The Theft of a Nation

The Theft of a Nation

The political crisis came to a head in 1887. King Kalākaua was struggling with debt and political pressure from the business community. The Honolulu Rifles, a militia composed entirely of white residents, surrounded ʻIolani Palace with weapons and forced the king to sign a new constitution.

The "Bayonet Constitution" stripped most power from the monarchy and transferred it to a cabinet controlled by the business elite. Voting rights were restricted by property and income requirements that eliminated most Native Hawaiian voters while preserving the political power of wealthy foreigners. It was a bloodless coup that made future coups inevitable.

The Committee of Safety

The business elite saw this as an existential threat. If Hawaiians regained political control, they might lose their economic dominance. A group of 13 American and European businessmen and lawyers formed a "Committee of Safety" with the explicit goal of overthrowing the Queen and seeking annexation to the United States.

On January 17, 1893, they made their move. But the conspirators had no military force of their own. They depended entirely on U.S. Minister John Stevens, who ordered 162 armed Marines from the warship USS Boston to land in Honolulu, ostensibly to "protect American lives and property."

The Queen's Impossible Choice

The presence of American troops made resistance futile. Queen Liliʻuokalani faced an impossible choice. Fight and watch her people die in a hopeless battle, or surrender and hope the United States would eventually do the right thing.

She chose surrender, but not to the local conspirators. In a brilliantly crafted statement, she yielded her authority directly to the U.S. government, framing the overthrow as an illegal act between two sovereign nations:

She believed America would investigate and correct this injustice. For a while, it seemed she might be right.

Cleveland's Investigation

President Grover Cleveland did investigate and found the overthrow completely illegal. The Blount Commission report condemned the actions of Minister Stevens and called for the Queen's restoration. Cleveland formally apologized and demanded that the provisional government step down.

But the businessmen who had seized power refused to give it back. They declared themselves the Republic of Hawaii under Sanford Dole and settled in to wait for a friendlier U.S. president.

The Queen's Trial

In 1895, following an unsuccessful attempt by Hawaiian royalists to restore the Queen, the republic found its excuse for further repression. Liliʻuokalani was arrested and accused of knowing about the plot. Her trial took place in her own throne room at ʻIolani Palace—the same building that had once symbolized Hawaiian sovereignty now served as a makeshift courthouse.

Convicted of "misprision of treason," she was sentenced to five years of hard labor, later reduced to imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom of the palace. To secure the release of her supporters, she was forced to sign a formal document of abdication. She later wrote, "For myself, I would have chosen death rather than to have signed it."