Benjamin Harrison Event Timeline
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First Annual Message. Says that anti-competitive trusts "are dangerous conspiracies against the public good." Calls for legislation to prohibit and punish them.

Regrets lack of Congressional action to "break up the tribal relation" and "authority of the chiefs and headmen" as interfering with individualism among Indians. Reports that "national schools for Indians have been very successful and should be multiplied."

Reports that enforcement of the Chinese exclusion act has been "very difficult on the northwest frontier" because it is easy to cross the border.

Calls for establishing an intermediate level of appellate courts to help deal with Supreme Court workload. (Below, 03/03/1891.)

Naturalization laws should be revised to encourage "inquiry into the moral character and good disposition toward our Government of the persons applying for citizenship."

Endorses general government promotion of "education of the people" and points out that "a great work remains to be done" in providing education to emancipated slaves. Support of education would be beneficial for Alaska.

"[I]n many parts of our country where the colored population is large the people of that race are by various devices deprived of any effective exercise of their political rights and many of their civil right. . . . [A] sense of justice and respect for the law should work a gradual cure of these flagrant evils."

By Special Message, provides documents to the Senate related to the action authorized by his order of 04/24/1890. "It will always be agreeable to me if the local authorities, acting upon their own sense of duty, maintain the public order in such a way that the officers of the United States shall have no occasion to appeal for the intervention of the General Government; but when this is not done I shall deem it my duty to use the adequate powers vested in the Executive to make it safe and feasible to hold and exercise the offices established by the Federal Constitution and laws.”

Eleven Italian men, referred to in newspapers as members of the mafia, were lynched in New Orleans. The men had previously been acquitted of the murder of the New Orleans Chief of Police. Many citizens firmly believed they were guilty, and that the jury had been corrupted. A mob attacked the prison where the accused were held and shot them to death.

Among the men lynched were several Italian citizens, and the Italian minister protested to the US Government. The President discusses the incident in his Third Annual Message (12/01/1891) and calls for legislation to allow treaty rights of foreigners to be defended in Federal courts.

Fourth Annual Message. "There never has been a time in our history when work was so abundant or when wages were as high . . ." Urges the construction of an undersea cable to Hawaii. Notes a payment to the Italian Government as an expression of "reprobation and abhorrence" at the 1891 lynching of Italians in New Orleans. Notes the rapid increase in spending on pensions. Withholds recommendations on silver purchases pending the conclusion of the International Monetary Conference. Urges that quarantine regulations be nationally administered at all ports. Calls for legislation on elections "to free our legislation and our election methods from everything that tends to impair the public confidence in the announced result." "The frequent lynching of colored people accused of crime is without excuse. . . "