Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (45 page)

On Monday afternoon, January 17, several hundred royalists gathered in Palace Square, having been adjured to be peaceful and give no excuse for an intervention. Wilcox and Bush, who were back in the queen’s camp, addressed them, and read a statement that Lili‘uokalani had issued, declaring that she would make no further attempt to change the constitution except by the means provided in the existing one.

That morning the Committee of Safety had sent their letter to Minister Stevens pleading for intervention to protect American lives and property:

The Queen, with the aid of armed forces, and accompanied by threats of violence and bloodshed from those with whom she was acting, attempted to proclaim a new constitution; and while prevented for the time from accomplishing her object declared publicly that she would only defer her action. This [has] created general alarm and terror. We are unable to protect ourselves without aid and, therefore, pray for the protection of the United States forces.

The document’s exaggerations are self-apparent; conspiracy to depose the queen could not be viewed as other than treason, and they needed to know where U.S. minister Stevens would stand. It was getting late in the day, but Thurston and two others hurried to his residence. Stevens was easy, declaring that it was the queen who had committed a revolutionary act and placed herself beyond his protection. He would send for the marines when they asked for them, and once they had secured the public buildings, he would recognize their provisional government. Another messenger boarded a launch out to the USS
Boston
to make certain of Captain Wiltse’s position.

*   *   *

And Captain Wiltse was not just aware of the ferment in Honolulu, he was alive to the much, much larger question of America acquiring an empire, and the role forecast for the U.S. Navy in such a venture: For two generations Americans had vented their certainty in the perfection of their civilization with the pursuit of “Manifest Destiny.” That was the idea that Providence had gifted all of North America to the growing nation to display the superiority of democracy and laissez-faire capitalism. First coined in 1839, the expression came into popular usage to justify the annexation of the Republic of Texas to the United States in 1845, advanced by Democrats for the glory of the nation, attacked by Whigs as a justification for naked conquest. But always Manifest Destiny had looked westward: across the Mississippi River, mastering the Great Plains and subduing the native Indians on them, over the Rockies, and backwashing from the Pacific Coast to fill in those corners leapfrogged in the westward hurry.

In 1893, however, the year of the Hawaiian crisis, the historian Federick Jackson Turner announced in a seminal paper to the American Historical Association that the frontier, which had formed the essence of the American character, was gone. Manifest Destiny was accomplished, and it had made the United States a continental nation but not a world power. Where now to direct the national energy?

In fact, the hour had already provided the man: Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan, president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, author of
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783
, which posited that no nation had ever sustained itself as a mighty world power without the service of an overpowering navy. It was one of the most influential books of its generation; scholars have noted that what
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
did for abolitionism half a century before, Mahan did in 1890 for imperialism: He galvanized a large segment of the country behind a sense of purpose, that America must join Britain, France, Spain, Germany, and others as a colonial master. No one in the American navy, or foreign service, or in government at the national level was unaware of Mahan, his theories, or their implications for American expansion. And Hawaii’s potential was clear: “In our infancy,” wrote Mahan, “we bordered on the Atlantic only; our youth carried our boundary to the Gulf of Mexico; to-day maturity sees us upon the Pacific. Have we no right or no call to progress farther in any direction?”
15
And Hawaii, whose people had been spiritually and culturally captured seventy years before, and whose economy had been grafted to that of the United States twenty years before, was now in the crosshairs to become the first asset of an American empire.

Mahan considered himself a naval theoretician, not a historian, but in his historical writing he advanced the Hegelian “Great Man” theory and noted the times when strong men of conviction, in the right places and times, had wrought great changes in the story of civilization. In this tiny corner of the globe, such a well-placed man was Captain Wiltse of the USS
Boston
.

*   *   *

As the queen’s mass meeting was under way on Palace Square, the Committee of Safety’s meeting at the armory also commenced, and Lorrin Thurston tried his hand at oratory,
16
but as inflammatory rhetoric it was rather a dud, and the Committee of Safety sent word to Stevens that they were not ready yet, there were more plans to make for a new government. But it was too late. Triumphant that his moment had finally come, Stevens had already sent for the marines.

By five thirty in the afternoon the royalist meeting had dispersed, and the queen retired to the private second floor of the palace, when a disturbance became audible outside. American troops were landing on the wharf. From the front balcony the harbor was closer than it is today, for the landfills that extended the city out into the waterfront had not been created. Four launches from the
Boston
were unloading sailors and marine “bluejackets”; from the balcony the queen could plainly see two field guns, two ten-barreled Gatling machine guns, and the small caissons that carried their ammunition.

She watched the sailors and marines form into platoons and march into Palace Square. Seeing the queen on the balcony they gave her a “royal marching salute,” of all things—“arms port, drooping of colors, and ruffles on the drums”
17
—before separating into two small squadrons and one large unit. One of the small groups continued on toward the American legation, the other turned up Nu‘uanu Street toward the residence of Minister Stevens. The remainder trooped into the opera house, next door to the Ali‘iolani Hale. As the queen’s ministers continued to seek information from the unresponsive Stevens, the rest of the diplomatic corps advised her glumly not to resist. Thurston worked feverishly all night on a declaration of causes and justification for the coup; others set about trying to find a president for the new junta.
18

Thurston at least recognized that he was not suitable, having been the prime mover in the affair, but there was always Dole, whose support would give much color of legitimacy to the enterprise. Dole weighed the situation carefully, resigned from the supreme court, and accepted. With the backing of the U.S. marines and the Honolulu Rifles, the junta took control of the public buildings, which they found virtually deserted, and proclaimed the new government. Also that afternoon, a deputation from the junta called at the palace, headed by a former finance minister, J. S. Walker. He told the queen that they had come on a painful mission: the matter of her abdication. With amazing composure she told Walker that she had no mind to do any such thing.

It was apparent that she would not get away without having to sign something, but abdication was a finality, or at least it could be argued as a finality even if it was compelled. Twice in the history of her kingdom, junior officers of foreign powers had seized the country, only to have those chagrined powers hand it back. With this history, and in view of their long-standing friendship with the United States, there might be a way out other than abdication, a middle way, a way to stall. The queen excused herself to confer with her secretary, and said when she returned that an appropriate document was being prepared.

Especially for having been composed in the exigency of the moment, it was a brilliant instrument. She ceded her authority, but only provisionally, noting that it was Stevens who had caused troops to be landed; she handed power not to the coup plotters but to the United States.
19
By alleging American collusion in surrendering power, she had in effect slammed the lid down on the cookie jar with the American hand still inside it. That was all she could do for now. She was aware that among her household guard and the volunteer rifle companies still loyal, her forces may have outnumbered the Honolulu Rifles and U.S. Marines by close to double. But she did not want bloodshed on her conscience, and sent word over to the police station giving Marshal Wilson permission to stand down, and with Wilson’s assent, the annexationists disarmed 270 Royal Hawaiian troops. But the game was far from over, for the United States would have no choice but to respond.

18.
The Inscrutable Mr. Blount

‘Iolani Palace began a transition from royal residence to a makeshift capitol. In the coming days of the republic, the House of Representatives met in the throne room, the Senate in the blue room. When she retired to Washington Place, Lili‘uokalani took with her many of the symbols and trappings of her reign. Other members of the family also rounded up royal keepsakes for safety. Archibald Cleghorn had been overseeing construction of a luxurious home in Waikiki, called ‘Ainahau, as a residence for Ka‘iulani when she returned from boarding school in England. A visitor to the almost-finished house found it “crowded with relics of Hawaiian royalty, evidently hastily gathered together—feather coronets, shell necklaces, pieces of furniture, and in a large box was one of the celebrated feather mantles like those worn by the nobles.”
1

At the new government headquarters Sanford Dole endorsed the queen’s provisional cession of authority. He could have rejected it and insisted on an abdication, but it didn’t occur to him that by accepting her wording, he was submitting the revolution to American approval and setting in motion another year’s controversy. Whatever Minister Stevens’s posture of good faith about doing his duty and protecting American citizens and property, on February 1 he revealed his true bearing, and the object of his labors, in a letter to President Harrison’s secretary of state, John W. Foster: “The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.”
2
Five representatives of the junta took ship for the United States, and the Harrison administration made good on its pledge to Thurston to be “exceedingly sympathetic.” They negotiated, drafted, and finalized a treaty of annexation, which was signed on February 14, 1893—one month precisely after Lili‘uokalani had brought the rafters down on her head. If haste could be unseemly, this seemed shameless.

Their timing was poor, however, for the Harrison administration had only days to live. Grover Cleveland, whom Harrison had unseated four years before, reclaimed the White House in the 1892 election, the only American president to serve two terms without them being consecutive. Cleveland chose for his secretary of state a Republican defector, Walter Q. Gresham, and one of his first acts was to withdraw the annexation treaty from Senate consideration. Harrison saw it coming. “I am sorry the Hawaiian question did not come six months sooner,” he wrote, “or sixty days later, as it is embarrassing to begin without the time to finish.”
3

At the time the American administration changed, a new wrinkle appeared on the revolutionary front when it seemed that the junta’s ends might be more quickly and easily met not by abolishing the monarchy but by accepting Lili‘uokalani’s abdication in favor of her niece, Victoria Ka‘iulani, now seventeen and finishing her education in England. Her father Archibald Cleghorn had been present in the blue room as Lili‘uokalani berated her cabinet for not signing her new constitution. He vented his temper in a nineteen-page letter to his daughter: “If she had followed my advice, she would have been firm on the throne, and Hawaiian Independence safe, but she has turned out a very stubborn woman and was not satisfied to Reign, but wanted to Rule.… If the Queen had abdicated … in your
favor
, the Throne I think could have been
saved
, but she did not think they would do as they did.”
4
The princess’s guardian Theo Davies who was one of Honolulu’s richest sugar factors, pressed her to go to America and campaign to restore the crown.

The princess, escorted by the former finance minister E. C. Macfarlane, arrived in New York on March 1 and progressed to Washington; waif thin, doe-eyed, and the height of fashion (she traveled with eight bags and thirteen trunks
5
), she created a sensation. She delivered a series of wooden, melodramatic speeches and interviews, scripted by Davies, that reflected none of her natural flash and intelligence. “Today, I, a poor, weak girl,” she had to say, “with not one of my people near me … have strength to stand up for the rights of my people.” The new president and Mrs. Cleveland received her into the White House, while behind the scenes a flurry of letters circulated speculating on the advantages of accepting her as queen, rather than annexation. Joining the United States would not come without cost, as a new source of field labor would have to be found owing to the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act. Ka‘iulani was popular and could be controlled, at least during her minority, and it would deflect a growing wave of attacks on the coup in the American press that it was the project of adventurers out to get richer. Lilli‘uokalani’s lawyer in Washington, Paul Neumann, and his team were worried enough about the outcome that they investigated the American government’s attitude toward the possibility of restoring the queen under an American protectorate.

It was a scenario not unfamiliar to Lili‘uokalani, who late in her brother’s reign had stood in the same relation to him. When politicians disgusted with Kalakaua sounded her out about his conditional abdication in her favor, she had not refused them outright, but said only that if they approached him about it, they should use only the most respectful language. As it was, Neumann and the others monitored the princess’s appearances, wary of any hint that she was promoting her own benefit and not the queen’s restoration. “Kailuani’s appearance on the scene will embarrass us very much,” one wrote her, “more especially as she does not appear to care for anyone but herself, and wants the Throne at once.”
6