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—Robert DeC. Ward, 1905

BY FEBRUA RY 1910, THEODORE ROOSEVELT HAD RETURNED from his post-presidential big-game hunting trip to Africa. A private citizen now ensconced in the Manhattan offices of his new employer, The Outlook magazine, the fifty-one-year-old Roosevelt was not a man accustomed to retirement. His discomfort was made even worse by his increasing annoyance with his handpicked successor, William Howard Taft.

One day, the former president received some friends, including Robert Watchorn, at his new office. Pulling him aside by the arm and leading him to a quiet corner away from the others, Roosevelt asked: “Tell me, Mr. Watchorn, why did you leave your post at Ellis Island?”

“Because you left the White House,” Watchorn responded. “Or in other words because you are a friend of mine,” the former president said with a mischievous grin, receiving the confirmation he had sought. Watchorn’s answer reinforced Roosevelt’s belief that Taft had been forcing out Roosevelt loyalists. Yet Roosevelt was also suffering from a bit of selective memory. As president, he had brushed aside complaints about Watchorn’s supposed lax enforcement of immigration laws, but not the charges of corruption that had surfaced by 1908.

While he had expressed a desire to renew Watchorn’s appointment, Roosevelt also asked Herbert Knox Smith, solicitor of the Department of Commerce and Labor, to look into the accusations. The charges were relatively minor, dealing with accusations that Watchorn had forced the owner of the food contract at Ellis Island to cater private parties for him without charge. Watchorn denied the accusation, claiming he reimbursed the company except where “extravagant and extortionate charges” were made. Roosevelt seemed uneasy about the arrangement, but did not ask that formal charges be brought and renominated Watchorn. The request died in the Senate before Taft’s inauguration.

Prescott Hall had been filling Roosevelt’s ear with negative stories about Oscar Straus and Watchorn. Now he turned his attention to the incoming president, telling Taft that Roosevelt had been deceived in appointing Straus to his cabinet, calling him a man who “has done all in his power to interpret and apply the existing laws in such a way as to practically nullify some sections entirely and to weaken and demoralize the whole service.” As for Watchorn, Hall doubted his sincerity in enforcing immigration laws.

Despite the criticism, many people entreated Taft to renominate Watchorn. That was not to be. Noting that those around Taft were “not only not friendly to me but were distinctly unfriendly,” Watchorn knew his days were numbered. Taft had already eased out Straus as secretary of Commerce and Labor by naming him ambassador to Turkey and replacing him with Charles Nagel, a German-American lawyer from St. Louis. With Roosevelt and Straus gone, Watchorn lost his strongest defenders. When it became clear that Taft would not renominate him, he resigned. The official White House statement noted that Taft had found Watchorn’s administration “unsatisfactory.”

The personal attacks took their toll on Watchorn. When a reporter asked him after his resignation to comment on affairs at Ellis Island, Watchorn bluntly declined: “When I left the island I cut all connections. There has always been trouble down at that place and always will be. I’m out of it.” As late as 1913, Watchorn was still seething over his dismissal, complaining to Taft’s chief aide that he had been “very shabbily treated in the manner of my elimination from the service.”

If Watchorn was upset with Taft, the president complained that conditions at Ellis Island were “not what they ought to be” and sought out a man who could put them “on a proper basis.” Much as Roosevelt had been disgusted with the Powderly-McSweeney imbroglio when he took office, Taft seemed unhappy with the controversy that surrounded Watchorn.

Just as Roosevelt had done seven years earlier, Taft turned to William Williams to put things in order at Ellis Island.