| Black Week | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Hawaiian Rebellions (1887–1895) | |||||||
 USRC Thomas Corwin, whose unexpected arrival caused the incident | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 United States  United Kingdom |  Provisional Government of Hawaii | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Albert S. Willis John Irwin | Sanford B. Dole | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
United States
United Kingdom | |||||||
The Black Week was a crisis in Honolulu, Hawaii that nearly caused a war between the Hawaiian Provisional Government and the United States of America.[ citation needed ]
In the wake of the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, President Grover Cleveland of the United States denounced the coup d'état and vowed to reverse the damage done, and to restore the Kingdom. [1] [2] Following the Overthrow, Cleveland launched an investigation headed by James Blount (as then United States Minister to Hawaii), known as the Blount Report. After the investigation, the minister to Hawaii was replaced by Albert Willis, who began negotiations with the deposed monarch, Queen Liliʻuokalani, for a US led invasion to restore the monarchy. However, the negotiations fell through due to President Cleveland's unwillingness to use force against the Provisional Government. [3]
On December 14, 1893, Albert Willis arrived in Honolulu aboard the USRC Corwin unannounced, this caused anticipation of an American invasion to restore the monarchy.[ citation needed ] During this hysteria, Willis stimulated fears by staging a mock invasion with the USRC Corwin, USS Adams, and USS Philadelphia, directing their guns toward the capital. [4] Willis' goal was to maintain fear of the United States to pressure the Provisional Government into forfeiting the island back to the Queen and to maintain a US invasion as a possibility, whilst remaining officially neutral. Willis stated there were more than 1,000 men of military age in the city that the Provisional Government was arming. Willis ordered Rear Admiral John Irwin to organize a landing operation using troops on the two American ships. He made no attempt to conceal preparations of the operation, [5] as men readied equipment on deck. The next shipment of mail, news, and information was yet to arrive aboard the Alameda, so until then the public was uninformed of the relations between Hawaii and the U.S. [5] Sanford B. Dole, The President of the provisional government of Hawaii attempted to quell the anxiety by assuring the public there would be no invasion. On January 3, 1894 public anxiety became critical, giving the incident its name, the “Black Week”.[ how? ] As the anticipation of a conflict intensified in Honolulu, Irwin became concerned for American citizens and property in the city, considering he may actually have to land troops to protect them if violence erupted in retaliation for the crisis. The commanders of the Japanese cruiser Naniwa and the British cruiser HMS Champion asked to join the landing operation, in order to protect lives and property of their respective nationalities. On January 11, 1894, Willis revealed to Dole the invasion to be a hoax. [6] [7]
Though Willis did not restore the monarchy, he was able to incite doubt in the Hawaiian public over the Provisional Government and communicate that the US was capable of going to war with them. [8] This was one of the factors resulting in the formation of a republic. To Cleveland this was an improvement; avoiding annexation left the potential to restore the monarchy and was more favorable in keeping Hawaii an independent country than as a territory of the United States. Shortly afterward, on 4 July 1894, the Provisional Government renamed itself by declaring the Republic of Hawaii. [9]
Domestic response to Willis' and Cleveland's efforts was largely negative. The independent New York Herald wrote: "If Minister Willis has not already been ordered to quit meddling in Hawaiian affairs and mind his own business, no time should be lost in giving him emphatic instructions to that effect."[ citation needed ] The Democratic New York World wrote: "Is it not high time to stop the business of interference with the domestic affairs of foreign nations? Hawaii is 2000 miles from our nearest coast. Let it alone."[ citation needed ] The Democratic New York Sun said: "Mr. Cleveland lacks ... the first essential qualification of a referee or arbitrator."[ citation needed ] The Republican New York Tribune called Willis' trip a "forlorn and humiliating failure to carry out Mr. Cleveland's outrageous project".[ citation needed ] The Republican New York Recorder wrote: "The idea of sending out a minister accredited to the President of a new republic, having him present his credentials to that President and address him as 'Great and Good Friend', and then deliberately set to work to organize a conspiracy to overthrow his Government and re-establish the authority of the deposed Queen, is repugnant to every man who holds American honor and justice in any sort of respect."[ citation needed ] The Democratic New York Times was one of the few New York City newspapers that defended Cleveland's decisions: "Mr. Willis discharged his duty as he understood it." [10]
Sanford Ballard Dole was an American lawyer and jurist. He lived through the periods when Hawaii was a kingdom, provisional government, republic, and territory. Dole advocated the westernization of Hawaiian government and culture. After the overthrow of the monarchy, he served as the President of the Republic of Hawaii until his government secured Hawaii's annexation by the United States.
Liliʻuokalani was the only queen regnant and the last sovereign monarch of the Hawaiian Kingdom, ruling from January 29, 1891, until the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893. The composer of "Aloha ʻOe" and numerous other works, she wrote her autobiography Hawaiʻi's Story by Hawaiʻi's Queen during her imprisonment following the overthrow.
Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen is a book written by Queen Liliʻuokalani, the last monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. It was first published in 1898, five years after the overthrow of the Kingdom. In it, Liliʻuokalani gives her account of her upbringing, her accession to the throne, the overthrow of her government by pro-American forces, her appeals to the United States to restore the Hawaiian monarchy, and her arrest and trial following an unsuccessful 1895 rebellion against the Republic of Hawaiʻi.
The Committee of Safety, formally the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, was a 13-member group of the Annexation Club. The group was composed of mostly Hawaiian subjects of American descent and American citizens who were members of the Missionary Party, as well as some foreign residents in the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. The group planned and carried out the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi on January 17, 1893. The goal of this group was to achieve annexation of Hawaiʻi by the United States. The new independent Republic of Hawaiʻi government was thwarted in this goal by the administration of President Grover Cleveland, and it was not until 1898 that the United States Congress approved a joint resolution of annexation creating the U.S. Territory of Hawaiʻi.
John Leavitt Stevens was the United States Minister to the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 when he conspired to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani in association with the Committee of Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston and Sanford B. Dole – the first Americans attempting to overthrow a foreign government under the auspices of a United States government officer. Apart from his work as a politician and diplomat, he was also a journalist, author, minister and newspaper publisher. He founded the Republican Party in Maine and served as Maine State Senator.
The Provisional Government of Hawaii was proclaimed after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom on January 17, 1893, by the 13-member Committee of Safety under the leadership of its chairman Henry E. Cooper and former judge Sanford B. Dole as the designated President of Hawaii. It replaced the Kingdom of Hawaii after the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani as a provisional government until the Republic of Hawaii was established on July 4, 1894.
Robert William Kalanihiapo Wilcox, nicknamed the Iron Duke of Hawaiʻi, was a Native Hawaiian whose father was an American and whose mother was Hawaiian. A revolutionary soldier and politician, he led uprisings against both the government of the Hawaiian Kingdom under King Kalākaua and the Republic of Hawaii under Sanford Dole, what are now known as the Wilcox rebellions. He was later elected the first delegate to the United States Congress for the Territory of Hawaii.
The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is a grassroots political and cultural campaign to reestablish an autonomous or independent nation or kingdom of Hawaii out of a desire for sovereignty, self-determination, and self-governance. Some groups also advocate some form of redress from the United States for its 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani, and for what is described as a prolonged military occupation beginning with the 1898 annexation. The movement generally views both the overthrow and annexation as illegal. Palmyra Atoll and Sikaiana were annexed by the Kingdom in the 1860s, and the movement regards them as under illegal occupation along with the Hawaiian Islands. The Apology Resolution the United States Congress passed in 1993 acknowledged that the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was an illegal act.
The Wilcox Rebellions were an armed rebellion in 1888, a revolt in 1889, and a counter-revolution in 1895, led by Robert William Wilcox against the promulgation of the Bayonet Constitution in 1888 and 1889, and against the overthrow of the monarchy in 1895. He was considered a royalist and dedicated to the monarchy of the Kingdom of Hawaii. Wilcox's revolts were part of the Hawaiian Rebellions.
The proposed 1893 Constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom would have been a replacement of the Constitution of 1887, primarily based on the Constitution of 1864 put forth by Queen Lili'uokalani. While it never became anything more than a draft, the constitution had a profound impact on Hawaiʻi's history: it set off a chain of events that eventually resulted in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
The legal status of Hawaii is an evolving legal matter as it pertains to United States law. The US Federal law was amended in 1993 with the Apology Resolution which "acknowledges that the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii occurred with the active participation of agents and citizens of the United States and further acknowledges that the Native Hawaiian people never directly relinquished to the United States their claims to their inherent sovereignty as a people over their national lands".
The Morgan Report was an 1894 report concluding an official U.S. Congressional investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, including the alleged role of U.S. military troops in the overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani. Along with the Blount Report submitted in 1893, it is one of the main source documents compiling the testimony of witnesses and participants in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in January 1893. The Morgan Report was the final result of an official U.S. Congressional investigation into the overthrow, conducted by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whose chairman was Senator John Tyler Morgan, Democrat of Alabama.
The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom was a coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani, which took place on January 17, 1893, on the island of Oʻahu and led by the Committee of Safety, composed of seven foreign residents and six Hawaiian Kingdom subjects of American descent in Honolulu. The Committee prevailed upon American minister John L. Stevens to call in the U.S. Marines to protect the national interest of the United States of America. The insurgents established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was the annexation of the islands to the United States, which occurred in 1898.
The Blount Report is the popular name given to the part of the 1893 United States House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee Report regarding the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The report was conducted by U.S. Commissioner James H. Blount, appointed by U.S. President Grover Cleveland to investigate the events surrounding the January 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Albert Shelby Willis was a United States Representative from Kentucky and a Minister to Hawaii.
The Hawaiian Kingdom, or Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, was a sovereign state located in the Hawaiian Islands. The country was formed in 1795, when the warrior chief Kamehameha the Great, of the independent island of Hawaiʻi, conquered the independent islands of Oʻahu, Maui, Molokaʻi and Lānaʻi and unified them under one government. In 1810, the whole Hawaiian archipelago became unified when Kauaʻi and Niʻihau joined the Hawaiian Kingdom voluntarily. Two major dynastic families ruled the kingdom: the House of Kamehameha and the House of Kalākaua.
The Hawaiian rebellions and revolutions took place in Hawaii between 1887 and 1895. Until annexation in 1898, Hawaii was an independent sovereign state, recognized by the United States, United Kingdom, France and Germany with exchange of ambassadors. However, there were several challenges to the reigning governments of the Kingdom and Republic of Hawaii during the 8+1⁄2-year (1887–1895) period.
Opposition to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom took several forms. Following the overthrow of the monarchy on January 17, 1893, Hawaii's provisional government—under the leadership of Sanford B. Dole—attempted to annex the land to the United States under Republican Benjamin Harrison's administration. But the treaty of annexation came up for approval under the administration of Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, anti-expansionist, and friend of the deposed Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii. Cleveland retracted the treaty on March 4, 1893, and launched an investigation headed by James Henderson Blount; its report is known as the Blount Report.