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Claus Spreckles
Lorrin Thurson
Queen Liliuokalani.
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In his State of the Union message in 1850 President Fillmore spoke of the nation's need for guano - bird droppings, rich in chemicals for fertilizer, used by farmers to increase crop yields. The United States failed to acquire a treaty with Peru for buying guano, but the Guano Act of 1856 by the U.S. Congress authorized annexation of any small island in the Pacific that was not claimed by another government. By the end of the 1850s the United States had annexed various islands with guano: Jarvis, Baker and Howland islands and the Johnston Atoll, 1,900 kilometers west of Hawaii. The atoll, was claimed by the Kingdom of Hawaii, but the U.S. ignored this. Also mentioned in Guano Act of 1856 was Midway Island, which the U.S. annexed in 1867.
Meanwhile, in 1853, President Fillmore had sent Commodore Matthew Perry to Japan. Some supporters of the mission wanted this to be more than an opening of trade with Japan. They wanted to see an extension of U.S. naval power in the Pacific. Perry was interested in coaling stations and the island of Okinawa and Chichi Jima in the Bonin Islands. The Department of Navy and Congress opposed such "imperialist" acquisitions, and Okinawa and the Bonin Islands fell to the Japanese in the 1860s.
The Navy was trying to protect U.S. citizens and trade. In 1858 it went to the Fiji Islands in response to the murder of two American citizens there. In 1859 a U.S. naval force landed in Shanghai. In 1866, U.S. forces responded to an assault on the American consul at Newchwang (today Yinkou) on the Yellow Sea in Southern Manchuria. In 1867 a naval force landed in Taiwan in response to the murder of the crew of a wrecked American vessel. And, in 1868, U.S. forces landed in Japan during a civil war there, to protect American interests.
By 1872, the U.S. Navy Department was interested in a coaling station in the Pacific, to supply new steam-powered ships. It believed Pago Pago (pronounced pango pango) on the island of Tutuila in Samoan Islands was available. A German company based in the Samoan Islands, at Apia, looked askance at the U.S. interest, and so too did some New Zealanders, but they were unable to get their governments to move to make the islands a protectorate. The United States won the friendship of the Samoan chieftain in the Pago Pago area, and in 1878 a treaty was signed. Pago Pago became became a station for the U.S. Navy - the beginning of what would become American Samoa.
The U.S. economy was benefiting from a decline in transport costs, an expansion of trade and a rising standard of living. By the 1870s Hawaii's sugar exports were more than thirteen times what they had been in 1860, with steamships providing faster transport between Honolulu and San Francisco. The Hawaiians were Christianized, and missionary families were well established and still citizens of the United States, with foreigners having the right to own land, to vote and to serve in government.
In 1875 the United States signed a "treaty of reciprocity" with the Kingdom of Hawaii - free trade. There were complaints from southern congressmen about injury to the sugar and rice producers in their area, and complaints were made that cheap rice from Asia would enter the United States duty-free by way of the Hawaiian Islands. Also unhappy, into the 1880s, were many Hawaiians, not about imports from the U.S. but about the power and influence of members of the missionary families and other foreigners. Native Hawaiians had become became increasingly hostile to white business owners, whom they characterized as arrogant and uncharitable opportunists. There were calls for a white-free legislature, and there were complaints that most land was held by foreigners. "Hawaii for Hawaiians" had became a slogan.
A German-born financier from California, Claus Spreckles dominated the purchase of sugarcane from the growers. He was a poker-playing companion of the king, Kalakaua, and won political favors from the king in return for personal loans. A rumor had spread that he was the power behind the throne. Then, in 1886, he returned to California.
The well-established U.S. citizens in the islands had been there long enough to consider themselves Hawaiian. They believed that they deserved the influence they could exercise, and they were disturbed by what they thought was hostility from non-whites and bad government by King Kalakaua. Common among whites during these times was the belief that non-whites were incapable of good government. Whatever the beliefs of influential whites in Hawaii, among them were at least a few who believed that the king had too much power, ruling as he did through his ministers rather than being the kind of constitution monarch that had less power than the legislature - as with monarchies in Western Europe. They blamed the king for the government's growing debt and accused him of spending too much money. A few of the more adamant critics of the king formed a secret society called the Hawaiian League. These were businessmen and lawyers, led by Lorrin Thurston, son of a missionary from the United States, a lawyer and publisher of a newspaper, the Honolulu Pacific Commercial Advertiser. Thurston wanted a new constitution that gave more power to the legislature and voting restrictions that protected men like himself from the opinions of hostile non-whites.
The conspirators took power the old fashioned way. They confronted King Kalakaua with weapons, and the king, without an adequate guard or military counterforce, responded by signing a constitution that Thurston and his group had devised - to be known as the "Bayonet Constitution." The king, according to his sister Liliuokalani, signed the constitution "under absolute compulsion."
The new constitution gave Europeans and Americans full voting rights without need of Hawaiian citizenship. It restricted voting to those who made at least $600 annually (a substantial sum in the 1880s) or those who owned at least $3,000 worth of property. The new constitution in effect deprived native Hawaiians and immigrant Asians from voting. Only those persons selected by the whites would be able to serve in Hawaii's influential House of Nobles. The new constitution placed executive power in the hands of the king's cabinet, and members of the cabinet could be dismissed only by the legislature. The new constitution was, in short, a takeover, by U.S. citizens.
King Kalakaua died in 1891 of kidney disease, and his sister Liliuokalani took the oath as reigning monarch, including swearing to uphold the new constitution that she despised. With the support of Hawaii's citizens she drafted a constitution to replace the Bayonet Constitution. In January 1893, those in power defended their power by resorting to another coup. Their Committee of Safety sent militia that took over government buildings and offices. The administration of the U.S. President Benjamin Harrison, had encouraged the move, and he favored annexation. The coup was supported by the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Boston, which landed marines and sailors to keep order in Honolulu. The Queen's guards surrendered their arms at the palace barracks. Queen Liliuokalani was retired to her private residence. She wanted no bloodshed and urged people not to riot. In March a new Democratic administration would be coming into power in Washington, the presidency of Grover Cleveland, elected in November. She believed that the decency of the American people would set things aright, and she planned to write an appeal to President Cleveland.
On February 1, the Harrison administration recognized the government of the coup leaders, and Hawaii was proclaimed a U.S. protectorate. A treaty of annexation was sent to the Senate, but after learning that most Hawaiians opposed annexation, Democrats opposed it and the treaty of annexation failed to pass. Grover Cleveland spoke of dishonorable conduct toward Hawaiians, and after his inauguration in March he sent a new U.S. minister to Hawaii to restore Queen Liliuokalani to power. Liliuokalani also had the support of the sugar magnate, Claus Spreckles, but his power was not what it had been rumored to be.The government in Honolulu refused to step down, and there was not the will by the new administration, or the U.S. public, to use force against their fellow citizens in Hawaii.
Republicans took back the presidency on March 4, 1897, and in June 1898, during the Spanish American War, annexation of the Hawaiian Islands was debated in Congress, with the claim made that "we must have Hawaii to help us get our share of China." In July, President William McKinley signed the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands into law. In 1900 the islands were made a territory, with the leader of the coup against Liliuokalani, Samuel Dole, the territory's first governor.
Many in the United States were outraged by what Spain was doing in Cuba. A war of independence from Spanish rule had begun there in 1895. It was guerrilla warfare, with Cubans generally favoring the guerrillas. Spain's General Weyler tried to separate the rural population and the guerrillas. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans were herded into camps, which were disease-ridden and centers of malnourishment. In the U.S. press, Weyler was called a "Butcher." Some in the U.S. were alarmed too because sugar cane fields were being burned and a lot of these fields were owned by U.S. citizens. People in the United States who owned property there or were involved in trade with Cuba tended to support the rebels.
In late 1897, Spain removed Weyler from Cuba and granted Cuba autonomy (self-rule in domestic matters). The new government proclaimed by the rebels rejected Spain's offer, opting instead for full independence. In January, 1898, the United States sent to Havana a battleship, the U.S.S. Maine, with words of friendship expressed to Spain through diplomatic channels, and Spain sent a naval ship to New York in exchange. The U.S.S. Maine was sent with the hope that it would have a calming influence in Cuba. But in February the ship blew up, killing 266. Spain proposed a joint investigation. The U.S. refused, held its own inquiry and falsely concluded that the Maine was destroyed by a mine placed under the ship. Today it is known to have been an internal explosion. [note]
In the United States, "Remember the Maine" became a slogan. President McKinley detested war, and he had hoped that political pressure and negotiations would resolve the conflict in Cuba, but he gave into the passion that swept the nation. He requested authorization from the U.S. Congress to intervene in Cuba. Congress granted his request, by a vote of 311 to 6 in the House and 42 to 35 in the Senate. An ultimatum was sent Spain either to leave Cuba or face war. On April 1 Spain sent its refusal, and the Spanish-American War began.
On May 1, the U.S. Navy destroyed Spanish ships at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines - without any U.S. casualties. On June 10, U.S. Marines landed at Guantanamo Bay. On July 1 the Battle of San Juan Hill was fought, killing 1,200 U.S. citizens and 593 Spanish. In July, through the French Ambassador in Washington, Spain requested a cessation of hostilities and a negotiated peace. On August 11, the U.S. defeated Spain's forces on Puerto Rico, and on that day the U.S. agreed to Spain's proposal to end the fighting. A formal peace treaty was signed in Paris in December. From Spain the U.S. acquired the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico, and it recognized Cuba as independent. In January the United States claimed the uninhabited island of Wake, in the middle of the Pacific, for a cable link to the Philippines.
Filipinos did not assume that their nation was Spain's to give. They created a new constitution, but the United States refused to recognize the new republic, led by Emilio Aguinaldo, who had fought for independence as an ally of the United States. In the United States were strategists who believed that if the United States did not hold the Philippines other powers, such as Germany and Japan, would rush in and take possession. The alternative of establishing an alliance with the Philippines that included defending it against an invasion by other powers was either not considered or rejected. There were those who favored annexing the Philippines for greater access to trade. And some missionaries favored annexation, although Filipinos were already largely Catholic.
On February 4, near Manila, fighting erupted when two U.S. Army privates fired upon and killed three Filipino soldiers. On February 6, 1899 the U.S. Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris, and on that day President McKinley signed the bill, making the Philippines a U.S. possession by U.S. law. In early months of 1899, U.S. troops pushed northward into the central Luzon plain. The force under Aguinaldo retreated into the northern mountains, where they began guerrilla warfare, which spread to various other islands in the Philippine Archipelago.
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