President Benjamin Harrison Responds to the Dismissal of the Inspector of Immigration at the Newly Opened Ellis Island by the Secretary of the Treasury

The 1891 Immigration Act created the Office of the Superintendent of Immigration in the Treasury Department. The superintendent oversaw a new corps of immigrant inspectors stationed at the country’s principal ports of entry. During its first decade, the Immigration Service formalized basic immigration procedures. The service began collecting arrival manifests (also frequently called passenger lists or immigration arrival records) from each incoming ship, a former duty of customs officials since 1820. Inspectors then questioned arrivals about their admissibility and noted their admission or rejection on the manifest records. Beginning in 1893, inspectors also served on Boards of Special Inquiry that closely reviewed each exclusion case.

The Superintendent oversaw a new corps of U.S. Immigrant Inspectors stationed at the country’s principal ports of entry. On January 2, 1892, the Immigration Service opened the U.S.’s best known immigration station on Ellis Island in New York Harbor.

Cornelius N. Bliss was a partner in one of the largest wholesale dry-goods firms in the country. Involved in politics, he knew fellow New Yorker Chester A. Arthur and served as chairman of the Republican committee in New York in 1887 and 1888, contributing much to the success of the Benjamin Harrison ticket in his state in the 1888 election. Presidents Arthur and Harrison both wanted to offer him cabinet posts, but he declined on the grounds that his wife was a semi-invalid and could not move from their New York home to Washington. He served as Treasurer of the Republican National Committee from 1892 to 1904, and became friendly with William McKinley in his early years in that office. In January 1896, McKinley asked Bliss to become Secretary of the Treasury in his incoming administration, but Bliss declined on the same grounds; eventually he accepted the post of Secretary of the Interior. In 1904 he was Theodore Roosevelt’s campaign manager.

Bliss apparently wrote Harrison about an immigration inspector who had been released or suspended in his bailiwick of New York. This would have made the man one of the first inspectors on Ellis Island, which opened in January 1892.

John Millholland was a political opponent of Bliss, and a spat began when 3 inspectors at Ellis Island were removed. Millholland was the Inspector responsible for those workers. Bliss himself appealed to the Secretary of the Treasury and President to remove Millholland from that patronage post and this was done in late April. Bliss, confronted with petitions to the government to reinstatement Millholland, appealed directly to the President to not do so.

Autograph letter signed, as President, on Executive Mansion letterhead, Washington, April 28, 1892, to Bliss, and marked “Personal”. “I have yours of the 25th instant. Under the law the Secretary of the Treasury appoints the Inspector of Immigration & as no duty is devolved upon me I have said to all that I should not interfere with the Secretary’s action in the case of Millholland. Several labor leaders and organizations have sent petitions for his reinstatement and I have given this answer to them. You may however be sure that the Secretary will not take any action without first giving all an opportunity to be heard. I have not seen him since he went to Ohio two days ago but have no reason to think that he will re-open the matter.”

Here we learn much about President Harrison’s method of operating, as he makes a clear policy decision not to interfere with the decision of a Cabinet member.