and back in the fight. he's going to go on to try to capture meyers hill. if you went outside you'd see a radio tower on the far side of the road. that's meyers hill. upton's men will successfully capture that after some back and forth. strategically doesn't break things open. upton will go on to a highly successful career in the united states army. he'll be an influential tactician. it will become the standard bible for the army but he has an unfortunate personal life. has problems with his wife as what we think is migraines sparked by a brain tumor. he'll eventually commit suicide at the presidio. a promising young man who goes on to an unfortunate deaths. so thank you ladies and gentlemen. i appreciate i would.

[ applause ] >> you're watching american history tv on c-span 3 every weekend, during congressional breaks and on holidays, too. follow us on twitter, like us on facebook, and find our programings and schedule on our website. c-span.org/history. >> between 1892 and 1954, about 12 million i am grants seeking new life in america were taken to ellis island. today millions of americans take ferry boats each year to visit ellis ivory and the statue of liberty. up next, we visit to learn about the immigrant experience. >> good morning. my name is peter urban and i'm a park ranger for the national park service here at ellis island. this island, for many americans, is the place where their

american story began. 12 to 13 million americans came to this island and to this building in order to being given the ok to go out and spark their lifes in the late 1800s and early 1900s. let me talk to you briefly about the island itself. we're 27 acres in size today. in the original form, it was three acres. small island in the middle of the harbor. barely above sea level at high tide. it was a military installation, first as a fort during the war of 1812 and eventually during the 1800s as a storage depot. sometime around 1890 it was decided by the federal government, it would be converted into a building to process immigrants. this is actually the second

processing center. the first was a large wooden structure that lasted for five years and burnt to the ground in about three hours due to a furnace fire in 1897. the federal government decided at that point they needed to build something more permanent, somethings that would also reflect the grandeur of a federal building. this was built between 1898 and 1900 and it opened in december of 1900. it's a beautiful building and from the moment it opened, twagsz already too small for what it was about to face. constructed to handle about a half a million people a year, in 19097 alone, it handled 1, 200,000 people. it was two stories with the four towers that we have here. as we had more and more people come through and they realized

they were really too small to handle the flow, they began to add structures. the building we see straight out here, the three story structure is called the baggage and dormitory building. the overflow of people either being detained here or waiting for detained members of their family was so enormous that the dormitories on the balconies in the great hall were too small. we also found out that 2/3 of the people coming through here would end up going to others parts of america. only about a third of them would go to new york city. this building we have here was constructed and added on as a place nor immigrants to buy their tickets in order to go and start their lives in other parts of the country. a large polish population heading to check. a czech population headed to nebraska. a large group of germans and slow vaks led for texas. it housed ticket windows for

railroads that would eventually sell the ticket and they would go across the harbor to the central rail of the terminal where they would eventually find a train to take them to most likely friends and relatives who had settled in those areas. the others would be headed to new york. those will find many different ethnic neighborhoods that a lot of the times would welcome them with open arms. this is the sea wall at ellis island facing out into the harbor. this is a perfect place to begin our story. 12 to 13 million people would make their way through the building we have here, but their journey started back in kwlurp they made that very braf and sometimes ambitious decision to leave the sometimes everybody they knew behind and to make a journey here to this country.

for most of those immigrants who came to ellis island, this is going to be a place that they had to save money for quite a long time just to be able to buy a ticket and make their way through this building. an immigrant had to pay $30 of the money of the tim period which could equal several hundred dollars in today's money just for a ticket for a spot on an ocean liner that was never meant for any human being. the ocean liners had always taken care of people with money. first class passengers had fade thousands of dollars in today's money to be able to be wined and dined and treated like royalty. even if you had just a little bit less money, you could get a second class ticket that would give you a modest but private room. but shipping companies began to realize that so many people who were poor wanted to come here in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they had to accommodate that demand. they figured they could

sacrifice cargo holds below in their ships. dark, dirty, usually crates and things of that nature, they housed three of four high beds packed in tightly. the immigrant coming to ellis island would be a passenger in the lower decks. the lower decks were not pleasant. very little light. very little ventilation. about a thousand to 1500 packed down there and your ship ride could fake anywhere from a week to a month. so coming to america was a great challenge. they would be leaving port cities like brennan or con stan that nopele where shipping companies had their office. very important part of the story is when they boarded the ship they had to answer 25, 30 questions about themselves to a shipping clerk from the company on whose boat they're about to board. and those answers will be a important part of the immigrant story. that's the information that will

be used in the great hall to interrogate the immigrants to determine if they have the legal right to land here. so we'll return to that story a little bit later by i wanted toed bring that story in right now. we're at the harbor for a reason. we're going to assume that the immigrant ship has made it across safely. the first place they will enter new york harbor is where you see the barazato narrows bridge, an area we call the narrows in this area. that's the first place where inspectors will board ships to see if this ship has a raging epidemic of a disease. they don't want to let immigrants bringing diseases into this country, which was one of the things they're checking inside in the great hall. inspectors aren't likely to find anybody with tremendous amounts of illness or even a ship fall because shipping companies had already done some preprocessing. they knew pretty quickly that american law stated that if a shipping company brought somebody here who was to be

deported, they had to bring them back at the shipping company's cost. so many companies had their own small processing before you got here. didn't mean people might not get on the sick. so they'd get taken off the ship there. your ocean liners are going to move into this harbor. if you're looking at the harbor today, it's about the most peaceful sight you're going to see. if you use your imagination, think about the fact that basically, your international travel is all on ship at this time. so this harbor would be full with commercial vessels, private vessels, ocean liners, especially at peak time here in the mid 1900s and 1910 time period. you had ocean liners out here anchored, waiting for a dock to open. there would be noise. there would be a dinny atmosphere. there were no atmosphere laws back then. a poor immigrant farmer and many of them are going to be from

rural areas. they're going to be absolutely amazed at the sight. they're going to look at the skyline of new york. even some of the smaller brick buildings would have been there. they don't look very big compared to one world trade but for an immigrant who never saw a big building, it's going to be like outer space. this sight, this harbor and they are amazed at lady liberty. that's the first thing that welcomes them is this gorgeous site that opened in 1886. so up the harbor the shim comes. a lot of people who come think the ships docked here and let people out. that's not true. they're just too shallow for something like that. the ships are going up the river here. today where the uss intrepid is

moords, for exampl moored, for example. the boat moves up the harbor and is given an inspection. unless they have a glaring problem that needs attention, they're going to be let out to go start their lives. the thinking was this. if you have a slight illness, you've got the money to pay for a doctor. you're going to be able to go and get the care you need. you're also going to be able to afford a place to live. the steerage class package have in their pocket a couple of hundred dollars that they're going to have to prove they have when they get inside. still not enough to prove that they're not going to be a problem for society. they're afraid of people bringing diseases, people involved in crime. they're afraid of being overwhelmed. that's what ellis island does,

serves as a way for the passengers to come into the country and start their lives. there's a clear delineation for the immigrant. if you have the money, you're in. if you don't have the money, you're going to get sent. when we head inside in a couple of minutes, we'll start the story of the immigrants who came off the shift and brought down here by a ferry and are going to enter the front door and come in from the first floor of the ellis island, which looks dramatically different now than it did then. ok. we're about to enter the main entrance of ellis island. across the way there might be a point of note. these beautiful buildings that are now abandoned, were the hospital complexes that were run by the united states public health service, which was just a fantastic crew of doctors who cared for immigrants bhoorp detained for medical reasons. about 10% of the people who came

through here were detained for medical reasons. the string of buildings we see right here were for noncontagious diseases. behind about 30 yards parallel is a spring of building for contagious diseases. there was a amnesiales ward, a tuberculosis ward, an insane asylum. this was a real operating island. the public health service was so good at their job that occasionally hospitals from new york would send patients out here to be taken care of and they did a great job of nursing people back to health who had diseases that were cure building. that's a very big standard here. if you had a disease that was n incurable and contagious, you're definitely going to bo back. it's a very big part of our complex. it's not open to the public yet.

it's being worked on. so definitely ellis island is awork in progress. slowly but surely we will get that complex opened up and open for the public to see, too. so we're walking up the ramp. underneath the canopy here at ellis island. this canopy in this spot would have been a place where graentsds who had just gotten off the boat here would have lined up to go in the door and begin their preissing. the original canopy had black slate roofs. people lined up here and what they had with them was virtually only what was important to them. for many who are bringing their entire families at the same time, they had to sell everything they owned back in europe. the farmland, the cattle, all the supplies, the farm yiitself just to be able to i ford all of the fares for everybody coming here. you'll see inside there's a

beautiful picture that just shows you this. they have a bag or satchel or a steamer trunk and everything the family owns that is of value to them will come with them. let's take you inside. the room we're entering right now is the baggage room. here's the place where immigrants got the their first sight of ellis island. and to be honest with you, this room looked very different, depending upon the moment you came. in 1907, according to some floor plans i've seen, immigrants who came in this door had to go immediately over to our left, their right, where medical examination would take place. now, eventually they would end up in the staircase which is originally right up in the middle of this ceiling that took you right up into the middle of the great hall. as i mentioned to you earlier, this building was really planned to handle a lot less people than

they thought. so over the years, the process of having all this medical processing here, immigrants going up the stairs here became highly impractical, and they had to figure out a way to make it work more efficiently. around 1912, this stair well in the middle of the room was torn up and a mod everyone staircase was built where we have it today taking you up to the second floor. it was not just to make the flow go faster, it was also to make the medical processing more efficient, too. you give credit to the people who were here. they handled a highly chaotic situation in a really efficient and i think in many cases compassionas way. doesn't mean it wasn't scary to the immigrant but there was a lot of care put forward to make things better. in the early 1900s, this could be a place that was very tricky

for an immigrant to get through. so the people who were bringing their baggage in -- and you can see samples of the baggage here that we have. baggage handlers could hold your luggage, make sure it gets on the boat when you head over to catch your ferry or if you're going to go catch a train. early on we had concession airs who would take advantage. they would double or triple charge them for their services. money exchange people would give them back a small amount of what their money was worth and pocket the rest. the food concession people dressed up somebody looking like an inspector. he went in the crowds and told them if they didn't buy a lunch from the food stand, they'd get imported. william williams dressed up a couple of his best inspectors as immigrants and put them in the crowd to document the corruption and he was very instrumental in getting rid of the corrupt concession firms and making

things even more fair for the people come through. so here you come in. and after 1912 you're going to be directed to go up those stairs. we're going to head up stairs to the second floor now to talk about the medical and legal processing. we're also going to see the room that i think most of you have come to know as the symbol of ellis island. it's officially called the registry room but we call it and i think most people call it the great hall of ellis island. it's a majestic piece of architecture. we're going to take you up the stairs. we're heading up the stairs to the second floor. as i said, this is a modern staircase but imagine there being a wooden staircase here that immigrants would walk up in large crowds. some had refused to give their baggage to the baggage handler, so they've still got either their suitcase or perhaps a

sheet with stuff in it over their shoulders, their belongings. they're coming up these stairs. the one thing they don't realize yet is they're already being inspected as they walk up the stairs. they might be limping because of a bad foot. they might be carrying that big baggage and holding their chest and having trouble breathing. they may be very happy to be here and singing a song from the old country and looking wonderfully ecstatic. all three of those conditions would be observed by inspectors who would be at the top of the stairs and they would be watching. as you got to the top of the stairs here, those expecters would come up to you with one of their tools of the trade, piece of chalk, and they're going to mark your coat up with initials that signify exactly what they

feel may be the condition you have. the stubd toe gets an l for lameness. the person holding their chest might have a heart problem, h. the person who's so ecstatic to be here that they're singing and dancing, we feel they may have a mental condition that needs to be checked, so they have an x on their coat. i ask everybody to do something and when they don't do it i tell them we have to check their hearing. not to make themselves feel bad about themselves but it's all about the idea of inspection without understanding what's going on. now, doctors will also meet you here. and they'll give you an inspection that is just about as fast a medical inspection as you're ever going to get. i know sometimes they were called the six-second specialists for that reason. anywhere from five to ten seconds, maybe 15.

there are highly skilled members of the united states public health service who can spot even the smallest sign of anywhere from 50 to 60 ailments that normally afflict an immigrant. and again, any doubt that you have something means more initials are going on your coat. so the one set of initials you don't want on your coat is ct. ct represented an illness called trochoma. it was a much widespread disease back in the past. still exists. it makes the underpart of your eyelid is rough as sandpaper. highly contagious and incurable. if they had to check the eyes, they used buttonhooks, hooks that were used to pull up gloves for women of high society. thought pull up your eye led to see if the tell tale signs of the disease were there.

if you were taken this moment with initials on your coat, intit didn't mean you were automatically going to be sent back. it did mean that down these hallways, here and over here, they will take you to individual medical exam rooms. all of these initials were about making this process more efficient. they didn't have the time to give you a thorough exam. but the doctors down that hall could look at you and check you out more specifically for just those two or three initials on your coat. the vars majority, it will be no problem. the man with the stubbed toe. he'll be treated and come back out here. for some, it may mean an internment in the hospital for days, weeks, and maybe even months. for some, as i said, it may mean the doctor's report will rule that they, in fact, need to be sent back. this is step one of the process. ok. as they walk into this room, as

terrifying as this moment can be, they're also in a room which is the grandest room that some of you have ever seen in your entire life. is this is the great hall of ellis island. it has been restored to the way it looked roughly around 1918. our american flags have 48 stars because in the early 1900s they only had 48 states. so we try to be a little accurate right to the point about 1918 in what we had. the ceiling that you see up hire, those tiles were put up here by a family company called the bustavino family whose work is still famous in places like carnegie hall around grand central station and the cathedral of st. john the divine in new york. tiles placed on the ceiling in a patented style that was all their own when the restoration was done here in the 1980s, they

had to check every tile for their integrity and they only found 18 tiles that needed to be replaced. the floor we're standing on is over a hundred years old. when they waxed this floor it looked brand-new. tiles on the column around here are part of the room in 1900. as are the chandelier, first chandelier here and the other chandelier in the middle of the room. the third one, you could never guess, was a reproduction but it apparently was destroyed by a cable snapping when they did the restoration. they put up -- i guess they figured you couldn't go up there and check, but, anyway, these are the original chandeliers. now, to get a sense of what the room was like when people came here, you had to use your imagination. today we don't have much in here because we want people to be able to roam and enjoy the room.

if you were here as an immigrant, you would have entered a room after 1912 that was full of rows of benches here. we have benches in the front. the darker ones are original benches. tlt lighter ones were reproductions done by a high school program up in new york state. and if we use your imaginations, the benches would have been in rows coming all the way down here coming all the way into the middle of the room. once you got passed this medical inspection you're going to come and sit and wait. when you got off the boat in new york, a tag was put on your coat with a number that corresponded to your ship's manifest. when your ship's manifest's book is brought to the desk, they call your number, they send inspectors out to get everybody with that number, they line you up and you're about to be retested to see if you are, in fact, the person who you say you are when you got on the boat.

that's where we're going to head next. we're going to head down to that inspector's desk. we'll talk a little bit about the questions that were asked and what happened to many people when they got there. our last stop in the great hall is going to be at a replica of the possibly about 15 to 20 inspectors desks that line this end of the hall. here is the spot where you go through the last part of your processing. now, if you remember, we talked a little bit about a ship manifest outside. manifests were a list of answers to questions that immigrants gave. 25 to 30 questions were asked. what's your name? what's your age? what's your nationality? where's the last place you lived in europe and with whom? what's your final destination? can you read and write? who -- where are you going to -- where are you going to live in america and with whom? how much money do you have?

now, that's a bit of a tricky question. it wasn't always known by immigrants that inspectors add most points were looking for you to have about $25 in the money of time period. couple hundred dollars in today's money. you might have that money when you board the ship. it may be stolen. you may have lost it. if i don't have anywhere near that amount, that could be a reason to detain you, because they don't want to let people out in america with no money to go start their lives. this is another tricky question that a lot of people wouldn't take as a trick question. who paid for your passage? most people will say i paid for it myself. my mother or my father paid. the answer you don't want to give, even if you're nervous and think it will inspect the inspector is my new boss in america paid for me to come here.

i start working tomorrow. it may seem like an impressive answer because the inspector would let you in because you ju have a josh but you just admitted you were a contract worker. to admit that would be a certain trim back to europe and a hefty fine for your american employer. so every one of these questions would be asked or sampling. some of them here are actually physical descriptions. i can answer them simply by looking at the immigrant. ok. so i can see that, for instance, a young woman, 5'2" with gray eyes and blonde hair. for the vast majority of people that came up to this desk, this is going to be a pretty easy process. they'll answer all the questions. they'll remember all the answers. they won't look too suspicious in answering, because if you look too suspicious in answering, that alone could be a reason for detention.

but about 80% of the people who come through this building will eventually leave here to go start their lives after an experience of about three or four hours. the 20% are detained. 10% to the legal processing that we saw and another 10% for some discrepancies in their interrogation here. so we're going to take you to the room where they had their chance or their day in court. it's a scary experience. we'll talk about that in a minute, for so many of them. we're going to head down the hall to the board of special inquiry room located on the very spot where it existed and has been restored to look pretty much the way it did in the early 1900s. if you'll follow me, we'll head down there. this wing you're heading into is actually the legal wing of ellis ooild island at the time period. there were actually four operating courtrooms in this

area at one time. offices were here for lawyers. there were detention rooms for those who would be detained in some way. many of the items on this desk are up are authentic from our collections. they tried to create what inspectors' desks would look like. there are three inspectors seatsed here, and they are your judges. each of them will hear and -- will hear your case as they will ask you important questions. a stenographer would be here to keep minutes of the case and an interpreter would be here to help the inspectors understand the words of the immigrants as they pleaded their cases. immigrants were not allowed to have a lawyer in this first hearing. they had to plead their own case. oftentimes there would be members of what were called

immigrant aid societies, groups that had been set up by specific ethnic groups to help people of their background to get through this process here on ellis island and they could serve as an interpreter for the immigrant themselves. an agreement could also call witnesses to come and testify on their behalf. let's say the young woman who lost her money on the boat befriended by a very nice man who eventually ended up stealing her money, she would send a telegram in to new york to her brother who lives in new york who she's going to go live with and ask him to come out and testify on her behalf. they would never allow the two people, the brother and sister, in the same courtroom at the same time. they will interrogate them separately so there would not be any kind of story created betweened the two of them. if the brother came in and said she is my sister, i will take

her in, here's my name and address, i vouch for her, she will stay under my wing until she has enough money to get a place of her own and get a job, that would oftentimes be more than enough to solve or assuage the fears of the expecters here. all they need to do is convince two of these three inspectors is that the reason they were detained is not a good enough reason to send them back to europe. for the 20% of people who came through here, it's a terrifying moment. they've really not seen a lot of justice in their own country. many of them have come from pretty brutal regimes. they're going to be given a wonderful introduction to an american justice system which gives them a real good shake. of the 20% in this room, only 2% would eventually be sent back. that means 18% had enough of an

explanation for the reason for their detention that it would be enough for at least two or three of the inspectors to allow them to come in and stay. the board of special inquiry room was also one that created fears of terror and fear but for the most part, it created joy and celebration where they could go out and start their lives here. 80% in the great hall are going to start their lives. as i mentioned, a third heading to new york, 2two-third2/two-th to another places. for me, i have three grandparents that came through here in 1909 and 1912. it's a very special experience to work here, because i know i'm telling their story and i can only imagine what they would think if they knew a hundred years later that their grandson

would be here and giving tours and telling their story. >> the items that we have in this exhibit area which is called treasures from home, were donated to us by people whose ancestors had come here. they're actually organized by theme. here we have a case of clothing that was worn by many people who came here. a beautiful rich texture and the craftsmanship is absolutely gorgeous. and these are items that were in many cases actually worn here when immigrants got off the boat and came in to ellis island. as we walk down, we have a case of personal papers that were a part of many immigrants'

process. so a lot of these are going to be documents that they took, legal documents from the old country, that had been put in here and just representative of the type of things that you would find if you start to do some family research and you start looking for documents overseas. the case next to us here is i believe religious items. yes. and these religious items are again -- the type of things that immigrants would bring here that they would not dare leave behind. so you see the rosary beads here and so many of the other items that are throughout here, the clothing that is religiously based. these are things they would not leave behind. if they had that one steamer trunk, this would definitely be something that would be in there. ok. here are pictures. so many pictures of so many

people. either back in the old country or perhaps here in america where they finally came would definitely be something you would do to send countries back to the old country of your life here in america. there are so many pictures like this who i think every family who comes through ellis island has at home. i've got a shoe box at home that i'm still sorting through. so many different images, so many different backgrounds. so many people with so many dreams of something better. this is what -- when you look at all these pictures you can really kind of absorb and appreciate. the last case here brings in what they call family life items. just things that people would bring that they used in every day life. cutlery, sewing machine, camera, just a sampling of the tremendous amount of items that were actuall donated.

some families gave us so much that cases were dedicated to those families specifically. so we have about six or seven of these here and behind the photographs that are dedicated to specific families who kind of literally gave us the steamer trunk full of items and asked us to tell their story and their importance to their family and their culture and their backgrounds. processing center opened in 1892. and for the next 30 years or so operated at full tilt as a mass processing center. somewhere in the early 1920s, there was the dwibeginning of t

process of restricting immigration through very restrictive quota laws that brought the flow of people through here almost to a halt. world war ii helped to do that, too. in 1934, an immigration law really brought ellis island to a close as a mass processing center. now, it remained open for another 30 years. it would be a place where those detained in port in new york would be brought out and held until the case was adjudicated. by 1954, we're in the middle of a strong anti-communist surge, fear of foreign elements. and by that time, the building had really kind of lost its total purpose and use. so in november of 1954, the building closed and it would be really empty for the next 11 years. until 1965, when president

johnson issued the order to add ellis island as part of the statue of liberty national monument. for the next 15 years, the building would be administered by the parks service but not restored or open to the general public. you had to arrange for what they called the hard hat tour and they did bring people out here and walk them through the abandoned structures. i guess in conjunction with the centennial of the statue of liberty and its restories, money was raised by the statue of liberty-ellis island foundation both to restore the statue as well as to restore this building. the statue will be rededicated in 1986 and this building will open in october of 1990. believe vice president quail

ca -- quayl came out to efficient the opening and we've been open everybody since. so all told, 98% of the people who came through this building were able to get out and start their lives in america. 98% of 12 to 13 million people will translate into about 45% of the american population today who can tell you honestly that one of their ancestors came through this building, went through this process, and began their family's american story. for so many people it is the reason why they come visit ellis island, because they've heard so much about it. it's been in their family folklore. they come back to see the place where grandma or great grandfather came to america, answered the questions, passed the medical processing and began their family's american story.

i think in all the discussions with immigration that we have going on today, i think there needs to be the context that this story of people coming here, being from a different cultural background, starting their lives here and in many cases becoming successes, that's really a great american story and it will continue. it will not be one that ever ends. and i think that sometimes we lose track of that. that some of us who are the descend ends of the 1880s have forgotten. i hope this will reawaken that in some people's minds. that's what ellis island is about. it's the story of americans looking for something better, really, the american dream, which i think we cherish greatly. thank you for coming along. i'm glad you did.

the national museum of african-american museum and culture oped this september on the national mall. a few days later we spoke with the design team responsible for the design and look of the museum. we'll hear about what inspired the shape and decorative elements. and in about 20 minutes we'll show the opening ceremony, including remarks by president obama and former president george w. bush as well as performances by denise graves and stevie wonder. >> hi. i'm david aja. i'm the design leader of the