American Passage (55 page)

Yonkers, New York
BG Boston Globe
BH Boston Herald
CC Calvin Coolidge Papers, Library of Congress
CN Charles Nagel Papers, Yale University
CR Charles Recht Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University EG Emma Goldman Papers, University of California, Berkeley FLG Fiorello La Guardia Papers, La Guardia and Wagner Archives, La

Guardia Community College, City University of New York
HW Harper’s Weekly
HP Herbert Parsons Papers, Columbia University
HST Harry S. Truman Papers, Official File, Harry S. Truman

Presidential Library, Independence, Missouri
INS Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Record
Group 85, National Archives, Washington, DC
IRL Papers of the Immigration Restriction League, Harvard University JAMA
Journal of the American Medical Association
LD
The Literary Digest
LOC Library of Congress
MK Max Kohler Papers, American Jewish Historical Society
NAR North American Review
NMB Nicholas Murray Butler Papers, Columbia University NYHS New York Historical Society
NYM New York Medical Journal
NYPL New York Public Library
NYS New York Sun
NYT New York Times
NYTM New York Times Magazine
NYTrib New York Tribune
NYW New York World
OS Oscar Straus Papers, Library of Congress
PSM Popular Science Monthly
RMN Richard M. Nixon Papers, National Archives, College Park,
Maryland
SG Samuel Gompers Papers, University of Maryland, College Park
SP Saturday Evening Post
TR Theodore Roosevelt Papers, Library of Congress
TVP Terence V. Powderly Papers, The Catholic University of America WC William E. Chandler Papers, Library of Congress
WGH Warren G. Harding Papers, Library of Congress
WL William Langer Papers, University of North Dakota
WSJ Wall Street Journal
WHT William Howard Taft Papers, Library of Congress
WP Washington Post
WW Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress
WW-NYPL William Williams Papers, New York Public Library WW-Yale William Williams Family Papers, Yale University

1
By 1912, thirty-three-year-old
: On the Tyni family, see File 53525-37, INS.
2
Unlike the Tyni family
: For the story of Anna Segla, see File 52880-77, INS.
3
Other immigrants
: Letter from Louis K. Pittman, December 3, 1985, Public Health Service Historians Office, Rockville, MD.
3
Others, luckier than Pittman
: For the story of Frank Woodhull/Mary Johnson, see
NYT
, October 5, 6, 1908;
NYTrib
, October 5, 1908;
New York Herald
, October 5, 1908; and Erica Rand,
The Ellis Island Snow Globe
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), Chapter 2.
5
For these individuals
: Bruce M. Stave, John F. Sutherland, with Aldo Salerno,
From the Old Country: An Oral History of European Migration to America
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994), 44–45.
5
No one story
: James Karavolas, who arrived as a six-year-old in 1915, told of his memories of Ellis Island years later. “Ellis Island didn’t impress me at all. The memory is faint,” Karavolas admitted. Peter Morton Coan,
Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words
(New York: Checkmark Books, 1997), 279.
7
The process at
: Edward A. Steiner,
On the Trail of the Immigrant
(New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906), 72; Stephen Graham,
With Poor Immigrants to America
(New York: Macmillan, 1914), 44.
7
The central sifting
: Allan McLaughlin, “How Immigrants Are Inspected,”
PSM
, February 1905; J. G. Wilson, “Some Remarks Concerning Diagnosis by Inspection,”
NYM
, July 8, 1911; Alfred C. Reed, “The Medical Side of Immigration,”
PSM
, April 1912; E. H. Mullan, “Mental Examination of Immigrants: Administration and Line Inspection at Ellis Island,” Public Health Reports, U.S. Public Health Service, May 18, 1917; and Elizabeth Yew, “Medical Inspection of Immigrants at Ellis Island, 1891–1924,”
Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine
56, no. 5 (June 1980).
8
All of these ideas
: Speech by Henry Cabot Lodge before the Boston City Club, March 20, 1908, reprinted, 60th Congress, 1st Session, Senate Document 423.
9
Traditional histories
: John Higham,
Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1955), 4. For a critique of Higham’s “psychopathological approach,” see Aristide R. Zolberg,
A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America
(New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2006), 6–8.
9
The “nativist theme”
: See John Higham, “Another Look at Nativism,”
Catholic Historical Review
, July 1958 and John Higham, “Instead of a Sequel, or How I Lost My Subject,”
Reviews in American History
28, no. 2 (2000). 10
Few Americans argued
: Allan McLaughlin, “Immigration and Public Health,”
PSM
, January 1904.
11
Take the opinions
: Max Kohler, “Immigration and the Jews of America,”
AH
, January 27, 1911.
11
On the other side
: Frank Sargent, “The Need of Closer Inspection and Greater Restriction of Immigrants,”
Century Magazine
, January 1904.
11
“We desire to”
: American Jewish Committee report quoted in Max J. Kohler,
Immigration and Aliens in the United States: Studies of American Immigration Laws and the Legal Status of Aliens in the United States
(New York: Bloch Publishing Company, 1936), 1.
11
The laws that dealt
: See Erika Lee, “The Chinese Exclusion Example: Race, Immigration, and American Gatekeeping, 1882–1924,”
Journal of American Ethnic History
, Spring 2002; Lucy E. Salyer,
Laws Harsh As Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). On the role of Angel Island in historical interpretations of immigration, see Roger Daniels, “No Lamps Were Lit for Them: Angel Island and the Historiography of Asian American Immigration,”
Journal of American Ethnic History
17, no. 1 (Fall 1997).

19
Fifty thousand
: Daniel Allen Hearn,
Legal Executions in New York State, 1639– 1963
(Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1997), 40, 299–300.
19
Pirates bring to
: Rudolph Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” mimeo, 1934, 6–7, NYPL.
20
When Washington Irving
: Washington Irving,
History, Tales and Sketches
(New York: Library of America, 1983), 628–629.
20 “
Guests from Gibbet Island”
: Washington Irving, “Guests from Gibbet Island,” in Charles Neider, ed.,
Complete Tales of Washington Irving
(New York: Da Capo Press, 1998). Irving also returns to the theme in his short story “Dolph Heyliger.”
20
Pirate hangings
: “Life and Confession of Thomas Jones,” 1824, NYHS.
21
A similar tale
: “Trial and Confession of William Hill,” 1826, NYHS; Frederick Douglass,
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
(New York: Signet Classics, 1997), 26.
21
On the night
:
Genius of Universal Emancipation
, January 2, 1827; Ralph Clayton, “Baltimore’s Own Version of ‘Amistad’: Slave Revolt,”
Baltimore Chronicle
, January 7, 1998, http://baltimorechronicle.com/slave_ship2.html.
22
Confusion reigned
: Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” 24;
Commercial Advertiser
, April 23, 1831;
Workingman’s Advocate
, April 30, 1831.
22
Gibbs was a white man
: “Mutiny and Murder: Confession of Charles Gibbs,” (Providence, RI: Israel Smith, 1831), NYHS.
23
Their dead bodies
:
New York Evening Post
, April 23, 1831;
Atkinson’s Saturday Evening Post
, April 30, 1831.
23
The island’s last
: Hearn, 46; “The Life of Cornelius Wilhelms: One of the
Braganza
Pirates,” 1839, NYHS.
23
New York City
: For an excellent discussion of New York’s waterfront, see Phillip Lopate,
Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan
(New York: Crown, 2004).
24
There are some forty
: See Sharon Seitz and Stuart Miller,
The Other Islands of New York City: A History and Guide,
2nd ed. (Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2001).
24
Many of the city’s
: Lopate,
Waterfront,
374.

24
In upper New York Harbor
: Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell,
Touring Gotham’s Archaeological Past: 8 Self Guided Walking Tours Through New York City
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 20–21.

25
Seals, whales, and porpoises
: Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell,
Unearthing Gotham: The Archaeology of New York City
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 87; John Waldman,
Heartbeats in the Muck: The History, Sea Life, and Environment of New York Harbor
(New York: Lyons Press, 1999); and Mark Kurlansky,
The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell
(New York: Ballantine Books, 2006).

25
Little Oyster Island
: Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 63.
25
One of the first orders
: Berthold Fernow, ed.,
Records of New Amsterdam,
vol. 1 (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1976), 51, 58–59; Russell Shorto,
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
(New York: Doubleday, 2004), 259; Elva Kathleen Lyon, “Joost Goderis, New Amsterdam Burgher, Weighmaster, and Dutch Master Painter’s Son,”
New York Genealogical and Biographical Record
123, no. 4 (October 1992).
26
Little Oyster Island would also
: Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” 7.
26
Ellis died in 1794
: I. N. Phelps Stokes,
The Iconography of Manhattan Island,
vol. 5 (New York: Arno Press, 1967), 1198–1199; Thomas M. Pitkin,
Keepers of the Gate: A History of Ellis Island
(New York: New York University Press, 1975), 3.
27
Over the next few years
: Pitkin,
Keepers of the Gate,
4–5.
27
In 1807, Lieutenant Colonel
: Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” 16.
28
Nature blessed New York’s
: Robert Greenhalgh Albion,
The Rise of New York Port, 1815–1860
(New York: Scribner’s, 1939), 16–29.
28
Having such a natural port
: Edward Robb Ellis,
The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History
(New York: Kondasha International, 1997), 223–229.
28
New York City was
: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
435–436; Albion, 389; John Gunther,
Inside U.S.A.
(New York: Book of the Month Club, 1997), 555.
29
For the next few decades
: Reimer, “History of Ellis Island,” 17–18.

30
These men, women
:
NYT
, August 7, 1855.
31
The old fort
: On Castle Garden’s history, see
Commercial Advertiser
, June 22, 1839; James G. Wilson, ed.,
The Memorial History of the City of New York
, vol. 4 (New York: New York History Company, 1893), 441; Phillip Lopate,
Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan
(New York: Crown Publishers, 2004), 24; Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace,
Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 815–816; Sharon Seitz and Stuart Miller,
The Other Islands of New York City: A History and Guide,
2nd ed. (Woodstock, VT: Countryman Press, 2001), 72–74.
31
The new immigration station
:
NYT
, August 6, 7, 1855.
31
The indignation meeting
:
NYT
, August 7, 10, 1855.
32
This was an exercise
: Theodore Roosevelt,
New York: A Sketch of the City’s Social, Political, and Commercial Progress from the First Dutch Settlement to Recent Times
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 238, 246.
32
Born in upstate
: On Rynders, see Tyler Andbinder,
Five Points: The 19th Century New York City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections, and Became the World’s Most Notorious Slum
(New York: Free Press, 2001), 141–144, 166–167 and T. J. English,
Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish American Gangster
(New York: Regan Books, 2005), 13–15, 26–27.
33
There were certainly
: Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
736.
33
Rynders was
: George J. Svejda, “Castle Garden as an Immigrant Depot, 1855– 1890,” National Park Service, December 2, 1968, 41.
34
As soon as
: Friedrich Kapp
, Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the State of New Yor
k (New York: Nation Press, 1870), 62; Burrows and Wallace,
Gotham,
737.
34
A committee of
: “Report of the Select Committee to Investigate Frauds upon Emigrant Passengers,” 1848, excerpted in Edith Abbott, ed.,
Immigration: Select Documents and Case Records
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924), 130– 134.
34
The federal government
: Hans P. Vought,
The Bully Pulpit and the Melting Pot: American Presidents and the Immigrant, 1897–1933
(Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2004), 5.
35
The job of regulating
E. P. Hutchinson,
Legislative History of American Immigration Policy, 1798–1965
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 388–404; Daniel J. Tichenor,
Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 58–59; Gerald L. Neuman,
Strangers to the Constitution: Immigrants, Borders, and Fundamental Law
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 19–43. For examples of these state laws, see Abbott, ed.,
Immigration,
102–110.
36
The Board of Commissioners laid out
: Kapp
, Immigration and the Commissioners,
109–110. For a history of the Battery, including Castle Garden’s many incarnations, see Rodman Gilder,
The Battery
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1936).
36
Wealthy New Yorkers
:
NYT
, June 15, 1855; Svejda, “Castle Garden,” 40.
36
On Castle Garden’s first day
: Svejda, “Castle Garden,” 45–46;
NYT
, August 4, 1855.
37
Having failed
:
NYT
, August 7, 1855. In a letter to the editor the day after the indignation meeting, Rynders clarified his views on the matter.
NYT
, August 8, 1855.
37
After the final
:
NYT
, August 8, 1855;
New York Daily Tribune
, August 7, 1855.
37
Throughout the fall
:
NYT
, August 14, 18; December 15, 1855.
37
The harassment of
: Kapp
, Immigration and the Commissioners,
108; Svejda, “Castle Garden,” 50–57.
38
Some reports claimed
: Kapp,
Immigration and the Commissioners,
81.
38
With the runners
: William Dean Howells,
A Hazard of New Fortunes
(New York: Meridian, 1994), 263;
NYT
, December 23, 1866; Friedrich Kapp, quoted in Charlotte Erickson, ed.,
Emigration from Europe, 1815–1914
(London: Adam & Charles Black, 1976), 274;
New York: A Collection from Harper’s Magazine
(New York: Gallery Books, 1991), 363.
39
Between 1860 and
: John Higham,
Strangers in the Land
:
Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1995), 39.
39
A writer in
: Higham,
Strangers in the Land,
35; “Dangers of Unrestricted Immigration,”
Forum
, July 1887.
40
Daily newspapers
: Edward Self, “Why They Come,”
NAR
, April 1882; Edward Self, “Evils Incident to Immigration,”
NAR
, January 1884.
40
Newspapers throughout
:
Public Opinion
, April 30, May 14, June 30, 1887.
41
Others used
: “Immigration and Crime,”
Forum
, December 1889.
41
It took Episcopal bishop
: “Government by Aliens,”
Forum
, August 1889.
41
Despite Coxe’s florid
:
Public Opinion
, April 30, July 30, 1887, December 28, 1889.