{"id":1406,"date":"2010-12-15T14:06:18","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T19:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/?p=1406"},"modified":"2011-03-16T22:57:51","modified_gmt":"2011-03-17T03:57:51","slug":"edward-day-cahota","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/2010\/12\/15\/edward-day-cahota\/","title":{"rendered":"1912 (Arguing for Justice) Edward Day Cohota"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Edward Day Cohota (US Army)<\/p><\/div>\n

Narrative<\/strong>
\nEdward Day Cohota was a young Chinese immigrant who lied about his age to be able to enlist in the Union army in 1864.\u00a0 He served with honor in the 23d Massachusetts (Army of the Potomac) during some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns in Virginia.\u00a0 He was present at the Battle of Cold Harbor in June 1864 and helped save the life of a fellow soldier named Low who never forgot Cohota’s bravery.\u00a0 Yet some Americans did forget the contributions of Chinese.\u00a0 In 1882, Congress passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act.\u00a0 The anti-Chinese legislation did not affect Cohota, however, until 1912 when he was denied an application for a homestead on the grounds that he was not a legitimate citizen.\u00a0 The insult infuriated the veteran.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have fought in the country\u2019s service as a soldier\u2026I believe that I, if anyone, have earned the right to be pronounced a citizen of the United States and enjoy all of its rights and privileges\u2026I respectfully ask that some action be taken that will enable me to become a citizen of the United States of America.”<\/p>\n

Cohota died in 1935 still stripped of his US citizenship.\u00a0 Congress did not repeal the Chinese Exclusion rules until World War II.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong>
\nThis short report<\/a> from the New York Times<\/em> on November 13, 1927 notes that Cohota had \u201cspent thirty years in the service\u201d and \u201c[was] spending his last days at the Battle Mountain Sanitarium\u201d in Hot Springs, South Dakota.\u00a0One important secondary source is Ruthanne Lum McCunn’s article: \u201cChinese In the Civil War: Ten Who Served,\u201d Chinese America: History and Perspectives<\/em> 10 (1996): 149-169. In addition, the US Army has a profile of Cohota on this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Places to Visit<\/strong>
\nNo structures or sites related to Cohota exist. Cohota grew up abroad Captain Sargent S. Day’s ship as well as the Day family home in Gloucester, Massachusetts. After Confederates surrendered in 1865, Cohota was stationed at Fort Randall, Dakota Territory. In 1935 Cohota died at the Battle Mountain Sanitarium for Veterans in Hot Springs, South Dakota.<\/p>\n

Images<\/strong>
\nThe US Army has a photograph of Cohota on this page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Narrative Edward Day Cohota was a young Chinese immigrant who lied about his age to be able to enlist in the Union army in 1864.\u00a0 He served with honor in the 23d Massachusetts (Army of the Potomac) during some of the war’s bloodiest campaigns in Virginia.\u00a0 He was present at the Battle of Cold Harbor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[8648,3975],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-1406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arguing-for-justice","category-memory-meaning-1865-2015","tag-letters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1406"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2777,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1406\/revisions\/2777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/150th\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}