Grover Cleveland: Message to Congress on Hawaiian Sovereignty

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In the midst of the economic crisis called the Panic of 1893, Cleveland faced a difficult issue in foreign relations. In the final days of the Harrison administration in early 1893, American planters in Hawaii had overthrown the islands' monarchy and signed a treaty of annexation with the United States. Cleveland opposed the manner by which the Americans had seized control of the islands. Shortly after his inauguration, he withdrew the annexation treaty from the Senate and dispatched former Georgia congressman James Henderson Blount to Hawaii to conduct an investigation. Blount's subsequent report condemned the actions of the Americans in Hawaii, including the U.S. representative John L. Stevens. Cleveland feared that the Hawaiian example could mark a new age of imperialism for the United States and usher in an era of territorial expansion in which the nation would behave like the imperial powers of Europe. Privately, he also questioned the actions of the preceding administration for signing the annexation treaty in the last few days before it left office.

Based on Blount's report and his own personal inclinations, Cleveland sought a restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy. However, negotiations between Queen Liliuokalani and the pro-American government failed. In December 1893 Cleveland sent a message to Congress asking the legislature to develop a solution. In his message Cleveland stresses that the provisional pro-American government was not broad-based, nor was it representative of the people. He notes that “it did not appear that such provisional government had the sanction of either popular revolution or suffrage.” Cleveland declares that past instances of U.S. territorial expansion stood in “marked contrast with the hasty recognition of a government openly and concededly set up for the purpose of tendering to us territorial annexation” of Hawaii.

The president's message outlines the chronology of the fall of the monarchy. He mentions a number of illicit actions taken by U.S. officials and expresses his belief that the provisional government would not have acted without support from those representatives. He informs Congress of his sincere hope that the past would be buried, and that the restored Government would “reassume its authority as if its continuity had not been interrupted.” However, he also notes that the deposed queen was unwilling to grant clemency to those who had participated in her overthrow. As a result, U.S.-backed talks had failed to yield a compromise.

Cleveland's message met with mixed results. A significant faction in Congress supported the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands. Just as Cleveland had not been able to craft a compromise between the monarchy and the provisional government, the legislature was not able to develop a resolution. Instead, it produced the Morgan Report (named after Senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama), which exonerated the Americans who participated in the coup. This was followed by a Senate resolution that tacitly accepted the status quo. It rejected the restoration of the monarchy and the proposed annexation and called for the United States to adopt a policy of noninterference in the islands. The status of Hawaii would be determined by Cleveland's successor, William McKinley, when the Senate approved a new annexation treaty in July 1898.