Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii

by James L. Haley

  Much of the story about the queen swearing to take rebel heads if she were restored smacks of being someone else’s invention. The Conqueror a century before was known to offer the heads of his enemies as sacrifices to his war god, but they were harvested from corpses after battle. In the premissionary days, the usual mode of dispatch was strangulation, sometimes clubbing, or a woman who broke kapu might be thrown off a cliff. And for as long as almost anyone could remember, the approved mode of criminal capital punishment in Hawai‘i had been American-style hanging. But to circulate the mental image of Hawai‘i’s dark-skinned queen lopping off the heads of white American businessmen contains just the telltale mixture of cultural ignorance and racial baiting to have become exaggerated, even if it did not originate, among her enemies. The tale raced as far away as Massachusetts, where the 1894 Republican Party platform, written by their longtime senator George Frisbie Hoar, included the plank, “No barbarous Queen beheading men in Hawaii.”18

  Benefiting from such stories, if not propagating them, was Lorrin Thurston, scurrying from meeting to meeting in Washington to promote the provisional government’s cause. It became increasingly apparent that he considered Sanford Dole a weak sister in revolutionary fervor, and bombarded him with telegrams and letters to cave in to no inducements to restoration, in fact advising that they deport the queen to some other Pacific island.19

  On December 18 the former queen thought better of her intransigence and indicated that an amnesty might be possible, but she was too late. On that same day Cleveland had sent a detailed recapitulation of relations with Hawai‘i dating back to his withdrawal of Harrison’s annexation treaty in the opening days of his administration, along with all the relevant documents accumulated since that time. “If national honesty is to be disregarded,” the president began, “and a desire for territorial extension … ought to regulate our conduct, I have entirely misapprehended the mission and character of our government.” He would not, he advised the Congress (and instructed Willis to inform the Hawaiian junta), resubmit the Hawaiian annexation treaty, for the reason that without the malfeasance of American minister to Hawai‘i John Stevens there would have been no coup: “I believe that a candid and thorough examination of the facts will force the conviction that the provisional government owes its existence to an armed invasion by the United States. Fair-minded people … will hardly claim that the Hawaiian Government was overthrown by the people of the islands or that the provisional government had ever existed with their consent. I do not understand that any member of this government claims that the people would uphold it … if they were allowed to vote on the question.”

  Stevens had bombarded Harrison’s State Department with his vociferous advocacy of annexation both before and after the coup, and Cleveland now quoted the damning documents at length. He declared in his final summation that “but for the lawless occupation of Honolulu under false pretexts by the United States forces, and but for Minister Stevens’ recognition of the provisional government when the United States forces were its sole support … the Queen and her government would never have yielded to the provisional government.” What Cleveland’s broadside disregarded, however, was the fact that Stevens, with or without formal instruction, had been effecting the Harrison administration’s wishes. Britain’s minister to the United States, Sir Julian Pauncefote, perceived as much and expressed some sympathy for Stevens: “It is unfortunate for him that a change of Administration should have taken place just after he had succeeded in carrying out the annexation Policy.”20 Pauncefote was correct, as Harrison’s secretary of state Foster cabled Stevens on January 28 to approve of his recognizing the junta and advising his continued cooperation with Captain Wiltse to protect American interests.21

  But Cleveland’s conditions to the queen, “that the past should be buried, and that the restored government should reassume its authority as if its continuity had not been interrupted … have not proved acceptable to the Queen, and though she has been informed that they will be insisted upon, and that, unless acceded to, the efforts of the President to aid in the restoration of her Government will cease, I have not thus far learned that she is willing.” Cleveland had no way of knowing that Lili‘uokalani had capitulated on that very day; as it was he submitted the whole knotty issue “to the extended powers and wide discretion of the Congress,” with his assurance that he would cooperate in “any legislative plan which is consistent with American honor, integrity, and morality.”22

  Lili‘uokalani had surrendered her powers not to the junta but to the United States, on the gamble that that country would show the same honorable shame that Britain and France had done when misguided minions of theirs had seized the government in years past. And it almost worked, but once again a royal blunder—her distaste for and delay in accepting the deal that Willis offered—cost Hawaii its continued existence as an independent nation.

  On December 23, 1893, the junta formally rejected Cleveland’s request to stand down and return sovereign power to the queen. The revolution and provisional government, they declared, were faits accomplis; Hawai‘i was an independent country, and the United States had no right to order its citizens about. “Our only issue with your people,” declared the Dole regime, “has been that, because we revered its institutions of civil liberty, we have desired to have them extended to our distracted country, and … we have stood ready to add our country, a new star, to its glory, and to consummate a union.… If this is an offense, we plead guilty to it.” The junta’s conscience was untroubled by the irony that they had provoked American intervention by pleading that their American lives and property were in danger, but now proclaimed for themselves this new national Hawaiian identity in order to tell the United States to get lost.

  * * *

  With the hope of annexation gone for the present, the task of preparing for an extended national existence now presented itself, and they discovered that sustaining a government involved a plethora of small tasks. Typical of their extemporizing was the postal department, where royal issues that were still in use, all the way back to Victoria Kamamalu, had to be recalled and overprinted with a typeset “Provisional GOV’T. 1893” until a new set of stamps could be prepared. Of greater moment was the need for a new constitution, and it would have to be an artful one, for a genuinely democratic document would have resulted in a return to native power after a single election. For advice President Dole turned to John W. Burgess of Columbia University, widely acknowledged as the “father of political science” in the United States.23 Dole wrote Burgess on March 24, 1894, and again on March 31; there were two points particularly that he wished Dr. Burgess to address. First, “There are many natives and Portuguese who had the vote hitherto, who are comparatively ignorant of the principles of government, and whose vote from its numerical strength as well as from the ignorance will be a menace to good government.” Dole proposed to blunt this menace by imposing stiff property requirements on all candidates for the legislature, and also for voters in casting ballots for the upper house, which could block ignorant natives in the lower house from enacting undesirable laws. Second, Dole wanted Burgess’s endorsement that a Hawaiian constitution embrace a strong central executive. Dole had read Burgess’s books on political science, and complimented him on his espousal of a virile executive with “a veto power, a military power, and an ordinance power active enough and strong enough to defend his constitutional prerogatives.” The irony seemed lost on him that a new constitution with just such sweeping executive powers was exactly why they had pulled the throne out from under Lili‘uokalani.

  Paramount Blount may have disappointed the junta in exposing the naked racism of the coup, but in Burgess Dole found a kindred spirit. Burgess, during graduate study at the University of Göttingen, had been converted to the German notion that the right to democratic self-determination was not universal and natural but determined by innate intelligence, which was determined by race, and the Teutonic Aryan was superior. As he wrote the following y
ear, “No other peoples or population have ever given the slightest evidence of the ability to create democratic states.”24 Let alone the dark races, even other European races such as Huns, Slavs, and Celts were rightly directed by Teutonic nationalities until they could be educated into those values.

  The constitutional convention had been called for May 5, and Dole urged Burgess to hasten his reply. He answered on April 13, approving of most of Dole’s ideas, which would “place the government in the hands of the Teutons, and preserve it there, at least for the present.” He did not favor Dole’s first idea to have the lower house elect the upper, and the upper house elect the president, as potentially ceding too much power to the wrong element. He strongly seconded Dole’s predilection for a strong executive, and as a final redoubt against the lower class, warned that the judiciary should be chosen from among the Teutonic element.25

  On the same points Dole turned to Lorrin Thurston, who urged Dole to have a look at the recent (1891) constitutional convention in Mississippi for pointers on “how to keep the upper hand over a large, undesirable element in the population.”26 This was an urgent consideration, as made plain by the 1890 census, which showed that there were 9,554 native and part-native registered voters (of whom 8,777 were pure natives) as opposed to only 637 of American extraction.27

  To these cautions the junta ultimately added two further layers of protection in arranging the election of delegates to the constitutional convention: Only Hawaiian-born or naturalized citizens could vote, which cut out the Chinese and Japanese. And then, most native participation was precluded with a further stroke: No one could cast a vote who did not first pledge allegiance to the provisional government. Then and only then did the regime risk public balloting for delegates who would craft the constitution. Before he left office, Benjamin Harrison had suggested that the junta hold a plebiscite so that the coup would have some “semblance of having been the universal will of the people,” but even he would have been embarrassed at the charade of voting on the constitution.

  19. Countercoup and Annexation

  The constitutional convention finally convened on May 30, 1894, with thirty-seven delegates. Only five of the eighteen who were elected were native Hawaiians, but the junta still held an absolute majority with nineteen votes—the executive council, the advisory council, and the president. Dole’s attorney general, the original Annexation Club member William O. Smith, defined their task clearly enough: “In general terms the problem to be solved is, how to combine an oligarchy with a representative form of government.”1

  Thurston and Dole provided the draft document, and the essential features that they planned from the beginning—literacy and property restrictions, an oath not to support a restoration of the monarchy—survived into the finished Constitution of the Republic of Hawai‘i, adopted on July 3 and effective, emblematic of their hopes, the following day. The dethroned queen protested, but the United States had already abandoned her, and the British—who were realists—quickly recognized the new government, as did the other major powers.

  Shut out of the political process, the queen’s supporters began laying plans for a countercoup. They stockpiled guns, ammunition, and a few crude bombs, intending to rise up on January 7, 1895. The junta had long been alert to disloyalty, and on the night of January 6, tips sent police and helpful citizens to Waikiki to look for an arms cache. The rumor proved correct; a gunfight erupted, killing an important annexationist named Charles L. Carter. The junta fielded its riflemen and volunteers as the would-be freedom fighters scattered into the hills above Honolulu. Some held out for nearly two weeks, but they eventually surrendered or were flushed out. At their head, and it was something of a surprise, was Robert Wilcox, the Italian-trained hapa haole who had changed sides so many times no one was quite sure where he would materialize next, and also Volney Ashford, formerly colonel of the Honolulu Rifles.

  Lili‘uokalani was arrested on January 16. The republic’s government had moved into the ‘Iolani Palace, with the house of representatives meeting in the former throne room. The ex-queen was escorted in under guard and confined upstairs in the southeast bedroom, overlooking Palace Square and the Ali‘iolani Hale, which was now the Judiciary Building. As confinements go it was not harsh—at least this was the bedroom with the private bath, and she occupied herself with music and quilting. Sadly for her cause, a search of Washington Place revealed an arms cache buried in a flower bed—thirty or more rifles with a thousand rounds of ammunition, coconut-shell bombs, swords, and sidearms. She was tried as Lili‘uokalani Dominis, convicted, and sentenced to pay a fine of five thousand dollars and serve five years at hard labor. Probably she was guilty, but the irregularities of her trial—under U.S. law it would have been illegal to try a civilian in a military court when there was no fight ongoing; sudden reduction of the charge from treason, which could not stick, to misprision of treason; the lack of time given her to prepare a defense—placed the whole proceeding under a cloud.2

  Hers was the most prominent trial; one prince of the House of Kalakaua, Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, received a one-year jail term and had his photo taken in prison stripes; 191 others were tried; Wilcox and four others were sentenced to death. Lili‘uokalani finally abdicated in the hope that it would save the lives of the condemned. She was told rather insolently that former queens could not abdicate, but there was little stomach in the country for the harsh sentences, and all went free by the following January, except for the ex-queen. After eight months’ confinement in the palace, she was placed under house arrest at Washington Place for five months more, and confined to the island for another eight.

  After the countercoup was suppressed, the Dole government (not risking an election, the constitution appointed him president for the first six-year term) gained expertise in the seeding of confidential informants in hostile organizations and environs, ready to root out further disloyalty wherever it was uncovered. Sometimes their gumshoes made asses of themselves. One government monitor whose job it was to translate native-language newspapers for the junta was taken aback by the headline, “The Glad Tidings: Methodist Missionary Steamer Wrecked.” Thinking that he had caught someone in a wicked thought, he read on, and had to report (to his apparent disappointment) that the native reporter was not exulting in the death of missionaries—the name of the vessel was the Glad Tidings, “which removes our first impression.”3

  Lorrin Thurston was sent to Washington as the Hawaiian minister, perhaps not the best appointment, as the American secretary of state was still Walter Gresham, who was left with a bad taste of the whole revolution. Thurston made himself obnoxious enough that Gresham requested his recall, but then the annexationists received some good news, that the United States had elected a Republican president, William McKinley, the man who as a senator from Ohio had had much to do with tariff relations between Hawai‘i and the United States. The possibility of annexation seemed alive again, as the fate of Hawai‘i continued to thump like a shuttlecock back and forth with each change in the occupancy of the White House—Democratic in 1884, Republican in 1888, Democratic in 1892, and Republican again in 1896.

  Thurston and Commissioners William Kinney and Francis Hatch took ship for America, and in June 1897 worked out a new deal for annexation as a territory. McKinley signed it and transmitted it to the Senate for ratification, with the beatific endorsement that the failure of annexation in 1893 not only demonstrated the virtuous disinterest of the United States, but that annexation now would be not a change but a consummation. Of ninety senators in that body, McKinley needed the votes of sixty—two-thirds—to approve the treaty. From the beginning he knew that he could safely rely on fifty-eight. Finding two more who could be persuaded to add these magnificent islands to the American family should not be difficult—especially in view of the fact that the Senate had discarded James Blount’s hotly critical report and replaced it with a shameless whitewash of the coup authored by the new chairman of the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, John Tyler
Morgan of Alabama, who was the perfect combination of racist and imperialist to meet the new republic’s needs. The Morgan Report held the provisional government blameless in the coup and laid all the fault on the queen, without ever sailing to Hawai‘i or interviewing a single witness who was not partial to the revolution.

  To save the lives of her supporters Lili‘uokalani had sworn allegiance to the junta, but after her release it would have been disastrous publicity to prevent her from political advocacy and opposition any more than they could any other Hawaiian. Once she was freed from house arrest, it being painfully obvious that there was no opposing the march toward annexation within Hawai‘i, Lili‘uokalani went to the place where she might still derail the move. Mortgaging Washington Place and some other properties to raise money, she relocated to Washington, D.C., and stayed there for six months.4 Her presence alone was meant as a reproach to the annexationists—as indeed it proved to be: Unable to get a private audience with McKinley, the ex-queen, shortly before leaving for New York, crashed McKinley’s weekly reception for the general public in the White House. After sending her card—“Liliuokalani of Hawaii”—upstairs, an usher showed her and her suite to a group of chairs in a corner of the East Room farthest from the waiting file of well-wishers and patronage seekers. The president appeared and greeted his way through the hundred or so waiting to bend his ear to their particular needs. Lili‘uokalani rose as he approached, and she wrote that they chatted amiably for several minutes. Only Mrs. McKinley’s illness, said the president, prevented him from inviting her up for a more private visit. In her mind one head of state paid an informal social call on another; McKinley was the one who needed to explain why he had agreed to steal her country.