Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

by James L. Haley

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  One of the first things that Kamehameha IV wished to do was reset the tangle of foreign relations from his uncle’s rule. He retained R. C. Wyllie as his foreign minister, who was urbane, able, familiar with the existing messes, and not an American, which meant that the king felt he could trust him to advise for the country’s best interest. Toward the end of Kamehameha III’s reign, the kingdom had come perilously close to annexation to the United States, a step the new king was determined to avoid. Annexation originally had been held out as an alternative to Hawai‘i’s seizure by either France or Britain, but since then it had taken on a more economic tint. Hawai‘i’s growing sugar industry was largely in American hands, and Hawaiian sugar paid a stiff duty to enter the United States—an impediment to profit that annexation would answer. The king instead determined to seek a “reciprocity” treaty with the United States.

  The most direct path to an equitable relationship with the United States was to make another run at persuading the Americans to guarantee, along with Britain and France, Hawaiian independence. That tack had failed some years earlier, not for want of American amity but because of their reluctance to enter treaties generally. Chief Justice Lee, whose health was failing although he was only thirty-four, agreed to work for the treaty in the United States, as he was already planning to visit California for medical advice. He reached Washington in July 1855, and met cordially with President Franklin Pierce and Secretary of State William Marcy. But as the tripartite proposal was picked over in detail it fell apart again, this time mostly over the American concern not to give Britain and France any leave to speak up over an ongoing situation in Cuba. What Lee did get in September was a reiteration of the U.S. commitment to Hawaiian independence, including an agreement “to station some portion of their naval force, at or in the vicinity of the Sandwich Islands,” to deter any foreign ambitions. Significantly, the United States also undertook to protect the islands against filibusters from its own shores, as California adventurers who failed in the search for gold made noise from time to time about forming a private army and just taking over the country.

  Lee returned to Hawai‘i, where he died about a year and a half later, probably of tuberculosis. Elisha Allen took up the cause in the United States; he was a curious choice, and an interesting figure in Hawai‘i’s Americanization. He was a former congressman from Massachusetts who went to Hawai‘i as the American consul in the Millard Fillmore administration. The diplomatic corps being patronage positions, he was ousted by a new consul appointed by the Pierce government. In response Allen became a Hawaiian citizen and served ably as finance minister and in the house of nobles—and flexibly; he had supported Gerrit Judd’s advocacy of American annexation, but when the king made his preference known for a reciprocity treaty, worked for that in good faith.7

  The terms that Hawai‘i suggested for such an agreement seemed advantageous to both countries: Hawaiian sugar and molasses, coffee, arrowroot, and other specified products would be admitted duty-free to the United States, and American grain, lumber, and other products that were heavily consumed in the islands would enter the kingdom equally free of tax. When he arrived in San Francisco, Allen first heard that the treaty would be expeditiously ratified, but when he reached Washington he got a pointed lesson on how the American iteration of politics made strange bedfellows. On other fronts Northern and Southern senators were at one another’s throats over slavery, but a sudden alliance coalesced when Louisiana senator John Slidell attacked the treaty as dangerous to his state’s sugar growers, and he struck an alliance with Jacob Collamer of Vermont, who was eager to protect New England wool. Favor waxed and waned for more than a year until Southern intransigence killed the measure in February 1857. By way of a small apology, a general Tariff Act revision just a couple of weeks later lowered the duty on Hawaiian sugar from 30 to 24 percent.

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  The year 1857 also brought finally a respectable treaty with France, but it wasn’t easy. About a year and a half after Judd’s and the princes’ mission to Paris, President Louis-Napoleon staged a coup d’état and began ruling as Emperor Napoleon III. New negotiations began on a more hopeful footing, as rather than Hawai‘i having to send a commissioner to Paris, the French commissioner to Hawai‘i was given power to deal. Sadly for progress, that was Louis-Émile Perrin, the same man who had arrived on La Sérieuse threatening to resort to France’s “extraordinary power” if his demands were not met, which ultimately resulted in the arrogant 1846 agreement. Commissioner Perrin should not be confused with the more famous Émile Perrin, who at this time was director of the Opéra-Comique in Paris, but for purposes of getting a new treaty, the latter could have produced the negotiating sessions. Wyllie and Perrin detested each other, and there were times when Elisha Allen, the new finance minister and cocommissioner with Wyllie, almost had to physically separate them. Perrin’s government allowed him to discuss anything while still insisting upon the main points of the 1846 document: French as an equal diplomatic language of the kingdom (notwithstanding the dearth of Frenchmen in the country); French citizens in Hawai‘i to be tried only by juries nominated by the French consul; and only low duties on French wines.

  The last issue placed the king squarely between the French government and the missionaries, who wanted to ban all alcoholic imports. Employing the national skill with loopholes, the Hawaiians had observed the 5 percent limitation on duties for French wine but had been collecting a five-dollar-per-gallon duty on brandy, which pleased no one but netted some revenue for the government. After nearly four years of back-and-forth and failed ratifications, a treaty finally went into effect in March 1858. The French dropped their demand for French-approved jurors, the duty on French brandy was lowered to three dollars per gallon, and commercial and diplomatic papers would be made available in French, although the French conceded that they did not have to be prepared with the same speed as they were rendered in English.8 France’s coming to terms was no doubt helped by the American de facto extension of the Monroe Doctrine to Hawai‘i, but just to show that there were no hard feelings, the French emperor presented the king with an elegant silver service.9

  In January 1858, Kamehameha IV took a cruise through his islands, courtesy of HMS Vixen, a 1,400-ton paddle sloop, George Frederick Mecham commanding. With a new royal mausoleum having been completed in Honolulu, the king had the vessel call at Ka‘awaloa, near the source of so much history at Kealakekua. His mission was to take charge of the bones of the twenty-three ancestral kings that Kapi‘olani had rescued from their decaying resting place in 1829. He ordered the stones removed from the entrance to their cave, and the two large coffins were carried by torchlight aboard the British warship. Back in Honolulu on February 12, he consigned the venerated remains to his father and kuhina nui, Kekuanaoa, for a more Western-style interment. The commoners’ unease over disturbing their rest, however, was given credence when Commander Mecham sickened and died of bronchitis five days later. (His successor, Cmdr. Lionel Lambert, was later murdered.10)

  This reflection on death was balanced with a joyous expectation of life: Emma was pregnant. When she was delivered of a baby boy on May 20, 1858, the country was almost delirious. His Anglophile parents named him Albert Edward Kauikeaouli, after the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII), although they followed the Victorian fashion and referred to him simply as “Baby.” Four days later, on the suggestion of the privy council, he was created Prince of Hawai‘i. If Emma gave the prince in hanai to anyone, it was a limited hanai, for the parents were intimately involved in raising the child. She did select a principal governess and somewhat an adoptive mother, in Esther Kapi‘olani, great-niece of the Christian chiefess of the Big Island who descended into Kilauea to defy Pele. She was married to Emma’s uncle, who was thirty-five years older than she, and she served the queen as senior lady-in-waiting.

  While Finance Minister Elisha Allen was in the United States, he married and brought his bride back to the islands. Their son, Fred
erick Hobbs Allen, was born ten days after the Prince of Hawai‘i, and the king and queen virtually took the Allens into their own family; the boys became playmates from the start of their lives. Kamehameha IV harbored a distaste for Americans generally, but he made many exceptions in advancing those who were loyal and talented.

  Another on whom he relied heavily was his secretary, Henry Neilson, bright and companionable scion of a well-connected American family (“related by marriage to Hamilton Fish, secretary of state under President Grant”),11 and he fit in well with the vivacious court life. The first five years of Kamehameha IV’s reign, while notable for its preference for the Anglican religion, gave little sign of the return to primitive passions that the missionaries had feared. That the old days lurked, however, just beneath the social patina came home in a terrible way on September 11, 1859. The king’s frequent attacks of asthma caused him much pain and depression, and court gaiety was sometimes maintained with a kind of grim determination. Excursions away from Honolulu were frequent, and September found the court headed for Lahaina, the king with Bernice Pauahi and her hanai sister Lydia Kamaka‘eha in one boat; the queen with Lunalilo in another; the little prince with his nurses and Emma’s mother in another; Kalakaua and his retinue in still another.

  Three-quarters of the island of Maui consists of the massive shield of Haleakala (House of the Sun) volcano, and the object of the visit was a camping trip, on horseback, up its heights. They warmed themselves by blazing fires against the cold at ten thousand feet, then retired to their tents. Henry Neilson wrote that he had never seen the king more lively or in better spirits, but the exertion brought on a terrible attack of asthma. Accompanied by Neilson and a few others the king rode down to Lahaina. His mood changed, and in company with one attendant and the captain of his yacht, he went back to sea and remained the whole of the next day, drinking. That night he returned to Lahaina, and walked quickly and with purpose to the house where Neilson was staying. His secretary was on the porch and rose to greet him, when the king suddenly leveled a dueling pistol and shot him through the right side of his chest.

  The royal court has probably never convened in which there were not gossip, self-serving rumors, and intrigue. By some means the word had reached the king that in some way never detailed Neilson and the queen had “compromised” themselves. Daylight, sobriety, and the quickest of inquiries proved the rumor false beyond question. The court was in shock, Neilson was badly wounded although it seemed possible that he might recover, but the king was shattered by what he had done. He had suspected his wife wrongly; he had committed wanton bloody violence on a faithful and unsuspecting friend—but he had done worse than that: He had proved Judd’s and the Cookes’ worst fears correct. Scratch the surface and he was still a savage. Kamehameha IV took full responsibility for his act. He made certain that Neilson had the best medical attention, and paid for it, and he wrote to Neilson, when he was well enough to read and respond, a lengthy and eloquent exoneration of the secretary’s conduct, and a full admission of his own culpability. Most tellingly, he determined to abdicate.

  One important courtier who had not been touring with the royal suite was the foreign minister. R. C. Wyllie was approaching his sixty-first birthday, confined to Rosebank with an illness that grew so severe that the king at length insisted he move into town. Wyllie ensconced himself in Washington Place, a lavish house a few blocks from the palace. It was owned by Mary Dominis, widow of an American ship captain whose voyages had built the house, but whose disappearance at sea (in the same ship that went down with George Brown) left Mrs. Dominis in such straits that she rented out rooms to support herself. She nursed Wyllie, whose illness worsened until his right leg became partially paralyzed, and he began to arrange his affairs before recovery set in. News of the contemplated abdication set him in motion.

  He wrote the king a brilliant letter—humble, affectionate, occasionally even funny: “So long as God spares me in life I shall stand by Your Majesty’s Throne to the last—and if I cannot do so on two legs I shall do so on one.” He allowed that the king’s feelings were motivated by a desire to recover his honor, but, “permit me to say, with all loyal respect, that they originate in a judgment pronounced by you against yourself vastly beyond any just occasion.”12 The council at once backed Wyllie, registering the belief that in the international climate, an abdication would render the nation’s continued independence doubtful. The broken Liholiho returned to Honolulu. The council voted a generous cash settlement on Neilson, and the government began again, but the king never forgave himself. Had Neilson died, there would have been a finality to it. But by surviving, as an invalid, every breath he drew was a reproach to the king, and he lived for two and a half years.

  The public became aware that the king had wrongly committed an act of violence against an innocent man, owned up to it, and was doing all he could to make it right. To all appearances it did not damage his standing with the people, but it turned the king’s mind to religion, and if there was forgiveness to be had, he did not want it from the Calvinist God. Liholiho had been moved by Anglican services in London, and three months after the shooting he asked Wyllie to arrange to establish that church in Hawai‘i. Wyllie, whose own interest in religion had intensified after lying close to death, began employing his connections. He wrote the Hawaiian consul in London, Manley Hopkins (father of the poet) to begin rounding up support; the king had pledged land for the church and parsonage, and one thousand dollars per year for a clergyman. As if the king’s estrangement from the missionaries of his youth needed any emphasis, Wyllie sent a second, private, note to Hopkins: “The King desires me to make known to you, confidentially, that He and the Queen would prefer that the Episcopal Clergyman … be eminently liberal in all his principles and ideas.”13 Freedom of religion in Hawai‘i was going to take a step forward.

  The thorough Wyllie initiated discussion of a Hawaiian Episcopal church, not just in Britain from the Archbishop of Canterbury on down, but in the American Episcopal Church as well, which might be better situated over time to help sustain the effort. Word of the effort got out in Honolulu, and supporters started a building subscription fund to raise the church. News also reached New England, where Rufus Anderson, the same “foreign minister” of the ABCFM who had discontinued funding the Hawaiian Mission in 1848, was nevertheless jealous enough to fire off a letter straight to the Archbishop of Canterbury, protesting their crossing the informal equatorial boundary that had separated Anglican missionary efforts from their own. He also questioned whether the French and other powers might not interpret the injection of the Church of England into Hawai‘i as a precursor of some kind of territorial assertion. The archbishop responded that all missionaries in the Pacific “have the same great end in view”—the conversion of souls—and that he should be very sorry if the Anglican Church’s acceptance of the king’s invitation created jealousies among other churches.

  William Richards, who was no longer a missionary but was heartily connected to its philosophy, wrote to his old friend William Ellis, his fellow worker from a quarter century before, now back in London. He sought to guide the development rather than block it, asking Ellis to do what he could to see that a man of evangelical zeal was appointed: “A High Churchman, or one of loose Christian habits, would not succeed,” and the existing community of evangelical ministers would oppose him. Wyllie derailed this effort, however, sending his own letter to Ellis, suggesting that he visit Manley Hopkins—who could probably be counted on to tell Ellis of the royal wish that the post go to anyone but a zealous evangelical.

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  The terrible epidemics of 1848–49 had not even passed from memory when a new scourge, smallpox, swept the kingdom in 1853, leaving at least 2,500 dead. For many years seamen’s hospitals had offered care to the foreign community, but for the kanakas in the countryside, and the poor floaters who were trying to make their way in the towns, there was nothing. The dwindling population weighed on Kamehameha IV’s mind as much a
s it had his uncle’s, to the point that he once suggested initiating an immigration program from elsewhere in Polynesia to invigorate the native stock. To the legislature he proposed the establishment of hospitals for the poor,14 which the legislature approved if the money could be privately raised. One Congregationalist expressing his view on the subject was the Rev. Samuel Damon of the Tenth Company, who felt that if the natives were not lazy, drunk, and licentious, they would not need a hospital. (Not all the American medical missionaries were so contemptuous, especially the doctors who practiced unstintingly among the poor.) The legislature referred the question of fundraising to a committee consisting of the acting finance minister, D. L. Gregg, and Wyllie. The latter, perhaps partly in jest, suggested that if the matter were turned over to ladies, they could raise the money straightaway. But Wyllie also had enormous confidence in the queen, and she and the king did raise the money, resorting even to importuning people on the street.15 The Queen’s Hospital, when it was built, was a huge step forward in the country’s public health.

  After getting that project launched, Emma intended to spend a long vacation at R. C. Wyllie’s plantation at Hanalei Bay. She took the baby and his governess, Esther Kapi‘olani; her favorite cousin, Peter Ka‘eo; D. L. Gregg’s wife and three children; and several other friends. On the north shore of Kaua‘i they hiked, raced canoes, swam, and indulged in such naughtiness as eating chicken with their fingers—for the propriety of which Emma cited the example of Queen Victoria. The king joined them after a month; in and out of a fog of depression, after his daily work he often cared for Henry Neilson himself, his penance for having shot him. A few weeks at Hanalei Bay almost restored him—fishing, playing with the children, learning the Tyrolean waltz—all under Wyllie’s beatific gaze.