Grover Cleveland and Hawaiian Annexation: The Case for Self-Determination

0:00I want to thank the Institute for inviting me, specifically Marshall DeRosa, again, who's not here. This is my second consecutive year speaking here and second consecutive year speaking on Grover Cleveland, which I'm a Cleveland scholar and there's not very many of us. We don't even have enough to have a fan club or anything like that, but he's one of our greatest and most underestimated presidents and I've wrote a book on him called The Last Jeffersonian. And I know this conference panel is about secession, and my paper will cover an episode in American history that's very closely related to it. Marshall specifically invited me, he and Brian and I spoke at the Stephen D. Lee Institute last month in Florida. He asked me to join the panel and we talked about topics, and of course I talked about Lincoln or Jefferson or something like that, and he There was an attempted annexation of Hawaii by the United States in 1893, and President Cleveland, when he came back into office, tried to stop it, and he did stop it.

1:16And what his idea was to allow Native Hawaiians to decide for themselves whether their allegiance rightfully belonged. So what is the act of secession? When broken down to its basic fundamentals, it is the most pure act of self-determination of peoples, a principle that many Americans profess to believe in, but we know that not all of them do, at least in actuality. Jeffersonian conservatives, the philosophy to which Cleveland adhered, and he believed in, and a lot of us here at this institute believe in Jeffersonian conservatism. We believe that people have a right to determine their own political future, free from outside influences.

2:02This principle obviously is best espoused in the Declaration of Independence. It's a beautiful dedication to self-determination when you read it and read the words that it uses. The denial of this cherished right is what made Lincoln's war so wicked, for he decided Now, it's been said by many historians that the Spanish-American War in 1898 was America's first step into imperialism, and they can make a good case for it. But Lincoln's War on the South can also be characterized that way. This fed a growing movement of jingoism throughout the remainder of the 19th century, which culminated in the war with Spain. Now what is jingoism? It can be defined as extreme nationalism characterized especially by belligerent foreign policy.

2:53And with that definition, let me remind you of Professor Clyde Wilson's distinction between nationalism and patriotism because people try to interchange those two words. Patriotism, Dr. Wilson said, is the healthy love of one's country and its people. Nationalism is an unhealthy love of one's government and the desire to impose it on others. And that's what you see with Lincoln and the Republican Party in the late 19th century, this idea of nationalism, which they adhered to. Now, President Cleveland did not buy into the jingoistic and imperialistic arguments that were becoming more pervasive in his day or in the suggestion that America needed this big, large global naval force that everybody was wanting to build in order to achieve these Goals. Unlike many jingoists, young men like Teddy Roosevelt was a prime example. Cleveland remembered the war to prevent southern independence, and he never believed war was anything but bad to the consternation of people like T.R. I mean, T.R. believed that war was good, it was a healthy thing, it was good for society to have wars. I mean, you showed that you

4:00were a real man if you believed in war. Cleveland didn't believe that. Soon after retaking office Once in 1893 to begin his second term, Cleveland faced a serious test of American foreign policy in a situation concerning the Hawaiian Islands and the role the United States played in a revolution out there. Hawaii remained an independent nation into the early 1890s, and they were ruled by a native monarch, but they were in the process at the time of undergoing a very major demographic change. The Native Hawaiians were dying out, and they were being replaced by foreigners. There were Europeans, there were Americans, but there were also a lot of Asian laborers, cheap laborers from China and Japan that were coming in. The Native population, they were hanging on by a thread.

4:49About 200,000 in 1800, by 1890, the Native population was about 40,000 by local estimates. A lot of it by disease and other things. But you had thousands of these other foreigners that were coming in, particularly the Japanese. That population was growing very, very fast. Now sugar production dominated the island economy. Major plantations, just like we saw in the old south, dominated the economy. Most of them were controlled by Americans and Europeans. A small faction of white wealthy families, known as, they called them, outlanders, dominated Hawaiian society. They controlled the economy and they controlled the government. By the early 1890s, the monarch still held on to the monarchy, the native Hawaiians still held on to it.

5:38But it was basically a figurehead, they didn't have a whole lot of power. It was the titular head of government. But the real power was in the parliament, which was controlled by the outlanders. Now in the United States during this time, as I said, these liberal progressive Republicans controlled the government. They controlled it from Lincoln's election in 1860 until 1885 when Cleveland's first The Republicans controlled it basically for 25 years. They began pushing for this very aggressive foreign policy. After conquering the South by crushing the Confederacy and the West by subjugating the Plains Indians, Republicans turned their attention from wars of subjugation at home and looked further to the West, to the Asian realm, in this new bout of jingoism. They began casting an envious eye specifically on the Hawaiian Islands.

6:27Now, conservative, non-interventionist Democrats didn't follow suit for the most part. Some did, but many didn't. President Tyler, when he was in office, an old southern Democrat, he had extended the Monroe Doctrine to cover the Hawaiian Islands, but that's all he had done. After the war to prevent southern independence and his annexation movements began to spread, Andrew Johnson was another old Democrat. He announced that a treaty had been negotiated that would allow Hawaii to voluntarily apply for admission to the Union, voluntarily, on their own accord, not by force. But progressives in Congress, these progressive Republicans, rejected that voluntary offer. They didn't want it to be voluntary.

7:13They wanted Hawaii by right, if not outright, force. The inferior Hawaiians, they said, should have no say in the matter. In 1881, President James A. Garfield, who was described by several papers as a liberal and a progressive, even though we don't know, he only stayed in office 200 days, he announces the United States should be the arbiter in the Pacific region and the controller of its commerce and the chief nation that inhabits Hawaiian shores. By that time, the federal government had already become officially involved with Hawaii. President Grant and his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish, in 1875, concluded a treaty with Hawaii, and Fish's words would bind the islands to the United States with hoops of steel.

8:06This was an economic agreement that allowed the islands' major crop of sugar to enter the American market duty-free. U.S. products could enter the Hawaiian market free of charge as well. Well, and the treaty prospers for both nations. Though Hawaii had essentially become an economic colony in the United States, 99% of its products were sent to the American market. This was Fish's whole intent, to tie them to the United States. In 1887, during Cleveland's first term, the two governments renewed that trade agreement, but the Senate amended it a little bit to include a provision that would give the United and the United States exclusive rights to a naval base at the mouth of the Pearl River, which became Pearl Harbor.

8:53Cleveland and his secretary of state negotiated this provision. Now Cleveland believed in the vitality of Hawaii for economic and military purposes only. And he agreed with the Republicans for the need for trade and commerce, but he did not hold their nationalistic views on annexation, which would have destroyed Hawaiian sovereignty He favored annexation, as long as Hawaiians favored it, as long as they truly wanted to be a part of the United States, not by force. His policy was basically to uphold the Monroe Doctrine and protect the islands from outside influence. The British tried to come in at one point and offer the Hawaiians a $2 million loan.

9:39Well, Cleveland blocked that because he realized what the British were up to in Hawaii. Now, you think on the outside, well, what's the big deal about loaning Hawaii $2 million? Well, the British said, well, for collateral, we're going to take a share of Hawaiian revenue. Cleveland didn't like that. He said, I know what you're up to. And so he blocked it and kept him out of Hawaii. Hawaii. Now, the federal government have every reason to want, at least to maintain the status quo in Hawaii, economic reasons. If it couldn't be annexed, let's keep it an economic colony. When Benjamin Harrison became president in 1889, remember he was in between Cleveland's two terms, he ordered the landing of 70 marines from the USS Adams to prevent a coup against the feeble monarch, King Kalakaua, which I think it's Kalakaua.

10:31Harrison also mandated a permanent U.S. naval base in the area and a naval presence in the area. But in 1891, the situation changed dramatically and threatened to overturn the status quo. The king was weak and feeble, and he wasn't very strong, and he eventually died. And his sister came to the throne, Lilla Kalani, am I right on that one? She was very headstrong and highly patriotic, and she wanted to run Hawaii herself. She wanted to run Hawaii for Hawaiians. She didn't want the outsiders involved. She wanted to diminish their influence. She proposed a new constitution that stripped them all non-Hawaiians of the right to vote.

11:16This threatened the existing power struggle, so there's a problem here with this highly patriotic young monarch. So these outlanders had to do something about it. So on the night of January 14, 1893, the U.S. minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, met secretly with a group plotting the Queen's overthrow. It was a faction known as the Annexation Club. Though Harrison, President Harrison and his jingoistic Secretary of State James G. Blaine denied any knowledge of this coup, I think it's probably likely they knew about the plan and approved it. When a queen announced this new constitution, the scheme was launched apparently by orders from Stevens himself. Apparently he actually ordered U.S. military forces into Hawaii himself.

12:05So obviously the president had to know about it. The U.S. warship, the USS Boston supplied American troops to assist in the revolt and basically they went around keeping order, which was an important task in a revolution. The plotters removed the queen without bloodshed and established a provisional government under the protection of U.S. forces. Native Hawaiians were stripped of the right to vote and full control was given to the outlanders. Now the American press did not view this favorably, at least a lot of it. The New York Herald called it a revolution of, by and for sugar. The New York Times headlined it as the political crime of the century. This didn't really matter to the plotters. Minister Stevens immediately recognized the new provisional government. Unsurprisingly, the new provisional authority asked for annexation to the United States and the American flag began flying over Hawaiian government buildings.

12:59Minister Stevens announced that the Hawaiian pair is now fully ripe and it is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it. President Harrison agreed, calling the Hawaiian monarchy weak and inadequate. and Secretary of State Blaine drew up a treaty of annexation and the President submitted it to the Senate. The problem was they couldn't get it ratified before Cleveland came into office. He had been elected for a second term in 1892, came in on March the 4th, 1893, just a couple of months after the coup. He did not like the manner in which the Queen was treated and removed, nor the fact that the United States Minister and the Navy had involved in the incident, which caused, he said, serious embarrassment to the country. To get a handle on events, he appointed a Georgia Congressman by James Blunt, who had been in Congress for about 20 years.

13:49He actually chaired the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He sent him out there and said, you investigate, find out what happened. He spent four months investigating and found a military protectorate in the hands of U.S. troops, which were even conducting regular police duties for the provisional government. Cleveland said the use of the military against Hawaii was an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without the authority of Congress. The investigation showed, he said, beyond all question, that the constitutional government of Hawaii had been subverted with the active aid of our representative to that government and through the intimidation caused by the presence of an armed naval force of the United States, which was landed for that purpose at the insistence of our minister.

14:52Upon the facts developed, it seemed to me the only honorable course for our government to pursue was to undo the wrong that had been done by those representing us and to restore or as far as practicable, the status existing at the time of our forcible intervention. This report by Congressman Blunt found that Ambassador Stevens was guilty of aspiring to overthrow the Queen. The Senate launched their own investigation led by an Alabama Senator, John Tyler Morgan, who was an avid annexationist, and of course you can imagine what he found. He found the opposite. Now in order to restore the former government of the islands, Cleveland repudiated the annexation treaty and withdrew it from Senate consideration.

15:46He refused to annex Hawaii in any shape, form or fashion. But however, he was not able to restore the Queen to her throne. She had vowed that if she returned to power, she would behead all the rebels and seize their property. Cleveland asked that that not happen. He said, why don't you grant an amnesty for everybody? She refused. He didn't really get any satisfactory answers. The new Democratic Congress didn't have any answers either. They kind of bounced around solutions for several months. They remained largely indecisive, and Cleveland was too, to be honest. He was pretty indecisive about what to do. sort of a the toothpaste out of the tube now how do we get it back in Congress decided the best option be just to simply recognize the provisional government they had established after the coup and and and the new president of the provisional government was a man named Sanford Dole the name sound familiar DOL interesting how he ended up in power Cleveland really had no other option but

16:52and I think this demonstrates the complications of becoming involved in the internal affairs of other nations, a lesson we seem not to have learned as of yet. Despite the setback of failing to restore the status quo antebellum, Cleveland had fought back against the growing jingoist tide and won. Its paramount objective was to keep out of the affair and allow Hawaiians to determine their own future. The thing I care most about, he said, is the declaration that the people of the islands, instead of the provisional government, should determine the policy. The people of Hawaii, he said, were the source of power and control over the islands. And his policy received praise from the members of both parties. They were happy because he didn't go blundering into it and try to annex the islands.

17:39He was trying to keep them, at least retain some sovereignty and independence. Charles Francis Adams Jr. of the famed Adams family wrote him and said, I remember no stand taken by a government so morally sound and dignified as that now taken by your administration. It is not easy to see how the United States can protest against the policy of force in British dealings with semi-civilized natives and races if we ourselves are quite unable to Resist the Temptation to Have an Occasional Hack at Them on Our Own Account. Harrison's Attempt to Annex Hawaii and Cleveland's Defeat of that Attempt, wrote Alan Nevins, one of Cleveland's main biographers, constitute one of the most unjustly neglected episodes in American diplomatic history.

18:32But however, Hawaii would not remain long independent. Of course, they were independent on paper, but when the Republicans came back into office This was William McKinley in 1897, annexation preceded with vigor. Upon assuming the presidency, McKinley lost no time negotiating a new treaty of annexation which was sent to the Senate that summer. Of course, the Japanese began to protest and you can kind of see in this episode hostilities beginning to emerge between the United States and Japan. Japan feared that this treaty is going to probably be detrimental to some of our citizens living in Hawaii. They were concerned about it. They were beginning to exercise their influence in that sphere of the world, and they didn't want the United States in there, but of course they came up short. The annexation treaty lagged in the Senate for a little bit because you had some stiff opposition from anti-annexationists and anti-imperialists.

19:24But in August of 1898, after the Spanish-American War, Hawaii was finally annexed. When it became clear to a majority, and that's the key, a majority, that the islands were of vital importance to the United States. It's also used some fear to persuade Hawaiians for the need of this annexation. They began going around telling people, look, if the Japanese come in here and take over Hawaii, they're going to completely annihilate Hawaiian culture. They've done that everywhere they've been. You better watch out. They're going to come here and slaughter everybody and destroy the culture of Hawaii. So they were using fear as well. Now, to overcome anti-imperialists in the Senate, specifically in the House, they used a different Technique. Instead of a treaty, they used what they used in Texas in 1845. They didn't negotiate a treaty because the treaty, according to the Constitution, you have to have two-thirds of vote in the Senate. So they just used a simple resolution annexing Hawaii, only needs a majority

20:20of the vote. Hawaii is ours, Cleveland wrote after he heard the news. As I look back upon the first steps in this miserable business, I am ashamed of the whole affair. But although he was unable to To keep the islands permanently sovereign, many Native Hawaiians still to this day honor President Cleveland for his efforts to protect their native government. I'm friends, actually, with Cleveland's actual grandson who's still alive, and he went to Hawaii a few years ago, and when they found out he was President Cleveland's grandson, he said, I was treated like Elvis Presley, literally. And there's also a big movement to succeed today in Hawaii. I've been in contact with some of the people there, and they've asked me to come out there some of their conferences to speak in Hawaii and I said well you'll send me a plane ticket I'll be happy to come it's a little far to drive to from Mississippi but as Brian said there was an effort by Cleveland to protect the sovereignty of Hawaii and sovereignty is

21:21important that's an important word it's important that we use that word because because sovereignty can be defined as supreme power. And as Brian said, how do you divide sovereignty? How do you divide supreme power? Calhoun said you can't do it. So, as he said, sovereignty, I think, still resides in Hawaii. In Texas, I think it resides in all the states. And I think it's something that we should use. I agree with Mark. We should use that. And I think this example of Cleveland in Hawaii, even though it's not necessarily technically about secession, I think it's a wonderful example we have of a president who actually believe in self-determination of peoples, and I thank you very much.