I know they helped build the railroad and stuff, but I have no idea how they were treated back then. If I am not totally ill informed that was also in a time were blacks were still enslaved.
Well I don't know a lot about it...but I noticed you had no responses so...
You are correct that this was before slavery was abolished. Railroads started being built around 1830 and the is was full of Railroads during the Civil war...it was an important strategic element.
All I really remember hearing about the Chinese immigrants at that time is that they were drastically different culturally than the modern chinese...these were extremely uneducated and unskilled immigrants. And I remember reading some 'scientific' study at the time from someone who suggested that the 'mongoloids' had the lowest cranial capacity of the three main racial groups (meaning they felt they were even more mentally disadvantaged than blacks). Modern studies show that their cranial capacity is higher than whites so I really don't know how they came to that conclusion.