Captive Paradise: A History of Hawaii (44 page)

As the noon hour approached, Lili‘uokalani and her entourage emerged in procession from the ‘Iolani Palace and crossed the street to the Ali‘iolani Hale, where the legislative chamber had been filling with members, dignitaries, and guests. Most noticeable about the assemblage was the absence of its representatives of American ancestry, the core of the Reform Party. As Lili‘uokalani mounted the broad steps and passed through the rusticated Ionic portal of the Ali‘iolani Hale, her view of the harbor was blocked by the neighboring music hall and she could not see the white, 3,300-ton U.S armored cruiser
Boston
slipping back through the narrows into Honolulu Harbor. She had been stationed there for some weeks and become a familiar sight, her two black eight-inch guns protruding from their blast shields, one on the bow and one on the stern, and the lesser five- and three-inch guns jutting like thorns down the length of her gun deck.

That vessel, one of the most powerful in the Pacific, had departed Honolulu only a few days before, for gunnery practice, and to convey U.S. minister Stevens on a visit to Hilo. Later it was alleged by natives and royalists that Stevens and Thurston, as aware as anyone that the queen was fiercely anxious to bring out the new constitution, had agreed that she was more likely to be tempted into an unconstitutional step if the
Boston
and her big guns were out of the harbor, and Stevens had the ship’s captain, G. C. Wiltse, make speed back to Honolulu as soon as he heard the rumor racing like wildfire through the country that the queen was about to act.

Even as the warship dropped anchor, a launch hurried out bearing an invitation to Captain Wiltse to attend the prorogation ceremony, but he hesitated. Members of the Reform Party had previously conferred both with Stevens and separately with himself to ascertain whether, if there was trouble and they appealed for marines to protect American lives and property, they could count on the
Boston
. If it was true that the queen was planning to nullify the 1887 constitution and issue the new one, there was likely to be trouble. If it came to that, Wiltse would be needed aboard ship. He therefore ordered Lt. Lucien Young into his dress uniform with all haste, not just to attend the closing of the legislature, but to converse, eavesdrop, and learn what he could of the situation.

Lieutenant Young hurried ashore and was one of the last guests to be seated. In the legislative chamber Young noticed immediately that virtually all the lawmakers in attendance were from one or another of the native parties, and mostly sympathetic to returning the islands to native rule. Young seated himself behind an
ali‘i
with whom he had previously been acquainted, and greeted him. The native chief seemed very pleased with things. “We have them at last,” he gloated. He could only have been referring to the absent Americans’ Reform Party. “Wait until we leave the hall and you will see something. Come over to the palace when you go out.”

Young guessed his meaning but determined to draw him out a bit more. “Do you refer to the new constitution?”

The chief nodded and then gave his attention to the front of the hall as the ceremony commenced. Young’s recollection of the occasion was typical of what had come to be the American attitude toward Hawai‘i, mocking the ceremony as buffoonery in blackface. As the queen’s entourage entered the front of the chamber from a side door, Young wrote:

First came the Chamberlain, supporting in front of him a large portfolio containing the Queen’s message of prorogation. From it were streaming the ends of white and blue silk ribbons. Next came four dusky aides-de-camp in full uniform.… They were stiff and pretentious, and exhibiting the air of fully realizing the importance of their exalted position. After them were the feather kahili bearers, supporting the emblems of savage royalty. These were followed by her Majesty the Queen, dressed in a light colored silk which tended to add somewhat to her dark complexion and negro-like features, and more plainly exhibiting in the facial outlines a look of savage determination.… Next came four homely ladies in waiting, dressed in the loud colors so much admired by all dark-colored races. Then the two royal princes, modest in demeanor, but dudish in appearance.

Only after these came the cabinet and the justices of the Hawaiian supreme court—the only American-Hawaiians in the queen’s retinue—including Associate Justice Sanford Ballard Dole. Young marked him particularly, seeing a man “whose manly bearing and intellectual appearance gave a relief to what had preceded.”

Dole was tall, now not quite fifty, still rail thin, his age denoted by his gray hair and long, square beard that affected a close impersonation of King Leopold II of the Belgians. His apple cheeks, however, and his unlined face and delicate features made him seem many years younger. Observers always felt that he conveyed great dignity. It was Lorrin Thurston and others who had prosecuted the revolution of 1887 and forced the king to sign the Bayonet Constitution, but it was Dole whose later approval made it seem solemn and acceptable.

The queen seated herself at the front desk, but not before she had tripped over her long train, which caused her to snap at her train bearers—the four “lackeys,” Lieutenant Young called them, in knee breeches, blue velvet cutaway coats, and buckled slippers.
11
(The two “modest … but dudish” princes Young mentioned were David Kawananakoa and Jonah Kuhio Kalaniana‘ole, twenty-four and nineteen, respectively, sons of Kapi‘olani’s sister Victoria Kinoiki, who had begun taking part in court life.) After the ceremony Lili‘uokalani withdrew to an anteroom, and a receiving line formed for her to greet. When it came his turn, Lieutenant Young recorded that she received him coldly, but his presence was probably the first indication she had of the
Boston
’s return. She would naturally be sorry to see the ship back so quickly; any day that Minister Stevens was out of Honolulu was a good day.

Leaving the Ali‘iolani Hale, the queen and her attendants crossed the square toward the ‘Iolani Palace. Her palace guard was present, turned out in their dress uniforms for the greater ceremony to follow. On the palace grounds the Royal Hawaiian Band was playing light airs in the pavilion that her brother had built for his coronation. The queen was an expert pianist and composer, and always listened to the band and its German conductor with a more critical ear than did her people, who just enjoyed the music and always gathered when the band played.

After entering, on her left she saw that the marshal of the kingdom, her trusted friend Charles Wilson, stood at the entrance to the blue room. She paused and asked him if everything was ready, and he said that it was. All four of the arched doors on the right side of the hall passed into the throne room, which occupied the entire east side of the first floor. At the north end of the room, two thrones reposed upon the canopied dais, flanked by two tall
kahilis
. Before the thrones was a
kapu
stick to create a sacred space. Hawai‘i was now a Christian country, but the principle of
kapu
had been an element of chiefs’ courts for centuries, and it was retained in deference to tradition. The
kapu
stick was made of a seven-foot narwhal tusk that a whaling captain had presented to Kamehameha III, and since then it had been mounted on a gold sphere.

*   *   *

Lili‘uokalani had come through the 1892 legislature with more wins than losses: she had successfully manipulated no-confidence votes, she had played the Liberal and Reform Parties against each other to obtain two means of income for the kingdom that might see it through until something could be done about the McKinley Tariff Act. Hawai‘i’s leading historian has written that had she been content with that, the coup might have been averted.
12
But she could not let it go, and she would not continue to play the existing system for what good she could get from it. Once again in Hawaiian history, royal overreach led to mayhem.
13

At the proper moment a procession of natives attired in morning dress entered the throne room. They were members of a patriotic movement, the Hui Kala‘ia‘ina. The first one carried an elegant folio that he presented to the queen, begging her to heed the many petitions of her people and proclaim this new constitution, and liberate them from the alienation they had suffered since 1887. It was impressive, but it was royal stagecraft; in fact the constitution they offered her was the one over which she herself had labored for months.

The queen decided to have the cabinet also sign the document, as was provided in the Bayonet Constitution anyway. She dispatched her chamberlain to fetch them, and she said that she would receive them in the Blue Room. As the crowd waited in the throne room, she crossed the grand hall and entered the palace’s principal reception chamber, with its yellow-cream walls, royal blue draperies and upholstery, expansive cream-and-blue carpet, and—as throughout the palace—glowing wainscoting and trim of rare, exotic native woods. The room was dominated by the pompous 1848 portrait of Louis-Philippe. Watched over by the king of the French and other European monarchs who had sent their portraits as tokens of friendship, Liliuokalani waited—for three hours.

When the cabinet finally assembled, freshly coached by Thurston, they declined to sign the document, and urged on her the fatal irregularity of what she was about to do. Lili‘uokalani was furious with them, alleging that she would not have proceeded with the constitution without their having encouraged her; accusing Peterson of playing her falsely in returning the draft after a month with no correction, from which she assumed that he found it acceptable. She raged, but they would not be moved. It was said that she even threatened to tell the restive crowd outside that it was her ministers who prevented her from issuing the new constitution. She hardly needed to remind them that during the riots in support of Queen Emma over Kalakaua, the mob had stormed the Ali’iolani Hale and cast an offending legislator from an upper-story window down to the natives who killed him. Steeling himself to the moment, Attorney General Peterson protested their loyalty but insisted that she stop and realize the danger. The step she was taking was unconstitutional, however defective she found that 1887 document to be. What she proposed to do would give the annexationists the only excuse they needed to arm themselves for revolution. With enormous difficulty Peterson and the others persuaded Lili‘uokalani for her own safety’s sake to postpone promulgating the new constitution.

It was almost unthinkable for an
ali‘i
of her station to back down from such a confrontation, and it was four in the afternoon before Lili‘uokalani returned to the throne room. “Princes, Nobles, and Representatives,” she began, “I have listened to thousands of the voices of my people that have come to me, and I am prepared to grant their request. The present Constitution is full of defects, as the Chief Justice here will testify.… It is so faulty that I think a new one should be granted. I have prepared one in which the rights of all have been regarded—a Constitution suited to the wishes of the people. I was ready and expected to proclaim the new Constitution today as a suitable occasion for it … but with regret I have to say I have met with obstacles that prevent it.… You have my love and with sorrow I now dismiss you.”

Now the humiliation would have to be repeated before the crowd that had gathered outside to welcome the restoration of their rights. Her people had despised the Bayonet Constitution that stole the vote from them, and they had petitioned her relentlessly to do what she had done. She knew they would rise up if she asked them to, but she did not want anyone’s blood on her soul. More to the point, she knew that she would be blamed for any violence, and she knew that the United States would respond fiercely if any of their people, property, or investments were threatened. Although she was angry, the queen could not be responsible for any replay of the 1874 riots.

With bitterness but determination, the queen mounted the iridescent
koa
staircase and appeared on the palace balcony, motioning the crowd for quiet. She spoke in Hawaiian and in the style of the epic chants: “O, ye people who love the chiefs!” she hailed them. “Hereby I say unto you, I am now ready to proclaim the new constitution of my Kingdom, thinking that it would be successful. But look you! Obstacles have arisen. Therefore I say unto you, my loving people, go with good hope and do not be disturbed in your minds. Because within the next few days now coming, I will proclaim the new constitution.”

The crowd grumbled and began to disperse, but the listening Americans—including Lorrin Thurston and others of the Annexation Club—buzzed among themselves. What had she said? Many of them spoke Hawaiian, but it was an ambiguous language:
Ua keia mau la
.
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Had she actually meant the next few days now coming, in a short time, or had she merely meant sometime? They must not take the chance, and the members of the secret Annexation Club dispersed to gather again immediately at William O. Smith’s law office.

Harking back to the French Revolution and the goodwill that it might buy them from the United States, they formed a Committee of Safety—mostly the same people as the Annexation Club—which decided breathlessly that the time had come to abolish the monarchy and establish a provisional government. They therefore set to work at what they did best—drafting documents.

The next day, Sunday, they shared their work with Peterson and Colburn, who were not prepared to go quite so far. After conferring with proroyalist leaders, they believed that the queen’s pledge not to change the constitution would suffice to head off such a drastic step. By now word of a mass antigovernment meeting for Monday was abroad, with all the trouble that portended. Lili‘uokalani sent urgently to U.S. minister Stevens to learn whether the government could count on American protection, of which Stevens declined to assure her. Some advised the queen to declare martial law and round up the conspirators before things went any further, but that could ignite the fighting she dreaded. Lili‘u chose a milder course: simply calling a competing mass meeting for the next day, as though her supporters could merely shout down the annexationists.