Ken Conklin emailed this comment yesterday after running into trouble getting through my spam filter. It points to some interesting information, and I thought it worth sharing. The links to the Morgan Report lead to contemporary accounts of the events of 1893 taken during testimony given under oath before a U.S. Senate committee.

Hi, Ken Stokes. I still remember you from a meeting about 13-14 years ago at Kekuni’s house, at a time when I was leaning in the direction of supporting the independence movement; and another one or two at UH.

Ken, you wrote “there was nothing ‘internal’ about it.” [the Hawaiian revolution of 1893]. Oh yes there was. And the U.S. Senate said so after a two month investigation under oath and cross examination. That little thing you wrote is typical of the historical half-truth zingers put out there by sovereignty activists. Unfortunately it requires considerable information to disprove it, and of course I need to provide lots of footnotes since otherwise you’ll just say I’m making it all up.

As you point out, Willis’ letter to Dole in December 1893 makes clear that Cleveland was blaming America for the overthrow of the monarchy. At roughly the same time, Cleveland sent the Blount Report to Congress along with Cleveland’s strongly worded message blaming the U.S. for the overthrow and turning the matter over to Congress for further action. It’s my own belief, although I cannot prove it, that Cleveland wanted Congress to approve sending troops to overthrow Dole and put Liliuokalani back on the throne.

But then something very interesting happened. The U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing about the Hawaiian revolution. The hearing ran for two months (January and February 1894), open to the public (unlike Blount’s “investigation” which was done in secret; worse than Abercrombie; Ian take note!) with testimony under oath and severe cross examination (unlike Blount who administered no oath and was eager to believe all the royalists he spoke with).

In late February the committee published its 808-page report including its conclusions and the transcripts of what the witnesses had said. The committee concluded that the U.S. peacekeepers did not take over any buildings, did not patrol the streets, spent their time in barracks waiting to be called but never needed, did not enter the Palace grounds nor point their guns at the Palace, did not give any food or ammunition or any other assistance to the local revolutionaries.

Among the interesting facts about the committee report are the fact that the Senate was controlled by the Democrats (Cleveland’s own party), and of course the chairman of the committee, Senator Morgan, was also a Democrat. The committee totally repudiated the Blount Report. There was even testimony under oath from men who had been interviewed by Blount in Honolulu, who told the committee that Blount had falsely reported them in the Blount Report as having said things opposite to what they had actually told Blount (i.e., Blount was a liar).

The committee took testimony from several of the U.S. peacekeepers including enlisted men, officers at several ranks, the captain of the ship, Minister Stevens, etc. always asking them “Exactly what happened? What day? What time of day? Who gave the orders?” etc. It also took testimony from several highly respected native-born subjects of the Kingdom who had served for many years as department heads under several monarchs and were not involved in the revolution.

Shortly after publishing the Morgan Report, the Senate passed a resolution that basically slapped Cleveland in the face, telling the U.S. to keep its hands off the internal affairs of Hawaii. And remember, the committee chair and a majority of the Senate were Democrats, same as Cleveland.

I am very proud to have served as co-editor of the Morgan Report webpage. After several years when the sovereignty activists had scanned the Blount Report using government money, but conveniently ran out of money before they could get around to the Morgan Report, Jere Krischel and I worked together (with zero money but lots of respect for history) to put Morgan on the internet so everyone can read it easily. Jere did the scanning and OCR work from the original document; he and I both did the proofreading and editing to correct OCR errors, and we both (mostly I) wrote summaries of all the testimonies and special sub-pages pulling together information on specific topics from throughout the report.

See especially the “Outline of Topics” and the “Morgan’s Gems” linked on the right-hand side of the front page at
http://morganreport.org.