Hawaii

Great Britain, France, and the United States became interested in Hawaii after its discovery by Captain James Cook in 1778. American missionaries arrived in 1820, and treaties of friendship and commerce with the Kingdom of Hawaii were signed by the United States in 1826, Britain in 1836, and France in 1839. The U. S. Senate did not ratify its treaty, but Hawaii abided by its provisions, and in 1842 the United States recognized Hawaii’s independence. American whalers used Hawaii as a base, and with American acquisition of Oregon and California a few years later, Hawaii’s importance for the defense of the West Coast became apparent. In 1851 when France had designs on Hawaii, the United States warned that it would not permit its annexation by a European power.

It was in the Gilded Age that America solidified its influence in Hawaii. More for strategic than for economic reasons, the United States in 1875 entered into a reciprocity agreement with the Hawaiian kingdom whereby both nations agreed to drop tariffs on a long list of products, the main one being sugar. Within a year American capital began to flood the island, and sugar production by American growers skyrocketed. In 1887 the reciprocity treaty was extended, and the United States was permitted to establish a naval base at Pearl Harbor.

Since the royal family was capricious, Americans in Hawaii generally favored annexation by the United States to protect their property. But after the McKinley Tariff of 1890 put foreign sugar on the free list (depriving Hawaii of its favored position) and gave domestic sugar a two cent per pound subsidy, they became ardent annexationists. In addition Queen Liliuokalani, advocating “Hawaii for the Hawaiians,” set aside the Constitution of 1887 that favored whites and promulgated an autocratic constitution in 1893. American planters, with the connivance of U. S. minister John L. Stevens and aided by a contingent of marines, ousted Queen Liliuokalani and declared a republic, but they immediately agreed to a treaty of annexation with the United States in the closing days of Republican president Benjamin Harrison’s administration. The Senate, however, failed to ratify the treaty before the incoming Democratic president Grover Cleveland, an anti-imperialist, took office. Cleveland, suspicious of Stevens’s actions, withdrew the treaty and sent Georgia congressman James H. Blount to Hawaii to investigate. After a thorough investigation Blount concluded that Stevens and the American military had actively abetted the coup. Contrary to dispatches from Stevens, marines from the cruiser USS Boston were not called out to protect American lives but were strategically placed across from the royal palace, which was far away from the consulate or any American property.

After reading the report, Cleveland and his secretary of state Walter Q. Gresham wished to regain the throne for the queen and amnesty for the rebels. The queen, however, insisted that the coup leaders be beheaded as Hawaiian custom dictated, while Sanford Dole, president of the provisional republic of Hawaii, would not resign and said that the United States could either annex Hawaii or respect its independence. Unable to work out a solution, Cleveland placed the problem in the lap of Congress in December 1893 and stated that he would execute whatever solution it devised. After much partisan wrangling, Congress neither annexed the islands nor attempted to disturb Dole’s provisional government. On July 4, 1894, the provisional government became the Republic of Hawaii, and a month later Cleveland acquiesced and recognized the white minority government.

Cleveland was succeeded in 1897 by Republican William McKinley, who was more aware of the islands’ strategic value and less troubled by the illegitimate birth of the Republic of Hawaii. Accordingly, in June 1897 a new treaty of annexation was signed, but strong Democratic opposition prevented ratification. Annexation, however, became imperative following Admiral George Dewey’s stunning victory at Manila Bay and the need to “bridge the Pacific.” That victory also emphasized the perception of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan that Hawaii was the “key to the Pacific.” In July 1898, during the Spanish-American War, the United States annexed Hawaii by a joint resolution of Congress with McKinley’s approval.

Further reading: William A. Russ Jr., The Hawaiian Revolution (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1959); William A. Russ Jr., The Hawaiian Republic: 1894-1898 (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1961).

—Timothy E. Vislocky

Hay, John Milton (1838-1905) statesman, writer John Milton Hay capped his distinguished literary and diplomatic career by serving as secretary of state from 1898 to 1905. Born in Salem, Indiana, on October 12, 1838, Hay grew up in Illinois, graduated from Brown University, and by 1860 was back in Illinois studying law in the office of his uncle in Springfield. Friendship with Abraham Lincoln’s secretary, John Nicolay, enabled Hay to become assistant personal secretary to the new president in 1861. The youthful presidential aide won the confidence of his chief and also amused him with his storytelling ability. After the Civil War, from 1865 to 1870, Hay received brief diplomatic postings to Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, where he despised European aristocrats and sympathized with radical democrats. He achieved fame in 1871 as a poet with the publication of Pike County Ballads and Other Pieces, and from 1870 to 1875 he wrote editorials for the New York Tribune. In 1874 he married Clara Stone the daughter of Cleveland railroad builder and financier Amasa Stone, and from 1878 to 1881 Hay served as assistant secretary of state. Disturbed by the Great Strike Of 1877, Hay had become conservative and anonymously published in 1883 an antilabor novel, The Bread-winners, and in the 1880s he wrote with Nicolay a 10-volume biography of Lincoln.

Having married wealth, Hay was a heavy contributor to the Republican Party and in 1897 was delighted to be appointed by William McKinley as ambassador to Great Britain. As an ardent Anglophile, Hay facilitated the rapprochement between London and Washington and encouraged British support of the United States in the Span-ish-American War. Soon after hailing it as the “splendid little war,” Hay in August 1898 became secretary of state, and although he had earlier opposed imperialism, he favored the acquisition of the Philippines (with their proximity to China) at that war’s end and defended the American suppression of the subsequent Filipino insurrection. In the Open Door notes of 1899 to 1900, Hay sought to prevent the dismemberment of China and to preserve equal access there for American investors and missionaries at a time when other foreign powers were acquiring spheres of influence. In the Caribbean, Hay obtained British acquiescence to an American-fortified isthmian canal across Central America in 1901; negotiated a treaty with Colombia for a canal zone in its province of Panama, which that government rejected; and then in 1903 negotiated similar concessions from Panama following its successful (with American help) revolt against Colombia. In his last year in office Hay played a lesser role in loreign policy as President Theodore Roosevelt essentially became his own secretary of state. Hay died on July 1, 1905.

Further reading: Kenton J. Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1975); Howard I. Kushner and Anne Hummell Sherrill, John Hay: The Union of Poetry and Politics (Boston: Twayne, 1977).

—Bruce Abrams