John L. Stevens - Overthrow and Stevens's Response

Overthrow and Stevens's Response

On January 14, 1893, envoy Stevens met with two other men concerned about American territorial interests in the Pacific. That night, Stevens and American-Hawaiian businessmen Sanford Dole and Lorrin Thurston met to hatch "an audacious plot to overthrow Hawaii's Queen and bring her country into the United States," writes New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer in his book Overthrow.

The immediate event which precipitated the meeting was Queen Lili'uokalani's attempt to promulgate a new constitution which would have restored many of the powers of the monarchy that existed prior to the forced promulgation of the "Bayonet Constitution" in 1887 that reduced the power of the Hawaiian monarch and rescinded voting rights to much of the population. The Queen's cabinet refused to go along with the planned new constitution, and Queen Liliʻuokalani temporarily yielded. But to the ardent Annexationists the volatile situation provided an opportunity that they seized. The Annexation Club morphed into a Committee of Safety; it shepherded documents drafted to establish a provisional government.

The Committee of Safety expressed concern for the safety and property of American residents in Honolulu. Minister Stevens, advised about these supposed threats to non-combatant American lives and property by the Committee of Safety, obliged their request and summoned a company of uniformed U.S. Marines from the Boston and two companies of U.S. sailors to land on the Kingdom and take up positions in strategic locations in Honolulu on the afternoon of January 16, 1893. 162 sailors and Marines aboard the Boston came ashore well-armed but under orders of neutrality. They were positioned around Royal residences and Hawaiian government installations, not around United States citizens' quarters. Having observed the troops' march up the street, the Queen was heard to remark that the Marines were finishing what the "missionaries" started. The presence of the Marines served effectively in intimidating royalist defenders. Historian William Russ states, "the injunction to prevent fighting of any kind made it impossible for the monarchy to protect itself." Due to the Queen's desire "to avoid any collision of armed forces, and perhaps the loss of life" for her subjects and after some deliberation, at the urging of advisers and friends, the Queen ordered her forces to surrender. The Honolulu Rifles took over government buildings, disarmed the Royal Guard, and declared a Provisional Government.

Minister Stevens recognized the new government, giving his blessing on behalf of the United States Department of State, and commissioners were immediately dispatched to Washington to request that Hawaii be annexed by the United States. On February 9, 1893, Stevens acted preemptively, establishing a protectorate pending negotiations for annexation. On February 16, President Harrison sent a message to the Senate, formally requesting annexation of the Hawaiian kingdom.

But President Cleveland, immediately following his inauguration, sent a message to the Senate, canceling all further talk of annexation. He then sent a commissioner to the Islands to assess the situation, who reported that the newly established protectorate be withdrawn as unnecessary. Envoy Stevens immediately resigned and returned to Maine, where he spent his time in public denunciation of the new administration's Hawaiian policy.

The Blount Report commissioned by President Grover Cleveland was submitted on July 17, 1893 and found Stevens guilty of inappropriate conduct in support of the conspiracy to overthrow Hawaii's Queen. Answering the charges from his Augusta, Maine, home, Stevens supplied his rationale: the Queen was immoral, and so needed to be dethroned. The later Morgan investigation conducted by the U.S. Congress, which led to the Morgan Report on February 26, 1894 found Stevens and other U.S. agents not guilty, after which Cleveland abandoned the matter because of lack of Congressional support. Both the Blount and Morgan Reports are cited by partisans on both sides to support their claims about the legitimacy or lack thereof of the overthrow.

In 1993, Congress passed and the President signed an Apology Resolution apologizing for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii a century before. Based on the Blount Report and other historical analyses, the Resolution subsequently became a touchstone in the cultural and political identification of many native Hawaiians.