Celso Caesar Moreno

Celso Caesar Moreno, also known as Cesare Moreno and C. C. Moreno, was born into a Roman Catholic family in the Piedmont region of Italy at Dogliani. According to testimony he gave in an 1896 court trial, he was born in 1830, and became a naturalized United States citizen in California in 1878.[1] His family was financially well off enough to send him to private Catholic schools where he became fluent in multiple languages.[2][3] After furthering his education at a military academy, Moreno enlisted in the Piedmontese regular army, serving in the Crimean War. Before the war's end, he decided against a military career, and enrolled in the University of Genoa, graduating as a civil engineer in 1856.[3]

He quickly lost interest in working as a civil engineer, and became captain of his own steamship, eventually arriving in Indonesia.[3] In the Dutch East Indies territory of Sumatra, Moreno changed his occupation once again, and was in the service of the Sultan Alauddin Ibrahim Mansur Syah 1859–1862, marrying one of the sultan's daughter.[4] After running afoul of the Dutch government, he abandoned his wife and fled the Dutch East Indies, returning to Europe.[3] He began lobbying efforts in Italy and France advocating a colonization of Sumatra, first with Victor Emmanuel II and then with Napoleon III. Neither of those efforts came to fruition, but Napoleon III was sufficiently impressed by Moreno to send him as a representative to Tonquin in Vietnam.[5]

About two years after he had arrived at Tonquin, Moreno made the acquaintance of Li Hung-chang, the Viceroy of Zhili,[5] who founded the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company with a vision towards establishling a steamship line between China and California.[6] Li Hung-chang had already begun formulating plans for a trans-Pacific telegraph line. Moreno would become a key player in both projects.[7]

Moreno showed up in Washington D. C. in 1868, as the "White Chief Mustapha Moreno", trying to sell the United States government an unnamed Malaysian island, and his services as an envoy to the island, for $500,000. The story he gave to newspapers, is that he discovered the inhabited island in February 1862, "took possession in his own name", and was elected the White Chief Mustapha by the locals. He was making the offer, he said, as a promise to the island's inhabits that in selling the island they would have the protection of the United States. A newspaper mention inferred that Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had negotiated the 1867 Alaska Purchase, was in favor of the sale; however, nobody took Moreno up on the offer.[8]

In 1869, he published American Interests in Asia, a 40-page pamphlet urging the United States to expand its sphere of influence by establishing treaties, "territorial concessions" and naval stations in Asia. He, in fact, suggested that the US team with Russia to divide up India between themselves.[9] President Ulysses S. Grant allowed Moreno an audience to expound on the subject.[10]

As a representative of the American and Asiatic Telegraph Company, Moreno promoted Li Hung-chang's idea of an undersea telegraph cable between Asia and the mainland United States. He spent time in California lobbying among influential leaders in hopes of gaining financial support for the project, then began lobbying the United States Congress. Senator Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen introduced a bill on May 18, 1874, to grant a charter to Moreno and thirteen others for the construction and maintenance of the trans-Pacific cable.[11] Moreno addressed Congress four months later on September 26, detailing the specifics of the proposal.[12] A bill was passed and signed by President Grant, for a non-exclusive charter requiring the project to begin no later than three years after the bill's August 15, 1876 passage. Subsequent fund raising efforts for the project were unsuccessful, and the deadline expired without the cable being started.[13]

Moreno stayed in Italy for a while after being removed as guardian of the three Hawaiian youths, and was a member of the Chamber of Deputies in the Kingdom of Italy until King Umberto I discharged all the deputies in 1882.[36]

He eventually returned to Washington, D. C. where he was active in the Italian community, trying to abolish the padrone system (a form of slavery) existent at that time in contract labor from Italy.[37][38] In 1886, he persuaded Congressman Henry B. Lovering of Massachusetts to introduce a bill to ban importation of slave contact labor from Italy into the United States.[39] On July 11, 1895, Moreno was indicted for libel against Italian minister to the United States, Baron Saverio Fava.[40] The libel case stemmed from an article written by Moreno and published in The Colored American. Therein, he referred to Fava as "Don Bassillo", the hypocrite in the Barber of Saville. Moreno accused Fava of corruption in using his position and influence to perpetuate the trafficking of slaves from Italy, while also reaping financial benefits from the practice. When the case was tried before a jury on October 29, Moreno testified that he had never had any contact with Fava or evidence upon which to base his claims, but rather wrote the article on hearsay. The jury rendered a guilty verdict the same day.[1] Moreno served 90 days jail time.[41]

Congress once again began to consider legislation on a trans-Pacific telegraph cable in 1895. Moreno unsuccessfully lobbied the United States House of Representatives for an extension of his 1876 charter for construction and maintenance of the cable.[42]

In the last year of his life, an endorsement allegedly from Moreno for the patent medicine Peruna appeared in newspapers.[43] Peruna was marketed to ease or cure catarrh, and had an alcohol content of 28%. Moreno was not the only public figure reputed to endorse the product. The manufacturer ran ads with testimonials from well-known doctors, athletes, entertainment celebrities, and members of the United States Congress. Years after Moreno's death, investigative journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams found that the endorsements were often fakes, or the results of blackmail.[44]

Moreno died of a stroke on March 11, 1901, having collapsed on a Washington D. C. sidewalk the day before. He was financially destitute at the time of his death. Local Italian societies took care of the arrangements, and he was buried in a donated plot at St. Mary's Catholic Church cemetery.[45][46]

Three months after Moreno's death, Baron Fava was recalled "at his own request" to Italy. An editorial in the Barton County Democrat disdained the continuing padrone system, blaming the Italian government for encouraging it and stating that Fava ran interference whenever the United States immigration officials tried to intervene. Moreno had been correct in his accusations, just incorrect in how he had gone about it.[5]

• Chapin, Helen Geracimos (1996). Shaping History: The Role of Newspapers in Hawai`i. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-6427-9. OCLC 45729341 – via Project MUSE.
• Faure, David (2006). China and Capitalism:A History of Business Enterprise in Modern China. Hong Kong University Press. ISBN 9789882203839. OCLC 650825903 – via Project MUSE.
• Kuykendall, Ralph Simpson (1967). The Hawaiian Kingdom 1874–1893, The Kalākaua Dynasty. 3. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-87022-433-1. OCLC 500374815.
• Quigg, Agnes (1988). "Kalakaua's Hawaiian Studies Abroad Program". The Hawaiian Journal of History. Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society. 22: 170–208. hdl:10524/103 – via eVols at University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
• Young, James Harvey (2015) [1972]. The Toadstool Millionaires. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6900-8. OCLC 599159278 – via Project MUSE.

• Vecoli, Rudolph J.; Durante, Francesco; Gabaccia, Donna R.; Venditto, Elizabeth O. (2018). Oh Capitano!: Celso Cesare Moreno—Adventurer, Cheater, and Scoundrel on Four Continents. Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-7989-0 – via Project MUSE.

• Media related to Celso Caesar Moreno at Wikimedia Commons