Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen (22 page)

T
HE
first annexation commission was sent to Washington by the parties who had been prominent in the overthrow of the monarchy during the closing days of the administration of President Harrison. When Mr. Carter and his fellow-commissioners, Messrs. Thurston, Wilder, Castle, and Marsden, arrived in Washington, President Harrison and Secretary Foster had received my letter of protest, so that they had ample time to consider the situation before the so-called commissioners were presented at the executive mansion. Yet, after having been fully warned by the statements in my letter, these men were received diplomatically.

I was the constitutional ruler the last time the Department of State had heard from the Islands.

The minister bearing my commission and seal was at that moment residing at the national capital.

I had informed President Harrison and his Secretary of State of the unjust and fraudulent actions of the revolutionists, of the well-known aid and counsel they had received from Mr. John L. Stevens, the American minister, and the substantial assistance given by the forces of the United States ship Boston, under command of Captain Wiltse, through which agencies, and those alone, my government had been overthrown.

I had asked that justice should be done, and that the rights of my people should be restored.

President Harrison chose to set aside my statement and petition, and give audience to these irresponsible commissioners, sending to the Senate a treaty which, without the least authority, they offered to him.

These commissioners were self-chosen; but even allowing that they had been selected by the missionary party, with whom they were in sympathy, yet that was a mere petty minority, — only 637 voters against 9,500 of Hawaiian birth, and nationality. Yet their proposition was certainly sent to the Senate, while no action whatever was ever taken upon mine, although in this I did not represent myself individually, but the constitutional government and the real people of Hawaii. I have been informed, since I visited Washington in 1897, that the Senate decided that these acts of President Harrison amounted to a recognition of the Provisional Government. Why should this be so, when it was a mere proposal placed before the President, and by him transmitted as such to the Senate? It was there simply for their consideration. No vote was taken on the question up to the day when it was withdrawn by his successor, President Cleveland. The pretence of recognition to these irresponsible commissioners was unjust to me, as well as a wrong to the Hawaiian people.

In contrast to this, the wise step taken by President Cleveland in sending a commissioner to investigate the situation was fair to both sides, and carried out by the man of his choice in a thoroughly impartial manner. When Mr. Cleveland was finally forced into some kind of recognition of the missionary party, he used these words, that he recognized "the right of the Hawaiian people to choose their own form of government." My people have had no choice since the Provisional Government came into power.

Nothing of importance seems to have transpired during the early part of the year 1894. All this time, however, the Hawaiian people were waiting with patience to hear from the American continent that justice was to be done, and their constitutional rights restored by the great power to which they had trusted.

No messages or communications of any kind were made to me all this time by the American minister, and none were sent to me from Washington by the Department of State. Why was this? By Mr. Cleveland's decision, by Mr. Gresham's despatches to Mr. Willis, by the declarations of that gentleman publicly made to Mr. Dole, I, Liliuokalani, was the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands; why should I have been kept in complete ignorance of all that was taking place at Washington, while the petty minority of alien residents, who had been summoned by the American minister "in the name of the United States of America to resign power and authority," should receive official despatches which ought to have been delivered to me?

Just before he left the Islands, Mr. Blount impressed upon me with great solemnity the importance of the continuance of the peaceful attitude of the Hawaiian people, assuring me that if any disturbance should take place on our part it would prompt the United States to send vessels of war to the port, men would again be landed, and the result would be the loss of the independence of our country. Believing that he spoke by authority, and that the day of release from the oppression of the stranger was near, I continued from the day of my retirement at Washington Place to impress upon all the necessity for abstaining from riot or disturbance.

The people listened to my voice, and obeyed my will with a submission that kept the community free from disorder far more than any law or restraint of that which has called itself a government. Many a time have I heard that the Hawaiians would no longer submit to their oppressors, that they were about to appeal to fire and the sword; but I have always dissuaded them from commencing any such measures. This discontent was not confined to the people of native or even part native birth. Those of foreign ancestry not in sympathy with the revolutionists, those whose daily comfort had been disturbed or whose business had been made unprofitable or ruined by the rich and powerful missionary party, appealed to me and my friends to restore the old order of things, that prosperity might again smile on the majority, instead of being locked up in the bank accounts of a very few.

It subsequently became known to me through other sources, although not until long after the date about which I now write, that the Senate had taken matters out of the hands of President Cleveland, and had conducted an independent investigation in the city of Washington, at which O. P. Emerson, Peter C. Jones, Z. S. Spalding, W. D. Alexander, Lieutenant Lucien Young, Mr. E. K. Moore, L. G. Hobbs, W. T. Swinburne, Lieutenant Laird, Mr. A. F. Judd, W. C. Wilder, J. H. Soper, A. S. Wilcox, C. Bolte, Geo. N. Wilcox, John Emmeluth, C. L. Carter, F. W. McChesney, W. B. Oleson, J. A. McCandless, Minister John L. Stevens, James F. Morgan, William R. Castle, L. A. Thurston, Dewitt Coffman, M. Stelker, William S. Bowen, P. W. Reeder, Charles L. Macarthur, Admiral George Belknap, Ν. B. Delameter, Francis R. Day, Rev. R. R. Hoes, W. E. Simpson, N. Ludlow, and S. N. Castle, gave either by affidavit or in person their testimony against me.

So far as the above individuals knew anything whatever about the affairs of Hawaii, they were conspirators against my government; the obscurely known amongst the number were from those who had been, as one of them stated, simply rusticating at the Islands a while, and had been poisoned against the native people by my enemies. Not a single witness on the side of constitutional government was examined by the committee, if I except Hon. James H. Blount, who was called, and courageously repeated all the statements of his report to Mr. Cleveland.

Yet on such
ex parte
testimony as this, the Senate made a lengthy and partisan report, which I never had an opportunity to examine until my residence in Washington during the winter of 1897. It is altogether too long to find admittance here, but its meaning can be expressed in a very few words. It says that, rightfully or wrongfully, the native monarchy had been overthrown, the parties who succeeded in this fraud and imposition had been acknowledged as a government by the administration of Mr. Harrison, and therefore the question would not be reopened nor the facts reviewed by the United States !

Where was proper consideration given to my own statement to President Harrison, made through my·commissioner, Mr. Paul Neumann? Why were not the petitions of the patriotic leagues of my people put into the inquiry? Why was not the fact that there was such an inquiry going on communicated to me? Why were my enemies informed of that which was in progress, so that they could hurry to Washington, or send their testimony, while not one of my friends was given the opportunity to raise a voice in behalf of the disfranchised Hawaiian people or their persecuted queen? Whatever may be the answers to these questions, it is true that no message ever reached me. No further communication was ever made to me by the American minister, nor did I even hear, except through the most vague kind of rumor, that probably no more would be done in the cause of justice. Even the fact of the decision of the Senate was not communicated to me; yet it seems that it was all settled the last week in February, 1894, on the testimony of the above aliens.

Since the bold admissions of members of the missionary party made to Minister Blount of their own guilt, since the confession, by those who had established themselves at the head of a provisional government, of the intended crime of which my brother was to be the victim, all of which appears in black and white on the pages of their own testimony, the scornful title of "P. G." has clung to them, to their children, and will be passed down to their children's children. After the truth was made public they became ashamed to hear themselves called "P. G.'s," and, repudiating the name, called themselves instead "Annexationists."

The so-called Provisional Government began in the spring of 1894 to consider again a change of name. So they allowed a few of their chosen tools to vote for what was called a constitutional convention, of which the original conspirators, to the number of nineteen, who had no warrant for their position save their own self-given nominations, and eighteen others in sympathy with them, enacted what they called a constitution; and in order to have some guns fired at its adoption, and to curry favor with the United States, they announced the so-called Republic on the fourth day of July, 1894, and it was declared from the steps of Iolani Palace, while the vessels of war in the harbor were saluting for a totally different occasion.

During that same month Mr. Samuel Parker had mentioned to me the necessity, in his opinion, of sending a Hawaiian commissioner to the United States to see what could be done for our people. Mr. Cornwell also consulted me upon the same matter. By conference with these gentlemen, it was decided that, instead of sending five commissioners, as we had at first designed to do, that Hon. Samuel Parker, Mr. John A. Cummins, Judge H. A. Widemann, with Major W. T. Seaward as secretary, should visit the capital of the United States, and represent those in Hawaii, whether native or foreign, opposed to the missionary party, that so the government of the majority might get a hearing in the councils of that great nation to which alone I yielded my authority.

What was the result of this commission? That is impossible for me to say. They went and they returned. They brought me no papers giving an official account of their proceedings or actions while on the mission. Each had some bit of information to communicate verbally. About the only definite remark which recurs to me now is, that Secretary Gresham had informed them that Mr. Cleveland was suffering from a slight illness, and would be unable to see them for three or four days, at which intelligence they became discouraged, and left Washington. They had absolutely nothing to show to me for their time and the expenditure of my money.

A month after word was sent to me that the merchants of Honolulu, who were in sympathy with the monarchy, had decided to send Judge Widemann on a foreign mission in our interests, at which I was pleased, and acquiesced in the choice. He was gone about three months, and again returned with only a verbal statement to the effect, that, while on his way to England, he had heard that that nation was sending a message of recognition to the Republic of Hawaii. He continued on his journey as far as Germany, where he reported that the minister to whom he meant to present the statement of our side of the case was absent from the country on a tour of business or pleasure. So Judge Widemann returned without any favorable results.

All the expenses of these commissions from the very commencement, when I sent Mr. Paul Neumann to follow the original commissioners of the first supporters of the rebellion, were paid by me from my private purse. And from the seventeenth day of January to the present hour, that remains true of every effort which has been made to induce the government of the United States to act under the righteous decision of its President, Grover Cleveland, supported by the impartial report of Hon. James H. Blount. No one, outside or inside the Hawaiian Islands, has contributed a cent to the repeated outlays I have made for the good of the Hawaiian people.

Further, from the date of the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy to the present day, I have never received from the Provisional Government, nor from its successor, the "Republic of Hawaii/' a single cent of income from any source whatever. Even those revenues of the crown lands which had been collected prior to the seizure of the public treasury by the insurgents, and which remained in the hands of the commissioner at the time of my retirement from public life, were never paid to me. What became of these moneys I do not say, but not a dollar of it was ever handed to me.