Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  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 trunks5), 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

  A good deal of discussion about Hawai‘i in the United States did not concern itself with who should be queen or even with the morality of the coup; the examination was about geopolitical reality in the imperialist age and the future of America after the close of the frontier. And while the frontier may have gone, the sense of Manifest Destiny had not, and there was an earnest belief that the virtues of American democracy (as it was perceived) should continue their westward march across the Pacific.

  One of the first people to react to news of the coup in Hawai‘i was Capt. Alfred T. Mahan, the influential author and naval strategist, who noted the heavy importation of Chinese labor into the islands. “It is a question for the whole civilized world,” he wrote the New York Times, “and not for the United States only, whether the Sandwich Islands, with their geographical and military importance … shall in the future be an outpost of European civilization, or of the comparative barbarism of China.”7 In his Times piece Mahan echoed the conclusion he reached in a second article, that “the annexation, even, of Hawaii, would be no mere sporadic effort … but a first fruit and a token that the [United States] in its evolution has aroused itself to the necessity of carrying its life—that has been the happiness of those under its influence—beyond the borders which heretofore have sufficed for its activities.”8

  As it developed, Cleveland withdrew the treaty, as Lili‘uokalani had surrendered her powers not to the Dole junta but to the United States, and her lawyers had made a prima facie case that the entire affair could be laid to the collusion and bad faith of the American minister in Honolulu. Cleveland decided to send a special commissioner to Hawai‘i to act as an honest broker of facts, to investigate and report on the actual conditions in the troubled country. At a glance, Cleveland’s selection of the outgoing chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, James H. Blount of Georgia, was so appropriate as to seem obvious. The choice, however, embraced a whole nest of interests and intrigues that bore materially on the question.

  After nine terms in Congress, Blount had not stood for reelection in 1892, preferring to return to his plantation near Macon and, it was well believed, first seek an appointment abroad and then press his claims to the Georgia legislature for election to the U.S. Senate. He was a Confederate veteran, commonly addressed as “Colonel,” and like most Southern politicians who had survived the horrors of Reconstruction, he was more interested in building the sectional and national economies from the poor up than he was in enriching Northern tycoons with empires either in the defeated South or abroad. Cleveland was aware of Blount’s sympathies that might prejudice him against annexation, but a balance of other Southerners in his cabinet, representing the portfolios of Interior, Treasury, and Navy, pressed his case. The attorney general also favored him, respecting Blount’s reputation as a dogged investigator.9 Moreover, the new secretary of state, Walter Q. Gresham, blamed members of the outgoing administration for reverses in his own political aspirations. He had been a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 1888, but as a pro-West and proagrarian Republican, he fell from favor with the probusiness investor class that favored Harrison, as Harrison favored them. Thus despite Gresham’s lead in the early ballots of the 1888 convention, the nomination eventually swung to Harrison. Gresham hated Benjamin Harrison’s guts; he supported Cleveland in 1892, and as a reward became secretary of state. If the Republicans in Congress could be humiliated by torpedoing the Hawaiian annexation—well, the actual merits of the case could be looked at another day.10

  Blount was in Macon, Georgia, when he read the telegram on Friday, March 10: “I ask you to come here immediately prepared for confidential trip of great importance to the Pacific Ocean.” The following Sunday he was in Washington for briefings with Gresham in the morning; officially he was merely a fact finder, but unofficially he was to particularly investigate the conduct of Minister Stevens and American involvement in the coup. If he found it proper and advisable to do so, he was authorized to lower the American flag and raise the Hawaiian once more. On Monday, Blount was presented to the whole cabinet for a few seconds before being sent off with Cleveland’s, “Now, Blount, you will let us hear from you.”

  Gresham cabled Stevens and Cleveland cabled Dole that Blount, his fact finder, was being dispatched. The full scope of his authority was not imparted. Other than the president and the cabinet, the only one who was given the whole story was Adm. John Skerrett, commanding U.S. naval forces in Honolulu. In Hawaii, members of the Dole government suspected that Cleveland was not their friend and knew some of the factors in play, but they fastened upon one bright ray of hope: Since he was a Confederate veteran and Georgia cotton planter, they could rely upon Blount’s sympathy for the notion that the dark races were incapable of providing enlightened government. “As a Southerner,” wrote Lorrin Thurston, “he is thoroughly familiar with the difficulties attendant upon government with an ignorant majority in the electorate, and will thoroughly appreciate the situation upon this point.”11

  Blount departed for San Francisco the day after he was trotted before the cabinet, finding upon his arrival there the insubstantial U.S. Coast Guard cutter Richard Rush waiting to take him aboard. A 140-foot schooner, displacing less than two hundred tons, rigged for sailing in case her single-screw steam engine failed, she was a minimal vessel in which to cross the vast Pacific, but she headed gamely through the Golden Gate. And at 9:30 a.m. on March 29 the telephone station on Diamond Head rang down to the city to notify the government and the American legation of the Rush’s imminent arrival at Honolulu. As the Rush coasted through the harbor the first ship she passed was a sobering one: the Japanese armored cruiser Naniwa, dispatched to Hawaii at first news of the coup with sufficient marines to protect Japanese citizens. British-built to Japanese specifications and armed to the teeth, the 300-foot, 3,700-ton Naniwa was the most powerful cruiser on earth at the time she entered service; the Emperor Meiji himself had reviewed his rapidly modernizing fleet from her deck. If violence were to suddenly erupt, Naniwa would be more than a match for the newer USS Boston, and she could
give a full account of herself. Dispelling any hostile intent, however, one of Naniwa’s guns saluted the Rush smartly as she passed, which Rush answered with her single six-pounder. One reporter in Honolulu remarked of the comical disparity in the ships’ respective capabilities that the American cutter’s answering salute was “like the yap of a terrier echoing the deep bellow of a boar hound.”12

  This correspondent on the dock was one of a large throng who produced more flags and bunting, she wrote, than she imagined could be in all of Honolulu. Both factions, annexationists nearly all white, waving American flags, and monarchists nearly all native, waving Hawaiian flags, were present to cheer on their cause. While the junta knew whom to expect, the crowd believed that the American commission to hear the case for annexation would consist of General Schofield, Admiral Brown, and an authority on international law, Justice Thomas M. Cooley of Michigan. Thus the consternation was general when the commission proved to be the single former congressman from Georgia, “a commonplace, rather sullen-looking man of sixty, clad in ill-fitting clothes of blue homespun and a Panama hat,” accompanied by his wife and secretary.

  From the moment the Rush dropped anchor, Blount was courted by all factions, and the games began. Minister Stevens, unaware that his own recent conduct was to be an object of Blount’s special attention, motored out on a launch to greet him, accompanied by a committee of the Annexation Club (a new one, reconstituted and no longer secret), which had rented for Blount an elegant mansion, fully furnished, including servants and carriage. Blount declined with thanks. The ex-queen sent her personal carriage to convey him to his hotel; determined to maintain his neutrality, he declined with thanks. Once it was clear that Blount would not become a partisan for their side, the proannexation press turned on him. His refusal of Dole’s favors became “insulting,” his very appearance “loathsome.” Admiral Skerrett paid his compliments, and offered use of the navy’s coded cipher for his communications back and forth to Washington. Considering the navy’s implication in the events of January 17, he declined with thanks. He did not trust Skerrett not to share his messages with Stevens.

  Calling on President Dole, Blount handed him a letter from President Cleveland, advising that Blount spoke for the United States and that his authority over the American mission and military was paramount. The contents of the letter were made public, after which the ex-congressman became known as “Paramount Blount.” From the inability of virtually everyone to draw out his thoughts, he also became known as “Minister Reticent.”

  From his cottage at the Hawaiian Hotel, Blount began taking testimony from virtually all comers. By the third day he had heard enough to order Dole to lower the American flag and restore the Hawaiian. That evening, before the order was carried out, Minister Stevens called on Blount, introducing and endorsing the worth of a Mr. Walter G. Smith, who Blount learned was a member of the Annexation Club and editor of the Honolulu Star, an American mouthpiece. Smith imparted his certain knowledge that Lili‘uokalani had colluded with the Japanese commissioner, and agreed that the removal of the American flag and marines was the signal to land troops from the Naniwa, and restore the monarchy in a counterinsurgency. Blount wrote, “I was not impressed much with these statements,” and his inquiries quickly exploded the story; indeed the Japanese commissioner was so mortified that the presence of an imperial warship would lend color to such a tale that he asked his government to withdraw the powerful cruiser, which it did.13

  In the days after the Hawaiian flag was restored, it became apparent that the fate of Hawai‘i and its “revolution” was being decided by the parade of witnesses trailing into Paramount Blount’s cottage at the Hawaiian Hotel. Mary Krout noticed that a huge yellow mastiff had taken up residence there, semiadopted by some Portuguese bellboys. As it happened, one day a black mongrel of equal size appeared and tried to muscle in on the arrangement, and the two hounds fell upon each other in a terrifying brawl in the hotel’s main corridor. “That,” remarked one of the foreign reporters from the safety of the staircase, “is the first real fight I have seen since the Revolution began.”14

  Blount made an almost impossibly quick study of Hawaiian history, but he succeeded to the point that, when A. F. Judd of the Hawaiian supreme court was giving him a précis of events leading up to the forced constitution of 1887, Blount interrupted him more than once with trenchant questions that induced a more even-handed narrative of events.15 Judd found Blount’s method of operating peculiar: “Mr. Blount has not observed the usual course in Diplomatic [illegible] at all. He did not tell Mr. Stevens of his intention to remove the Protectorate.… But the Prov Govt’s authority is not questioned & maintains itself well & keeps order so that quietness reigns. The ‘Annexation Club’ now numbers about 2500 and grows daily. Mr. Blount sees everybody and is getting information from all quarters. The royalists are working [and] have at him too.”16 Most of the maka‘ainana had been disenfranchised by the Bayonet Constitution of 1887. They could no longer vote, but Thurston and Dole could not keep them and their side of the issue away from Blount. Even with no more notice than they’d had, the commoners were able to give Blount petitions with more than seven thousand names on them protesting against annexation. To counter this landslide, Thurston suggested to Dole that he should collect a number of proannexation common natives and parade them before the special commissioner to bolster their case. Dole’s response was that the only way to accomplish this would be to first convince some natives that annexation was the best and only improvement they could expect over the provisional government, and then “pay their expenses.” It was probably too late for such a scheme to succeed, anyway, because Blount had already gotten an earful from the Hawaiian Patriotic League and other royalist groups.

  In his assessment of the events of January 14–17, Blount was critical of Stevens’s overhasty recognition of the provisional government, and noted that the sailors and marines of the Boston had been positioned in the city not for the protection of American property but to support the ongoing coup. Stevens was recalled, but not before his daughter accidentally drowned. Least sorry to see Stevens depart was the queen, who referred to his bereavement as a judgment from God. With Stevens gone, Secretary of State Gresham awarded his credentials to Blount, making him both special commissioner with paramount powers, and minister as well. Blount quickly realized that representing the interest of the United States might well conflict with his interest in getting to the bottom of the Hawaiian situation, and he resigned Stevens’s job as soon as it was given him. One Panama hat was quite enough for him to wear in Honolulu.

  When the Blount Report was made public in July, its shock waves rattled all the interested parties. To the extent that Thurston and Dole relied on Blount’s Southern heritage to color his view of the racial component of the situation, the Georgia planter blasted their hopes without mercy. After stating what credit the native Hawaiians reflected upon themselves with their high literacy rate, Blount went on to characterize the natives as “over-generous, hospitable, almost free from revenge, very courteous—especially to females. Their talent for oratory and the higher branches of mathematics is unusually marked.… The small amount of thieving and absence of beggary are more marked than among the best races in the world. What they are capable of under fair conditions is an unsolved problem.”17 In his report, Blount did not venture to advise President Cleveland on a course of action. His conclusions, however, were unmistakable: “The undoubted sentiment of the people is for the Queen, against the provisional government and against annexation. A majority of the whites, especially Americans, is for annexation.”

  As a Southerner who had survived congressional Reconstruction, Blount was uniquely qualified to spy out chicaneries by which the forms of “democracy” could be touted while ensuring that a genuinely democratic outcome was impossible. And what carpetbaggers had done to Southern Democrats, the latter had been doing to blacks since the end of the occupation. Blount summarized and then lambasted the American-Hawaii
ans’ shenanigans that guaranteed elections would reach a predetermined result—placing a wealth restriction on the franchise for Hawaiians that gave the Americans three-quarters of the votes for the house of nobles, for instance, while making it possible for illiterate foreigners such as the Portuguese (and they were almost uniformly illiterate, and only eight had become naturalized Hawaiians) to be taken to polls by plantation managers and vote as they were told. “The annexationists,” Blount concluded, “expect the United States to govern the islands by so abridging the right of suffrage as to place them in control of the whites.”

  Replacing Stevens as U.S. minister to Hawai‘i was Albert Willis, fifty, a former five-term congressman from Kentucky, with large blue eyes under a prominent balding dome. His first task was to approach Lili‘uokalani with an inquiry. President Cleveland was frank in his assessment that Minister Stevens had had no justification for offering American support for the coup, but his encouragement once offered made the United States responsible to a degree for the rebels’ safety. Thus Willis asked whether she would grant amnesty to the Americans who staged the coup, in exchange for Cleveland’s help, perhaps even intervention, in regaining her government. In a thoughtless moment the former queen, a Christian woman who could have saved her throne if she had taken some lives when she had the chance, finally bridled. The “Americans” who seized the government were born in the islands, subjects of the crown, and “American” only by ethnicity, or had become naturalized. She would not grant such an amnesty. She may have said, or at least Willis came away believing that he heard her say, they should be beheaded. Whatever the exact exchange was, the story gained currency in the press that Lili‘uokalani had vowed to take their heads as in the old days.