250th - Paradise stolen: Sugar barons, the coup and the Queen who tried to save Hawaii

When people look at the fiftieth star on the American flag, they often think of a tropical paradise. Hawaii brings to mind images of hula dancers, surfing and warm “Aloha” greetings. It is easy to assume that such a beautiful place joined the United States through a happy, mutual agreement. However, the true story of how Hawaii became a state is not a fairytale. It is a story of greed, betrayal and a stolen kingdom. To understand Hawaii today, one must look back at the men who seized it and the Queen who tried to save it.

The trouble began with sugar. By the late 1800s, white American businessmen had moved to the islands and taken control of the economy, growing wealthy by exporting sugar to the United States tax-free. In 1890, the U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff, which removed these special tax breaks. Suddenly, the sugar planters were losing money. They realized that if Hawaii officially became part of the United States, their tariff problems would vanish, and their profits would return.

Standing in their way was Queen Liliuokalani. She was a strong and dignified leader who saw that foreign interference was hurting her nation. She attempted to pass a new constitution to give power back to the native Hawaiian people and the monarchy. The American businessmen were furious. They formed a “Committee of Safety”—a misleading name for a group planning a violent overthrow. In January 1893, they staged a coup.

This betrayal would have failed without the United States military’s help. The American minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, ordered U.S. Marines to storm the islands, claiming they were there to protect American lives. In reality, they were there to intimidate the Queen.

Seeing the armed troops and wanting to avoid the slaughter of her people, Queen Liliuokalani surrendered. However, she did not surrender to the rebels. She yielded her authority to the United States government, trusting that once officials in Washington saw the truth, they would undo this injustice. Following the coup in January, the provisional government moved quickly to secure U.S. recognition. Commissioners representing the new regime arrived in Washington, D.C., and on February 14, 1893, signed a treaty of annexation with Secretary of State John W. Foster. The very next day, February 15, 1893, President Benjamin Harrison transmitted this treaty to the Senate, urging its ratification to prevent other powers from securing the islands 

President Grover Cleveland took office shortly after the coup and was horrified by what he found. After an investigation, he described the overthrow as an “act of war” against a friendly nation. He believed the United States had committed a “substantial wrong” and refused to send the annexation treaty to the Senate. He recognized that the new government in Hawaii did not represent the people; it was a small group of wealthy men holding power by force.

But the moral stand of one president could not stop the tide of imperialism. Powerful men in Washington, like naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan, argued that the U.S. needed to control the oceans to be a great nation. They viewed Hawaii not as a sovereign country, but as a strategic chess piece—a necessary naval station to protect the West Coast and trade with Asia.

The Native Hawaiian people fought back with the only weapons they had: their names and their voices. In 1897, loyal subjects organized a massive petition drive. They collected signatures from 21,269 native Hawaiians—more than half the native population—protesting the annexation. This act of peaceful resistance was powerful. It successfully blocked the treaty in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote was required.

The expansionists, unable to win fairly, decided to cheat the system. The Spanish-American War in 1898 and the military value of Pearl Harbor gave them the perfect excuse. President William McKinley and his allies bypassed the treaty process entirely. Instead, in February of 1898, they used a “joint resolution,” a legislative maneuver requiring only a simple majority vote. Through this loophole, they annexed Hawaii against the will of its people. Senator Richard Pettigrew, a rare politician who opposed the move, warned that by seizing the islands, the United States was joining the “robber nations of the world.”

Hawaii remained a territory for decades before finally becoming the fiftieth state in 1959. While statehood granted full citizenship rights, it could not erase the history of how that came about. Hawaii didn’t become part of the United States by choice. The push for annexation came largely from military interests and influential sugar businessmen, and did not consider the sovereignty of the Hawaiian people. That history matters because it shows that U.S. borders weren’t shaped solely by diplomacy; as with the American Indians, there was, to put it mildly, coercion and conflict.

In honor of the celebration of America’s 250^th Birthday, the Ole Seagull is going to write a column a month, through December, on a lesser known historical fact about Her, Her leaders, or history. The anniversary of that fact will be in the month the column is written and the headline for the column will be preceded by “250th.”