John L. Stevens - Diplomatic Career

Diplomatic Career

Stevens joined the United States Department of State and was appointed successively minister to Paraguay, Uruguay, Sweden and Norway, and finally to Hawaii, an appointment pushed by his old partner Blaine, who had risen to United States Secretary of State. When Stevens was named to the Hawaiian post, his title was changed to Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary, indicating his rise within the State Department.

Soon after his installation in Hawaii, Stevens began writing about the islands, in a steady stream of pamphlets and speeches, including his December 19, 1891, speech delivered at Founder's Day celebrations of the Kamehameha School, entitled Advice to Young Hawaiians, and his later The Hawaiian Situation tract, written with Eugene Chamberlain and William Springer.

Envoy Stevens had gone on-the-record about his Manifest Destiny views concerning close allies of the United States. Presumably his views reflected those of his former partner, friend, sponsor and now boss at the State Department. In 1881, James G. Blaine had written of the necessity of "drawing the ties of intimate relationship between us and the Hawaiian Islands so as to make them practically a part of the American system without derogation of their absolute independence."

Constitutional reforms in Hawaii in 1887 had widened the gulf between foreign businessmen and native Hawaiian nationalists. In January 1891 the Hawaiian King, who had been sympathetic to the interests of the foreign businessmen, died while on a visit to the United States. He was succeeded by his sister, the Princess, who was crowned Queen Lili'uokalani. The new Queen was known to dislike the restrictive constitution of 1887, and envoy Stevens suspected the Queen's nationalist sympathies. He asked that a United States warship, the USS Boston be stationed indefinitely in Honolulu harbor.

In March 1892 envoy Stevens wrote to United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine, his old newspaper partner, asking how far he might deviate from standard State Department rules if a native revolutionary movement emerged. "The golden hour is near at hand," Stevens later wrote his old partner and friend Blaine. "So long as the islands retain their own independent government there remains the possibility that England or the Canadian Dominion might secure one of the Hawaiian harbors for a coaling station." Added Stevens: "Annexation excludes all dangers of this kind."

The question had taken on significance after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886. Seeking to capitalize on the new transcontinental link in the Dominion of Canada, British capitalists were said to welcome the addition of the Hawaiian Islands as an English protectorate. For aggressive Manifest Destiny advocates like Stevens, the telegraphing of English intentions – even by diplomatic innuendo – signaled the need for a preemptive American response.