages of the Missionary Herald. The government had promised “vigorous measures” to protect US citizens going forward. Naval vessels were on their way to Turkish waters.30 Americans wanted the criminals punished and the missionaries protected, even as they doubted that the Sultan would approve the use of capital punishment for a Muslim who had killed a Christian.31
The secretary of state at the time was William Evarts, who had deep ties to foreign missions. His father was Jeremiah Evarts, one of the most important leaders of the ABCFM earlier in the century. Now, his son was in a seat of power and the younger Evarts was clear that the death of a US citizen must be “avenged.”32 As he understood it, the “existing state of lawlessness” in Ottoman lands was such that all travelers were in “constant danger” of sharing Parsons’s fate. There were at least a hundred US citizens serving as missionaries in Ottoman territories, but this was not simply a missionary concern. After all, Parsons had not been killed because of his missionary activity.33 American officials in Turkey took these matters seriously, meeting with the judges for two hours before the trial began, and following up with the minister of foreign affairs repeatedly both in person and in writing. They made it clear that the US government demanded that the guilty be sentenced to “the severest penalty of the law.” Failure to do so would result in “a very painful impression in the United States.”34
These attacks did not seem to be religiously motivated, making the government’s defense of the missionaries a far easier stance than in cases that involved missionaries’ rights to evangelize. Missionaries could frame the danger as a business issue. Because of the risk of violence, “the business interests of all this region remain paralyzed,” as missionary Rev. Pierce complained after he had been attacked. “Shall I relinquish my business,” he asked, referring to his missionary work, “or may I hope for protection from the government?”35 American minister Heap did his best to provide the desired protection, working with the minister of foreign affairs to have the robbers found and Pierce’s stolen property returned. It was an issue of concern all the way up to President James Garfield, whose letter to the US residents in Turkey assured them of his care and attention, and whose message to the Turkish foreign minister minced no words about the “intolerable” “state of perversion of the sense of truth and justice in the administration of the judicial power in Turkey.”36
When Rev. Barnum was robbed as he traveled from Harpoot (Harput) to Sivas in 1881, Heap reported to the State Department that the root of the problem was “the failure to punish malefactors who have been captured, tried, and sentenced.” This was one of three robbery cases that the minister had dealt with in only ten days. The region was in “a state of anarchy.”37
Ten years later, missionaries continued to take great risks when traveling throughout Turkey. Miss Anna Melton, a teacher at the Presbyterian mission school in Mosul, was attacked while she slept on a journey through Koordistan (Kurdistan). Two men with clubs beat her, while accomplices fired their guns to frighten away any villagers. The missionaries described Melton as “a delicate little woman, although very brave.” Her injuries were extensive. She had been beaten severely on the head and had bruises over her body. Melton defended herself fiercely, grabbing the stick away from one attacker and binding his hands to prevent him from attacking her further. “It seemed to me he was Satan himself,” she later reflected, and she fought back even as she felt “stunned and terrified as if in some terrible nightmare.”38 When the men left, they did not steal anything. She was covered in blood but would recover.
When her fellow missionary, Edward McDowell, went to the local official to search for and arrest the assailants, they made little progress. A week later, the official had not taken further action. The missionaries concluded that “he does not intend to do anything.” McDowell echoed the same complaint that missionaries in the Ottoman Empire had been making for decades: “Our common word is that our Government is so far away that it can not reach us.” The Americans needed more protection.39
The US minister at Constantinople quickly worked to obtain redress, convincing the grand vizier to urge the governor-general to action. This attack, he informed his counterparts, would be particularly troubling to Americans. The “assault and beating [of] a woman” was sure to create a “deplorable impression” in the United States. Yet some of the details from this story did not sit right with the minister. While he waited for a response, he reflected to the State Department his surprise that “two men armed with clubs and having a frail woman in their power, did not inflict more serious injury.” He wondered why she had not been robbed, given that the place was “notorious for robberies.” Perhaps the attack had not been random.40
The missionaries agreed. They assured the minister that they had given no offense to anyone. But as the weeks went on without any arrests, the missionaries reported that the people were being intimidated. Even though they suspected who the guilty parties were, no one would come forward. Some of the villagers even felt the need to deny that they had become sympathetic to Protestantism, or that they had welcomed the missionaries into their village.41 The minister was sure that someone of high rank had been involved. The mission board was convinced that the attack had been “deliberately planned and executed by quite a body of men” to force the missionaries away. It was an attack on Melton, but it was also an attack on the mission as a whole.42
It mattered to all of these writers that Melton was a woman. Both the missionaries and the government officials emphasized again and again that it was an “American lady” who had been assaulted. Her attackers needed to be punished; the US government would not stand for anything less. Even though the Ottoman government eventually made arrests, Americans continued to complain for months about delays in the trial.43 The minister believed this was due to insufficient evidence.44 But the missionaries were convinced that only “a wholesome fear of our Government” would protect American missionaries from violent attack.45 But just how far the United States could or should go to facilitate such a fear of US intervention was far from settled. In this moment, at least, there was little that the minister felt the Americans could do.
Rumors and Anti-Christian Violence in China
In 1868, the time had come for a renegotiation of the treaty between the United States and China. The Burlingame Treaty, as it would come to be known, would form the structural basis of US diplomatic responses to the missionary troubles that emerged in the coming decades. At its heart, the treaty set out the principle that the United States would recognize Chinese sovereignty. The Americans in China would, as Secretary of State Hamilton Fish insisted, respect all of the “prejudices and traditions of the people of China.” Or at least they would do so as long as those “prejudices and traditions” did not “interfere with rights which have been acquired to the United States by treaty.”46
Respecting the sovereign right of a foreign power to rule over its own people is a foundational principle of diplomacy that US ambassadors around the world would happily recognize. But in China, as Fish noted to the new US minister Frederick Low, “Christian” powers had been far more likely to turn to “force” to get their way.47 Over the twenty-six years since China had been forced to allow Western residents and traders in to four port cities, European and US influence had been steadily growing. Chinese anti-foreign sentiments were significant. The Burlingame Treaty, Fish expected, would mark the beginning of a new era of Sino-American relations in which the United States respected China as an equal peer. This respect, it was hoped, would in turn lead to a greater acceptance of a foreign presence in China.
This was challenging to put into practice. Much of the trouble centered around missionaries and the opposition—at times violent—that they faced. It could be difficult for missionaries and diplomats alike to determine if this opposition was primarily about religion or the Western presence in general. Missions, both American and European, often became the focus of Chinese opponents of Western incursion into the country.
In Yang-tchoo (Yangzhou), there had been rumors of coming violence against the Protestant missions for days when a mob attacked British and American missionaries in 1868. No one died, but there were injuries and the mission premises were burned to the ground, forcing several of the women of the mission, who had run upstairs to escape the violence, to jump out of the windows to save themselves. Following established procedure, the missionaries reported the violence to their consuls, and it fell to the US and British officials to determine how to respond.
The British consul’s response revealed a deep mistrust and disrespect for the Chinese government’s authority. He quickly visited the site of the violence and called on local officials to respond by punishing the offenders and paying reparations to the missionaries. But he did not expect that this would be enough. He did not trust the Chinese government to act unless forced, and so he quickly called a fleet of six British naval vessels to come to his aid. While civilized states must respect “the broad principles of justice, of right and wrong, which underlie the international code of nations,” he wrote, this was not appropriate in China. Instead, “an over-scrupulous pedantry” to the law of nations in Asia would only “do mischief, and bring on the very evils it is intended to avert.” Force was needed, he believed, when dealing with “an Asiatic race.”48
Seward, for his part, felt that the British response was uncalled for. The foreign countries in China needed to “give the regular proceeding at least a trial.” The proper response, he thought, would look like this: any dispute should be brought to the local consul, who should investigate alongside a Chinese officer. If this did not lead to “justice,” the consul should turn to the legation at Peking (Beijing), where the US minister could address the central Chinese government and, if necessary, seek out instructions from their home government. Only if all this failed might the possibility of force be hinted at. Such a method, Seward was sure, could not fail.49 George Seward’s multistep plan did not seem to have much faith in local Chinese officials to get the work done, either, but his call for patience and process was shaped by a generalized optimism about the changes that were occurring in China as a result of interactions with the West.
Seward’s theory would soon be tested. In the summer of 1870, reports reached Washington about an ever-increasing “feeling of insecurity and peril” resulting from a massacre in Tientsin (Tianjin). Many months later, it was not clear what, exactly, had happened in June, or why. Most importantly for Minister Frederick Low and for the American missionaries he was unsuccessfully trying to calm down, it was not at all clear how much of a risk remained. What they did know was this: sixteen French subjects, three Russians, and an unspecified number of Chinese Christians had been killed at the French consulate and missionary establishments in Tientsin. The consulate had been destroyed, as had a Catholic cathedral and the orphanage and asylum operated by a group of French nuns, the Sisters of Charity. Beyond that, there were many rumors, and few known facts. Was this an anti-French and anti-Catholic riot? Low thought so. Or was it a part of a more generalized anti-foreign conspiracy? The US missionaries and many of their Chinese converts were convinced this was the case. For years, the echoes of Tientsin and its unresolved questions would shape missionary diplomacy in China.
Whether the events in Tientsin were specific to the French and Catholics or not, the rumors about the missionaries and their practices mirrored those that plagued US Protestant missions in China too. Chinese observers accused the Sisters of encouraging kidnapping by paying bounties for children. Once a child was delivered to their orphanage, it could not be returned to the family. Suspicions ran wild. What were the Christians doing with those children? Community concerns were especially heightened because of stories circulating throughout China that missionaries harvested the brains, eyes, and hearts of children for the making of medicine. Was this what the Sisters of Charity were really up to?
Early in June, an official proclamation in Tientsin repeated these rumors as if they were an accurate description of missionary activities. Calling the kidnapping of children for the harvesting of their organs “detestable in the extreme,” it urged “instant measures” to punish those responsible.50 Ambassador Low believed that this proclamation was one of the primary catalysts of the riot. Tsang-Kwoh-fan, the Chinese official responsible for the investigation into the events in Tientsin, largely agreed. Suspicions, he concluded, led to hatred, which had led to “this serious catastrophe.” After interviewing all 150 boys and girls who had been taken from the asylum, he found that every one of them had been brought to the Sisters by their relatives. None had been kidnapped or coerced. The rumors were untrue. But like most rumors, their veracity had nothing to do with their power.51
No Americans were harmed at Tientsin. This put Low in a difficult position. He joined together with other foreign representatives in Peking to consider the matter. They regularly cooperated to coordinate relations with China, and this was no different. Together, they asked Prince Kung, the Chinese minister of foreign affairs, to provide more support for foreigners throughout the empire. The Chinese government, Low assured the secretary of state, wanted to help foreigners, but it was ultimately “weak and effeminate,” and in need of the “constant advice and aid” of these foreign powers.52
Low seemed content to conclude that what had happened in Tientsin was a specific response to French misbehavior. He believed reports that the French consul, who was killed in the riot, had opened fire on the crowd, thus fanning the flames and making things much worse. He believed, too, that part of the problem in this case had been the Chinese belief that the French government was actively supporting the Sisters of Charity mission. That sense of a united religious and political interest, Low thought, had contributed to the anti-French passions that erupted in Tientsin.53 He did not believe that any particular risk existed for Americans beyond what had been the case before Tientsin. The missionaries, however, disagreed with both his approach and his conclusions.
The American missionaries based in Tientsin had been absent from the city on the day of the massacre. Unsatisfied with Low’s report, they conducted their own investigation and published the results in the local press. Missionary C. A. Stanley of the ABCFM insisted in the Shanghai Courier that this outbreak was not just about the Catholics. He pointed out that the mobs had also attacked the eight Protestant chapels in the city, taking valuables and tearing down many of the walls. Stanley urged his government to take a firm response: “America has lost no children,” he admitted, “but others have, and we should stand by them in demanding a full investigation, impartial justice, and determined punishment of the guilty.” In this sentiment, Stanley echoed the feelings of British missionaries Jonathan Lees and William Hall who explained to their consul that “we are not crying for war and vengeance, but we do claim justice, and we hold most firmly to the belief that the path of safety and of honor, no less for individual Englishmen than for our government, is to stand by our fellow-sufferers in the hour of trial.”54
Low was not pleased. He marveled that these missionaries “appear to be impressed with the belief that they are somehow specially charged with diplomatic functions by their governments, in addition to their self-imposed task of taking care of the spiritual welfare of the Chinese.” This was ridiculous and presumptuous, he implied, as well as dangerous. Their anxieties were only spreading rumors further and increasing anti-foreign sentiments, as well as urging a war between China and France.
Over the summer, more and more reports of coming violence circulated. W. Ashmore, a missionary serving as vice consul in Swatow (Shantou), reported that the news of Tientsin had circulated very quickly throughout the region, leading to the rise of “a bitter, malicious rancor towards foreigners.” It was not that the anti-foreign sentiments were new. Rather, Tientsin had allowed “a long-cherished but suppressed ill-will” to finally see the light of day. Even Low had to admit that “there is no sentiment of regret or sorrow among the people over the result of the riot.” By the end of August, one could purchase fans illustrated with scenes of the attacks. Missionaries reported ongoing threats and rumors of violence to come.
Stanley, for example, reported a warning his mission had received from a Chinese informant about a “general rising against foreigners” scheduled for later that month. He wrote to Captain B. B. Tailor of the Asuelot, urging the US fleet to take “precautionary measures” to defend American lives.55 In September, missionaries in Tunchow (Tongzhou) had become so concerned about rumors of a coming attack that they had abandoned their station and sought shelter on a British vessel. According to the rumors, two thousand troops were marching toward them, determined upon “the extermination of the missionaries.” Missionary H. C. W. Matteer described the decision to leave as “the greatest trial I ever met with.” After seven years in residence, he had to weigh whether the mission was in actual danger, or if they were simply afraid. He could not tell, but ultimately decided not to risk it.56
Low was disappointed by the Tunchow missionaries. He was humiliated that they had relied on a British ship to carry them and was furious that the consul had not consulted with him early on about any rumors of coming violence. But he was also frustrated that the missionaries had “felt compelled to abandon, even temporarily, a field that had cost such a struggle to win.” The long-term effects, he feared, would not be good. The retreat would suggest that violence and threats of violence would be effective at getting missionaries to leave, which Low thought would only make the situation worse.57 This concern about holding on to hard-won fields sounds more like a member of a mission board that the US minister to China. For all that Low had criticized the French for aligning the interests of the state too closely with those of the mission, he was not immune to such slippages either.
When former secretary of state William H. Seward arrived in China in the fall of 1870 as part of his world tour, he noted the anxiety that continued to plague the foreign community.58 Many of the foreign legations were currently decamping from the capitol to seek safety in Shanghai, where the gunships of their respective nations were ready to respond if needed. European residents had begun drilling in preparation for a feared Chinese attack.59 Seward celebrated Low’s calm consideration of events, writing that he and Samuel Wells Williams seemed to be “almost the only persons in China who take a rational and statesmanlike view of the political situation.”60 William Seward, like Low, was satisfied that the Chinese had done all that they could and should to rectify the situation. Eighteen of the rioters had been beheaded. The Chinese paid indemnities. Nevertheless, the resident Americans and foreigners he met seemed united in their belief that nothing good could “come out of China, except through blockade and bombardment.”61
Seward and Low shared a great deal in their perspectives on China and the troubles that missionaries brought with them. Both diplomats felt that Christianity was necessary for the transformation of China. The Chinese Empire was in decline, Seward wrote, at least in part as “a result of the imperfect development of religious truth.”62 For his part, Low was convinced that missionaries were needed to educate the masses, just as foreign diplomats would have to enlighten Chinese officials on the proper functioning of diplomacy. Neither wanted to turn to force to “open” China to full Western commercial and diplomatic relations, and both agreed that missionaries were partners in the work of preparing China to open itself peacefully. But they agreed, too, that Christianity alone would not be enough.
Although Seward found the missionaries he met to be “earnest, true, and good men and women,” Low had real apprehensions about their approach.63 Neither Seward nor Low felt missionaries could or should expect the government to act aggressively in their defense. It was “right, just, and wise,” Seward wrote, “that all the Christian nations shall mourn together over the victims, sympathize with the survivors, and unite in demanding such satisfaction from the Chinese Government as would afford security against a recurrence of persecution.” This, however, had already happened. No more action from the government was needed or appropriate. Low complained that the missionaries had begun to endorse force as a way to open China for their own work. Force, they believed, was “absolutely necessary to break down the barriers of ignorance, conceit, and superstition, and that the use of armies to compel submission is only adding an auxiliary force to reason to accomplish the great work of the Master.” Low did not agree. “The arguments against such a theory,” he continued, “are so obvious that it is not necessary to repeat them here.”64
Missionary work was, by its very nature, dangerous. William Seward reflected that missionaries would do well to remember that in Matthew’s gospel, the Great Commission to go out and teach all nations was accompanied by a warning. Missionaries were sent out “as sheep in the midst of wolves,” and accordingly needed to be as “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”65 This scriptural allusion spoke to the contemporary political moment, Seward believed. Missionaries needed to pay attention to the perils that they might face and not expect the government to leap to their defense at all times. They might have been doing God’s work, but this did not guarantee them the backing of the US government.
But this did not mean that the United States would not, in fact, back them when they were at risk. When the Chinese government issued a circular in response to Tientsin that blamed the missionaries for the violence, US diplomats joined with their European peers to object. The Chinese said that missionaries made themselves “odious to the principal men and people” in the places where they settled and were at fault for the violence they faced.
The Chinese government proposed a series of regulations for missionary activity that, they hoped, would resolve some of the tension: orphanages would operate with more transparency, women would not be allowed to enter the churches, missionaries would be required to “conform to the laws and customs of China,” missionaries would cease protecting converts from trial, passports and missionary property would be more closely monitored, and missionaries would not allow any criminals to become Christians.66 The French, British, and US governments were united in their opposition to these resolutions, which seemed to fly in the face, not only of their understanding of Christianity, but perhaps more important, of the protections guaranteed in earlier treaties. Women made up the majority of missionaries in the field at this time. The idea that missionaries might prevent women from coming into the churches was laughable.
In Washington, the president and secretary of state took comfort in knowing that nothing in Tientsin concerned the behavior of US missionaries. President Ulysses S. Grant supported Low’s statements and actions, and confirmed that the US government had no interest in treating missionaries different in any way from any other US citizen abroad. If earlier in the century, missionaries used the principle of their equal rights of citizenship to make the government protect them abroad, increasingly diplomats and politicians were using it to argue that missionaries deserved no additional privileges not enjoyed by other Americans abroad. “We stand upon our treaty rights,” Secretary Davis wrote. “We ask no more, we expect no less.”67
Consuls and Violence in Persia
The State Department certainly grew in these years, but missionary activity continued in regions that were far from the centers of US diplomatic interest. There was sparse diplomatic coverage in the Ottoman Empire, but in Persia (Iran), there was no US diplomatic presence at all. This had not stopped American missionaries from working in the region, establishing a mission in the 1830s. By 1865, they believed the time had come for a formal US presence that could provide them with greater protection in times of trouble.
The Reverend Samuel Rhea appealed to President Andrew Johnson, using the same sort of reasoning that missionaries had adopted for decades to make these arguments. He pointed to the country’s dedication to protecting its citizens abroad who were “engaged in lawful and laudable pursuits.” This described the missionaries in Oroomiah (Urmia). He hoped that Johnson would agree that establishing a consulate or legation would be a beneficial way to inform the Persian government that the United States was “not unmindful of the well-being of its citizens, removed so far from the aegis of its own protection.”68 This request was not granted. By the 1880s, political difficulties in the region put the missionaries at risk without any US aid.
The missionary troubles in Persia were not the result of a misunderstanding about religious liberty or opposition to missionary evangelism. In some ways, they resembled the threats of attack by brigands that missionaries encountered in Turkey, but they were more complicated. The missionaries here were in physical danger as the result of ongoing warfare in the region. When Oroomiah was attacked during a Kurdish rebellion, there were rumors that the missionaries had been informed in advance. They denied this. During the siege, the missionary college sheltered some three hundred local Christians as well as a “large number” of Muslims in the area. Their longstanding good relations with local officials, largely due to the appreciation for the college, had kept them relatively safe. But when it had looked like troubles might arise, they were forced to rely on the British government for protection.69
Would the US government have considered representation in Persia at this time if it were not for the presence of missionaries? Probably not. Congressman Rufus Dawes, the brother of a Persia missionary, had brought the issue to the attention of the US government in 1880. As had been the case in Turkey, it was the physical attack—or the possibility of the attack—of American missionaries that created a clear duty for the United States. Missionary troubles led the United States to send its first representative to Tehran in 1883.70 Yet even this was insufficient to missionary needs.
In May 1890, Shusan Wright was stabbed in her home. She was a Persian Nestorian by birth, but a US citizen by marriage—a fact that the missionaries were sure to point out when they approached the government for assistance in seeking justice for her murder. For five years, she had been married to Rev. John Wright, a Presbyterian missionary. The couple had spent their married life living in Persia and the United States. At the time of her death, she was the mother to a son and a daughter, and was expecting to give birth again shortly. The couple made their home in Salmas, where there was an American mission school but no nearby consulate.
This attack was different from what missionaries tended to worry about. The motive was not theft or anti-foreign opposition to the missionary movement. It was far more personal than that. Minas, Wright’s attacker, was a graduate of the mission college who had been employed as a schoolteacher. For several months, he had been staying at the mission. The missionaries considered him “a gentle, nice-appearing fellow.” But the Wrights became concerned that he was “too intimate” with their maidservant. They rebuked the servant and sent Minas to a different home, but found this made little difference. When she took the children out for a walk, or when she went onto the roof of the building, he was there. Matters seemed to come to a head after Mrs. Wright noticed the nurse was absent from her usual spot next to the baby in the middle of the night and saw Minas pass through a gate from the mission to his own yard. The Wrights were convinced that the two were having an affair and decided to dismiss him. The next afternoon, when John Wright went to gather the balance of his wages, Minas took the opportunity to attack.
John Wright’s description of the scene was bloody. Minas had drawn a dagger from his sleeve and jumped on Shusan Wright, who was bent over her sewing. He tried to cut her throat, and sliced her chin, jaw, shoulders, and hands. He cut an artery and “the blood spurted as from a fountain.” He pierced her lung. Even though her husband had come running the moment he heard her scream, the attack was too fast. Minas ran away, Wright gave instruction for the villagers to arrest him, and immediately called for another missionary to come and help him attend to his wife. In the half hour that he waited, he held the gashes on her back shut with his own hands. They feared for her life and for her pregnancy.71
Wright survived for several weeks, though she remained weak. Dr. Mary Bradford attended to her care, finding her “dangerously ill” on account of her wounds. In the days after the attack, her husband’s attention was torn between caring for her and attempting to bring Minas to justice. This was challenging. John Wright had informed the government at Salmas of the attack at the same time that he had telegrammed for a doctor, but he was met with a refusal to act. It was Ramadan, and neither the governor nor his men could leave until they had broken their fast in the evening. Wright sent a messenger to bang on the door and demand redress, but no one would answer his call. From Wednesday until Sunday, the government would not take any action to arrest Minas. Wright offered a reward, but still nothing was done.
It was only when the British consul general happened to pass through town to visit with the missionaries that things began to change. The consul demanded action and informed the governor of Salmas, Hadji Khan, that he would inform both the British and US ministers of his negligence. Now “fully scared,” Hadji Khan began “vigorous measures” to capture Minas, who had passed into Turkish territory. Within a few days, Minas was in custody. It was through the British consul that the US minister in Tehran learned of the events in Salmas. Without any US government officials nearby, the missionaries relied on British protection.72
Once John Wright learned that Minas had been captured, he declined to state his preference for what punishment the would-be assassin ought to face. “I leave the matter of his punishment entirely with you and Colonel Stewart,” he wrote to the U.S. minister, “feeling sure that justice will be done and that he will be made an example, so that other evildoers may fear the results of their crimes.” This was “premeditated and deliberately attempted murder,” and Minas needed to face the consequences.73 Unless his wife died from her wounds, Wright did not think that Minas should be executed for his crime. On the first of June, Shusan Wright delivered a stillborn baby boy. Several hours later, she died.74
After Wright’s death, the Americans and British called for Minas’s execution, but the British consul was worried about unrest in the region. The Armenians asked the missionaries to forgive Minas.75 In the United States, the Presbyterian mission board demanded that the government work to ensure “an adequate punishment in this case.” Leniency, they agreed, would endanger the lives of all Americans and Europeans living in Persia.76 The case proceeded to trial, where the Americans and British insisted that, under Islamic law, Minas should be held responsible for two murders—of Wright and of her unborn child.77
At the end of the trial, Minas was sentenced to a life in prison. Spencer Pratt, the US minister at Tehran, called on the Eminé Soultan to challenge this decision. Pratt argued that only capital punishment could “meet the exigencies of the occasion.”78 The Presbyterian mission board agreed and asked the State Department to take action. Any discomfort they might have had in seeking “the execution of a poor deluded creature” could be cast aside. This was a man who had “deliberately murdered a noble wife and mother.” On behalf of the US citizens working as missionaries in Persia, they asked the government to ensure that “the ends of justice be not defeated, lest the lives of those who remain may be jeopardized.”79
This situation highlighted the dangers that American missionaries faced when they worked away from the protective arm of the US state. Foreign intervention was necessary to secure justice, it seemed. But the United States could not act alone. It was the British consul who forced the Persian government to act and who attended the trial.80 And when the death penalty was not pursued, the Americans considered uniting with the British in protest. But Pratt was not sure about the international implications of such a move. Would this bind the United States to future actions?
The United States was a “disinterested power” in Persia, whereas Britain was “one of the powers directly concerned in Persia’s politics.” Joining together might force the United States out of its neutral position. Accordingly, Pratt believed it best to either ask alone, or else join with not only the British, but also the French and Russian ministers in protest. Pratt believed that if he were to make “a formal demand in the name of the Government of the United States for this criminal’s execution,” the Persian government would comply.81 The United States, however, would make no such demand.
William Wharton, the acting secretary of state, agreed that life in prison was insufficient to the situation. But this was not just a question of justice for Mrs. Wright. It was also a matter of international relations between the United States and Persia. Because of the “high respect” that the United States had for the Persian government, the State Department remained confident that Persia would, upon “a full consideration of the case in all its aspects,” act “wisely and courageously” in punishing the criminal. No formal demand was necessary.82
Attacks on missionary employees provide a case in point for how one type of trouble could lead to another. Physical violence followed missionary activity, but it was not the Americans who were hurt. In a case such as this, what was the duty of the US government?
In the same year that Stephens was murdered in Mexico, missionaries in Syria complained to the State Department about the violence that they faced. The Reformed Presbyterian Church mission requested immediate government intervention to give them redress. In the middle of the night, a group of soldiers had surrounded the mission building, mounted the roof, and broke down the doors of the school, where they bound and seized the people sleeping within. Because the building was American property, and because two of the five captives were employees of US citizens, they hoped that the government would act.83 In Siam, too, missionaries requested the support of the US government when converts were hurt during an attack on the mission building in 1870.
In neither of these cases were US citizens harmed (though their property was damaged). Yet the missionaries hoped that the protection that they expected from their government might be extended to cover their employees and converts as well. These sorts of cases emerged naturally out of the missionary troubles that demanded government intervention and out of expanded understandings of extraterritoriality that included protection for American employees. Missionaries and consuls had long worked together, and it was easy for the missionaries to expect support in these situations just as they had in those where missionaries had been more directly victimized.
After decades of missionary troubles, the mission boards and the State Department were already in contact about the protections that missionaries required around the world. Why not seek help in these other types of trouble as well?
One type of missionary trouble, in other words, led easily to another. Soon, the missionary troubles were not only about missionaries who had been attacked. They also included the type of trouble that missionaries could drag the US government into and diplomatic crises that were entirely unexpected. Some diplomats began to wonder if the missionaries were victims after all, or if they might be better understood as troublemakers.