John Franklin Miller (senator) - Return To California

Return To California

Miller declined a commission as a colonel in the Regular Army and resigned from the Volunteers on September 29, 1865, to move back to California when President Andrew Johnson appointed him as collector of customs of the Port of San Francisco, a post he held until 1869 when he declined another term. He turned to business interests, and served for 12 years as the President of the Alaska Commercial Company, which controlled the fur industry in newly acquired Pribilof Islands.

Miller purchased the property which was part of Rancho Yajome in Napa Valley in the year 1869. At the time Miller bought this holding, it was entirely wilderness area. General and Mrs. Miller purchased the property in several parcels from different grantors, including the United States via a deed signed by President U.S. Grant and the State of California by a deed signed by Governor Newton Booth. Deeds conveying the various parcels to the General were dated in the years 1869, 1872, 1873 and 1881. Silverado Country Club now occupies the property.

Miller returned to politics, from 1878–79 as a member of the second state constitutional convention. The California state legislature elected the Republican Miller as one of the state's two Senators in 1880. He was an outspoken proponent of several bills to limit the influx and influence of Chinese immigrants. He expressed his sentiments about Chinese immigrantion or immigrants during passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act: One complete man, the product of free institutions and high civilization, is worth more to the world than hundreds of barbarians. Upon what other theory can we justify the almost complete extermination of the Indians, the original possessor of all these States? I believe that one such man as Newton, or Fraklin, or Lincoln, glorifies the creator of the world and benefits mankind more than all the Chinese who have lived, struggled and died on the banks of the Hoang Ho. 13 Cong. Rec. 1,487(1882). He was chairman, Committee to Revise the Laws of the United States (Forty-seventh Congress) and served on the Committee on Foreign Relations (Forty-ninth Congress).

Senator Miller died in Washington, D.C. while in office. He was initially buried in the Laurel Hill Cemetery in San Francisco, but was reinterred in the Arlington National Cemetery on May 5, 1913, alongside his wife Mary Wickerham (Chess) Miller, his daughter, and his son-in-law, Rear Admiral Richardson Clover.