March 25, 1860 – Georgetown, California: Chinese Miner Killed by Tax Collector, Mob Verdict of “Self-Defense”

In late March 1860, at Georgetown in El Dorado County, a Chinese miner was shot and killed by a local road tax collector under controversial circumstances. Newspapers identified the tax collector as Deputy F. Williams (or in some accounts as Deputy A. H. Connelly). He confronted a group of Chinese laborers who had allegedly failed to pay a road toll tax. According to one newspaper account, “thirty or forty Chinamen, armed with picks and shovels, who threatened and attempted injury to his person.” In response, Williams fired his pistol into the crowd and killed one Chinese man. A coroner’s inquest quickly determined that the killing was “necessary self-defense” and absolved Williams of wrongdoing. The Weekly Butte Democrat applauded the act, arguing that the officer “acted properly, and would have done so if he had shot a dozen of them,” coolly adding that “a severe lesson occasionally is of great service in managing them.” Such rhetoric reveals the openly racist reaction that often followed violence against the Chinese. This incident is particularly telling: it shows how official authority (a tax collector) could collide with Chinese resistance to harsh taxes, and how the killing of a Chinese man by a white official was not only excused but celebrated in the press as a teachable moment for the “Celestials.” The Georgetown lynching highlights how institutionalized anti-Chinese measures, like discriminatory taxes and judicial policies, and anti-Chinese prejudice came together to create an environment where vigilante justice was tolerated, and Chinese lives were expendable.