September 3, 2019 • 22 mins
The same day Queen Liliuokalani proposed a new constitution for Hawaii that would restore power to the monarchy and grant native Hawaiians the right to vote in elections, a group of white businessmen met at a law office in Honolulu, and hatched a plan that would change the course of nations.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minky. Listener discretion advised. In eighteen eighty seven,
Queen Victoria invited fifty foreign princes and monarchs from around
the world to celebrate her Golden Jubilee. The jubilee marked
(00:21):
fifty years for Victoria as the Queen of England. Her
silver jubilee twenty five years earlier was barely commemorated at all.
Just months before that, her beloved husband, Prince Albert, had
died young of typhoid fever. Victoria had been bereft. She
remained cloaked in black and shielded from the public life
(00:42):
in mourning for decades. But now for her Golden Jubilee,
she was re emerging for the first time, a newly
minted Empress of India, a global queen, and one who
deserved a celebration that exalted her in all of her
international imperial glory. Among her foreign royal guests were crowned
(01:06):
Princess Lilio Killani of Hawaii, the sister of the King
and next in line for the throne. Lilio Kilani traveled
with the King's wife and to their surprise when their
ship arrived in Liverpool, they were met with all of
the royal pomp and fanfare that England had to offer.
Banners flapped happily, streamers danced in the wind rows of
(01:30):
soldiers saluted in perfect unison. A military band played God
Save the Queen. They were greeted by the Lord Mayor
of Liverpool himself. In Hawaii, royalty enjoyed far less pomp
and pageantry, especially since the white owners of the sugar
plantations had installed themselves into government. Those men, mostly from
(01:52):
the United States, England, and Germany, treated the native Hawaiian
monarchy as something between a nuisance and a threat. But here,
arriving to honor Queen Victoria, Lilio Collani and her sister
in law were among the guests of honor, treated with
splendor and majesty that most European monarchs took for granted.
(02:14):
They were brought to London on a steamer train with
an escort of one hundred soldiers, and granted use of
Queen Victoria's own carriages, horses, and drivers for the duration
of their stay. When Lilio Collani commented on the grandness
of their welcome, their minister bowed deeply. They had come
such a long way, he said. Her Majesty thought the
(02:36):
special honors were the very least she could do. Lilio
Collani was seated in the Royal Box at Westminster Abbey
for the Jubilee service, and during the prayers for Queen Victoria,
Lilio Collani saw a ray of light come through the
high windows and fall directly upon Victoria's head. It was
like God himself granting Victoria her blessing. She on. Lilio
(03:01):
Klani and her sister in law arrived back at their
residence that afternoon, their ears still ringing from the boom
of military drums and the shouts of crowd, their heads
still buzzing with the excitement of their private audience of
Queen Victoria. But they were scarcely in the doorway before
they knew something was wrong. Their household staff were staring
(03:25):
at them stony faced. Lolio Collani let her eyes trace
around the room, and she noticed that their bags were
already packed. They needed to go back to Hawaii immediately.
Someone said something had happened. A group of white businessmen
had assembled a paramilitary group and forced the King. Lolio
(03:48):
Collani's brother to sign away most of his power and
turned the monarch into a powerless figurehead. What's more, the
right to vote for the legislature in Hawaii would now
include exorbitant property requirements, and explicitly refused that right to
the many immigrants who had come to the island from
Asia and who had been voting up until that point.
(04:11):
The new wealth restrictions meant the vast majority of native
Hawaiians could no longer vote either. The new law of
the land was the so called Bayonet Constitution, so called
because the king had been forced to sign at the
end of Bayonets. The nation to which Lilio Kolani frantically
returned was now falling into the grasp of business men.
(04:33):
It was a nation on the precipice, and that was
the nation the set and imperiled that she inherited when
she became queen after her brother's death two years later.
Queen Liliukillani tried to hold the bursting levies at bay
for as long as she could, but the waves of
imperialism came flooding in, swallowing Hawaii and eventually its last queen.
(05:00):
I'm Danish Wartz and this is noble blood even before
she was technically queen, Lilio Kalani made it clear that
her loyalty would always be to the Hawaiian people and
not to the business interests of white non natives. Back
(05:23):
in she had been acting as regent for her brother
while he was away on a diplomatic trip when Hawaii
faced an outbreak of smallpox imported mainly from Chinese laborers
who were brought in by businessmen to work in the
sugarcane fields. A quick word about smallpox. It takes about
two weeks for the symptoms of smallpox to show. In
(05:46):
that time, a person might look perfectly healthy, all the
while they're spreading the deadly disease in person, through the
air and through the objects they touch. After that incubation period,
the symptoms slowly emerge. It begins with the fever and
a lingering, uncomfortable headache. Your limbs will become heavy, your
(06:06):
back will ache, you might be vomiting. And then the
red spots come Lesions that appear first on your face
and hands, and then all over your body. Little spots
that become blisters that fill with pus and then scaped
reveal deep pitted scars. Its fatality rate was about one
in three. That two week incubation period makes smallpox especially
(06:31):
insiduous and contagious, and because native Hawaiians had no inborn immunity,
the threat was a deadly serious one. As Queen Regent
Lilio Kalani made the decision to shut down all ports
and enforce a mandatory quarantine until the outbreak was contained.
Vessels were prohibited from taking passengers between islands. The sugar
(06:55):
growers were infuriated that she was putting a frieze on
their business, but Lilio Kolani stood her ground. Though three
hundred people died from the outbreak, there were zero additional
cases outside the city of Honolulu, But Lilio Kolani was
faced with perhaps even a greater crisis in eighteen ninety
(07:19):
after she became Queen, the terrif Act. For decades, the
United States had provided generous terms for sugar growers in
Hawaii in order to encourage American plantation owners to settle there.
While the Terriffact of eighteen ninety massively increased the tax
(07:39):
on imported manufactured goods, it eliminated all tariffs on sugar,
which meant that the American market was now flooded with
cheap sugar from all over the world, the Hawaiian economy
was crippled. Over decades, Hawaii's economy had constructed itself up
around the of her both terms the US had given,
(08:02):
and now the US had pulled that framework out in
one single stroke, and the whole thing was threatening to collapse, unless,
of course, Hawaii agreed to be annexed by the United States.
That was the ultimate goal of a group of white
American business owners led by a man named Lauren A. Thurston.
(08:23):
They called themselves the Annexation Club. Annexation would make things
a lot more convenient for them, but it would especially
help when it came to making a tidy profit from
their sugar plantations. So annexation might have been what the
American businessmen wanted, but the same couldn't be said for
the native population of Hawaii or for Queen Lilio Kolani.
(08:47):
In fact, since her ascension, she had spent nearly all
her energy trying to build a new constitution for Hawaii,
one that gave the monarchy back its power, and one
that once again granted Native Hawaiian's immigrants of color the
right to vote. In eighteen ninety two, Queen Lilio Collani
traveled throughout the country on horseback, riding from village to
(09:10):
village and talking to her people. She may have lost
most of her political power, but she was still the
country's queen, and she used her power and influence to
listen to the voices of the people who no longer
had a voice in government. Thousands of people signed her
petition for a new constitution, and finally, on January fourteenth,
(09:32):
eighteen ninety three, Lilio Collani presented the draft of the
proposed constitution to the government's ministers. This version of the
constitution would increase the number of elected representatives and eliminate
the property requirements for voters. Non citizen American and European
residents would lose the right to vote. A massive crowd
(09:55):
of Native Hawaiians gathered outside in front of Iolani Palace,
where the meeting was taking place. They were waiting for
the queen to emerge and proclaim that Hawaii had a
new constitution, but the weight was taking longer than they expected. Inside,
the queen's ministers all refused to sign the new constitution,
(10:16):
believing it would spark unrest. After hours of debate, the
queen finally gave in, and so when the queen finally
emerged to the crowd waiting outside, their cheers caught in
their throats. As soon as they saw her face. Lilio
Kalani told her people that they should return peacefully to
their homes. Later, some of the Queen's ministers met with
(10:39):
the business men to tell them what had happened in
the palace that day. The informants shared what had been
in the queen's constitution, how she was building power to
take back Hawaii. They spoke of the crowd of supporters
that had come to cheer for her. It was time
for Lord Thurston and his coterie to strike before they
lost or chance. Looking at a photo of Lauren A. Thurston,
(11:09):
he doesn't look like he was born in eighteen fifty eight.
Take away the old fashioned style of his suit, the
massive Victorian era, and not in the tie, the narrow lapels,
and he looks like he could be a stern manager
at whatever company you work for today. With his full
but neat beard and slight receiving hairline, he might even
be considered handsome if it weren't for his black eyes
(11:32):
and the unsettling intensity of his gaze. Thurston was born
in Honolulu, the grandson of two American missionaries, two of
the very first Christian missionaries to Hawaii. He had been
the one who had written the Bayonet Constitution that Liliuokalani's
brother had been forced to sign. On January fo Liliuokalani
(11:55):
proposed her new constitution to her ministers. That very evening,
after hours in a law office in Honolulu, Lauren Thurston
gathered twelve elite white businessmen. These thirteen men, all members
of the Annexation Club, formed a new group, the Committee
(12:15):
of Safety. Their plan was to gather weapons and raise
a militia and, with the support of the American military,
overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy altogether. On January six, the Queen's
(12:36):
Minister of the Kingdom, Charles Burnett Wilson, received a tip
that a coup was imminent. He requested arrest warrants for
the thirteen members of the Committee of Safety, all incredibly wealthy,
well connected men. Fearing all out warfare, the cabinet denied
the arrest warrants. The next day, when a native Hawaiian
(12:59):
policeman tried to inspect crates of weapons that were being
gathered by the Committee's paramilitary group. He was shot. The
policeman survived, and his was the only bloodshed in the
overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The queen had watched from
the palace as the USS Boston approached the shore with
(13:19):
one hundred and sixty two marines on board. The U
S S. Boston had orders to protect American business interests.
Chaos is bad for business. They would only get involved
if there was fighting, which sounds well and good, except
it meant in practice that the queen and her supporters
were paralyzed, powerless when it came to defending themselves against
(13:43):
the coming insurrection. Almost five hundred men were rallied to
protect the queen. The Committee of Safety had fifteen hundred,
all white and heavily armed. Under the strict gaze of
the ship of American marines in the harbor, Lalio Kolani surrendered.
(14:10):
Lauren Thurston made Sanford B. Dole President of the provisional
Government of Hawaii. The Dole had declined to officially be
a member of the Committee of Safety that technically overthrew
the queen. The United States minister who had approved the
marine presence during the coup, wrote the Secretary of State,
the Hawaiian pair is now fully ripe, and this is
(14:32):
the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.
But unfortunately for the conspirators, something inconvenient was happening in
the United States a presidential election. Though Benjamin Harrison had
been eager to annex Hawaii, his successor, Grover Cleveland, was
staunchly anti imperialist. Cleveland was in his second of his
(14:55):
two nonconsecutive terms, and upon taking office, he immediately with
true the treaty for annexation that Benjamin Harrison had sent
to the Senate. Cleveland also appointed former Congressman James Blount
to investigate what exactly had happened during the overthrow of
the Hawaiian monarchy. The results of that report were crystal clear.
(15:17):
Blount determined that the U. S. Minister to Hawaii had
landed the U S. S. Boston under false pretenses in
order to support the coup, and the coup was carried
out against the wishes of the majority of the Hawaiian population.
The involvement of the U. S. Military was unauthorized, and
Queen Liliuokolani should be restored to the throne. In an
(15:39):
address to Congress, President Cleveland stated that the Hawaiian government
had been overthrown by quote, an act of war committed
with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United
States and without the authority of Congress. President Cleveland's representative
met with Lilio Kolani and shared the good news. The
(16:01):
United States would be willing to help her return to
the throne under one condition that you give a full
pardon to the group of conspirators who had tried to
depose her. Lilio Klani refused. She believed that she would
need to consult with her counsel and punish the traders,
most likely with banishment and the confiscation of their property.
(16:24):
The American representative was aghast. By the time he made
it back to Washington, the story had become twisted and distorted.
Propaganda in the papers shifted public opinion until Liliuokalani was
seen as a dark skinned barbarian queen who wouldn't be
satisfied until she saw the American businessman beheaded in the streets.
(16:50):
Lu Kalani wrote about that experience in her memoir about
hearing second hand that she was calling for beheadings. She wrote,
there's an old proverb which says that a lie can
travel around the world while the truth is putting on
its boots. That offensive charge was repeated to my hurt
as often as possible, although I immediately sent my protest
(17:12):
that I had not used the words attributed to me.
Even so, in order to restore the monarchy, that December,
Liliuokalani agreed to Cleveland's original terms a full pardon. But
by then the provisional government had consolidated its hold on
the islands and Cleveland power when it came to the
(17:32):
issue of Hawaii had weakened. Congress, controlled by Cleveland. Republican
foes commissioned their own investigation, the Morgan Report, chaired by
former Confederate general and Jim Crow proponent John Tyler Morrigan.
That report concluded that America had done nothing wrong in
the coup, and so to the American government at least
(17:55):
the issue was closed. When counter revolutionaries tempted to overthrow
the new white government, Liliukolani was arrested, her home ransacked
by soldiers from Garrett to seller. Every drawer wrenched open,
their contents spilled onto the floor and swept into bags
for evidence. Though she had not been directly involved in
(18:19):
the counter revolution, She was brought in front of a
military court and convicted of misprision of treason, meaning she
had been aware of potential treason but hadn't reported it.
Hundreds of her supporters were arrested, and six were scheduled
to be hanged in order to spare their lives. Liliukolani
formally abdicated the throne, or so it appeared. When she
(18:42):
was presented with the formal contract, she signed her name
as Liliukolani Dominus, her husband's last name, which she had
never taken legally. It was the only small act of
rebellion left to the queen, who was always willing to
sack advice for her people. That might be the end
(19:11):
of Queen Lilio Collani's reign, but there's still more in
her story. Stick around after a few brief words from
our sponsors to hear about it. If the name Dole
sounded familiar, chances are you're familiar with Sandford's cousin, James Dole.
(19:35):
James Dole had been about nine years old growing up
in Massachusetts with his colonial pedigree family. When the monarchy
in Hawaii was overthrown. When James turned twenty two, he
decided to move to Hawaii, where his cousin with the
governor and began the pineapple growing business that blossomed into
the multinational Doll Food Company. But Lilio Colani has a
(19:58):
legacy that survives to the modern day as well. You see,
in addition to being a queen, Lilio Kalani was a
gifted musician and composer. She sang and played guitar, piano, organ, ukulele,
and the zither. While imprisoned, Lilio Collani was denied books
and newspapers, but she continued composing music in transcribing music
(20:21):
that she had already composed. One of the songs she
wrote was called Aloha Ai. You almost certainly know it.
It's been covered by Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley and
Johnny Cash, But if you're my age, you probably know
it for a slightly different reason. The instrumental version of
the song has been used in countless episodes of one
(20:42):
of America's most popular cultural exports. A certain cartoon character
who lives under the sea in a pineapple doll or
otherwise SpongeBob SquarePants. The song aloha Ai was inspired when
Lilio Collani saw a and some Hawaiian colonel embracing a
young woman after the coup, when Hawaii went from a
(21:06):
monarchy to a republic, and then from a territory to
a state. For many, the song became a more meaningful
ballad mourning for the loss of Hawaii as it had
been in English. The title of Lohai translates to farewell
to the one fond embrace before I depart until we
(21:28):
meet again. Noble Blood is a co production of I
Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. The show was written and
hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,
Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social
(21:50):
media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more
about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart
Radio and Aaron Minky. Listener discretion advised. In eighteen eighty seven,
Queen Victoria invited fifty foreign princes and monarchs from around
the world to celebrate her Golden Jubilee. The jubilee marked
(00:21):
fifty years for Victoria as the Queen of England. Her
silver jubilee twenty five years earlier was barely commemorated at all.
Just months before that, her beloved husband, Prince Albert, had
died young of typhoid fever. Victoria had been bereft. She
remained cloaked in black and shielded from the public life
(00:42):
in mourning for decades. But now for her Golden Jubilee,
she was re emerging for the first time, a newly
minted Empress of India, a global queen, and one who
deserved a celebration that exalted her in all of her
international imperial glory. Among her foreign royal guests were crowned
(01:06):
Princess Lilio Killani of Hawaii, the sister of the King
and next in line for the throne. Lilio Kilani traveled
with the King's wife and to their surprise when their
ship arrived in Liverpool, they were met with all of
the royal pomp and fanfare that England had to offer.
Banners flapped happily, streamers danced in the wind rows of
(01:30):
soldiers saluted in perfect unison. A military band played God
Save the Queen. They were greeted by the Lord Mayor
of Liverpool himself. In Hawaii, royalty enjoyed far less pomp
and pageantry, especially since the white owners of the sugar
plantations had installed themselves into government. Those men, mostly from
(01:52):
the United States, England, and Germany, treated the native Hawaiian
monarchy as something between a nuisance and a threat. But here,
arriving to honor Queen Victoria, Lilio Collani and her sister
in law were among the guests of honor, treated with
splendor and majesty that most European monarchs took for granted.
(02:14):
They were brought to London on a steamer train with
an escort of one hundred soldiers, and granted use of
Queen Victoria's own carriages, horses, and drivers for the duration
of their stay. When Lilio Collani commented on the grandness
of their welcome, their minister bowed deeply. They had come
such a long way, he said. Her Majesty thought the
(02:36):
special honors were the very least she could do. Lilio
Collani was seated in the Royal Box at Westminster Abbey
for the Jubilee service, and during the prayers for Queen Victoria,
Lilio Collani saw a ray of light come through the
high windows and fall directly upon Victoria's head. It was
like God himself granting Victoria her blessing. She on. Lilio
(03:01):
Klani and her sister in law arrived back at their
residence that afternoon, their ears still ringing from the boom
of military drums and the shouts of crowd, their heads
still buzzing with the excitement of their private audience of
Queen Victoria. But they were scarcely in the doorway before
they knew something was wrong. Their household staff were staring
(03:25):
at them stony faced. Lolio Collani let her eyes trace
around the room, and she noticed that their bags were
already packed. They needed to go back to Hawaii immediately.
Someone said something had happened. A group of white businessmen
had assembled a paramilitary group and forced the King. Lolio
(03:48):
Collani's brother to sign away most of his power and
turned the monarch into a powerless figurehead. What's more, the
right to vote for the legislature in Hawaii would now
include exorbitant property requirements, and explicitly refused that right to
the many immigrants who had come to the island from
Asia and who had been voting up until that point.
(04:11):
The new wealth restrictions meant the vast majority of native
Hawaiians could no longer vote either. The new law of
the land was the so called Bayonet Constitution, so called
because the king had been forced to sign at the
end of Bayonets. The nation to which Lilio Kolani frantically
returned was now falling into the grasp of business men.
(04:33):
It was a nation on the precipice, and that was
the nation the set and imperiled that she inherited when
she became queen after her brother's death two years later.
Queen Liliukillani tried to hold the bursting levies at bay
for as long as she could, but the waves of
imperialism came flooding in, swallowing Hawaii and eventually its last queen.
(05:00):
I'm Danish Wartz and this is noble blood even before
she was technically queen, Lilio Kalani made it clear that
her loyalty would always be to the Hawaiian people and
not to the business interests of white non natives. Back
(05:23):
in she had been acting as regent for her brother
while he was away on a diplomatic trip when Hawaii
faced an outbreak of smallpox imported mainly from Chinese laborers
who were brought in by businessmen to work in the
sugarcane fields. A quick word about smallpox. It takes about
two weeks for the symptoms of smallpox to show. In
(05:46):
that time, a person might look perfectly healthy, all the
while they're spreading the deadly disease in person, through the
air and through the objects they touch. After that incubation period,
the symptoms slowly emerge. It begins with the fever and
a lingering, uncomfortable headache. Your limbs will become heavy, your
(06:06):
back will ache, you might be vomiting. And then the
red spots come Lesions that appear first on your face
and hands, and then all over your body. Little spots
that become blisters that fill with pus and then scaped
reveal deep pitted scars. Its fatality rate was about one
in three. That two week incubation period makes smallpox especially
(06:31):
insiduous and contagious, and because native Hawaiians had no inborn immunity,
the threat was a deadly serious one. As Queen Regent
Lilio Kalani made the decision to shut down all ports
and enforce a mandatory quarantine until the outbreak was contained.
Vessels were prohibited from taking passengers between islands. The sugar
(06:55):
growers were infuriated that she was putting a frieze on
their business, but Lilio Kolani stood her ground. Though three
hundred people died from the outbreak, there were zero additional
cases outside the city of Honolulu, But Lilio Kolani was
faced with perhaps even a greater crisis in eighteen ninety
(07:19):
after she became Queen, the terrif Act. For decades, the
United States had provided generous terms for sugar growers in
Hawaii in order to encourage American plantation owners to settle there.
While the Terriffact of eighteen ninety massively increased the tax
(07:39):
on imported manufactured goods, it eliminated all tariffs on sugar,
which meant that the American market was now flooded with
cheap sugar from all over the world, the Hawaiian economy
was crippled. Over decades, Hawaii's economy had constructed itself up
around the of her both terms the US had given,
(08:02):
and now the US had pulled that framework out in
one single stroke, and the whole thing was threatening to collapse, unless,
of course, Hawaii agreed to be annexed by the United States.
That was the ultimate goal of a group of white
American business owners led by a man named Lauren A. Thurston.
(08:23):
They called themselves the Annexation Club. Annexation would make things
a lot more convenient for them, but it would especially
help when it came to making a tidy profit from
their sugar plantations. So annexation might have been what the
American businessmen wanted, but the same couldn't be said for
the native population of Hawaii or for Queen Lilio Kolani.
(08:47):
In fact, since her ascension, she had spent nearly all
her energy trying to build a new constitution for Hawaii,
one that gave the monarchy back its power, and one
that once again granted Native Hawaiian's immigrants of color the
right to vote. In eighteen ninety two, Queen Lilio Collani
traveled throughout the country on horseback, riding from village to
(09:10):
village and talking to her people. She may have lost
most of her political power, but she was still the
country's queen, and she used her power and influence to
listen to the voices of the people who no longer
had a voice in government. Thousands of people signed her
petition for a new constitution, and finally, on January fourteenth,
(09:32):
eighteen ninety three, Lilio Collani presented the draft of the
proposed constitution to the government's ministers. This version of the
constitution would increase the number of elected representatives and eliminate
the property requirements for voters. Non citizen American and European
residents would lose the right to vote. A massive crowd
(09:55):
of Native Hawaiians gathered outside in front of Iolani Palace,
where the meeting was taking place. They were waiting for
the queen to emerge and proclaim that Hawaii had a
new constitution, but the weight was taking longer than they expected. Inside,
the queen's ministers all refused to sign the new constitution,
(10:16):
believing it would spark unrest. After hours of debate, the
queen finally gave in, and so when the queen finally
emerged to the crowd waiting outside, their cheers caught in
their throats. As soon as they saw her face. Lilio
Kalani told her people that they should return peacefully to
their homes. Later, some of the Queen's ministers met with
(10:39):
the business men to tell them what had happened in
the palace that day. The informants shared what had been
in the queen's constitution, how she was building power to
take back Hawaii. They spoke of the crowd of supporters
that had come to cheer for her. It was time
for Lord Thurston and his coterie to strike before they
lost or chance. Looking at a photo of Lauren A. Thurston,
(11:09):
he doesn't look like he was born in eighteen fifty eight.
Take away the old fashioned style of his suit, the
massive Victorian era, and not in the tie, the narrow lapels,
and he looks like he could be a stern manager
at whatever company you work for today. With his full
but neat beard and slight receiving hairline, he might even
be considered handsome if it weren't for his black eyes
(11:32):
and the unsettling intensity of his gaze. Thurston was born
in Honolulu, the grandson of two American missionaries, two of
the very first Christian missionaries to Hawaii. He had been
the one who had written the Bayonet Constitution that Liliuokalani's
brother had been forced to sign. On January fo Liliuokalani
(11:55):
proposed her new constitution to her ministers. That very evening,
after hours in a law office in Honolulu, Lauren Thurston
gathered twelve elite white businessmen. These thirteen men, all members
of the Annexation Club, formed a new group, the Committee
(12:15):
of Safety. Their plan was to gather weapons and raise
a militia and, with the support of the American military,
overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy altogether. On January six, the Queen's
(12:36):
Minister of the Kingdom, Charles Burnett Wilson, received a tip
that a coup was imminent. He requested arrest warrants for
the thirteen members of the Committee of Safety, all incredibly wealthy,
well connected men. Fearing all out warfare, the cabinet denied
the arrest warrants. The next day, when a native Hawaiian
(12:59):
policeman tried to inspect crates of weapons that were being
gathered by the Committee's paramilitary group. He was shot. The
policeman survived, and his was the only bloodshed in the
overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The queen had watched from
the palace as the USS Boston approached the shore with
(13:19):
one hundred and sixty two marines on board. The U
S S. Boston had orders to protect American business interests.
Chaos is bad for business. They would only get involved
if there was fighting, which sounds well and good, except
it meant in practice that the queen and her supporters
were paralyzed, powerless when it came to defending themselves against
(13:43):
the coming insurrection. Almost five hundred men were rallied to
protect the queen. The Committee of Safety had fifteen hundred,
all white and heavily armed. Under the strict gaze of
the ship of American marines in the harbor, Lalio Kolani surrendered.
(14:10):
Lauren Thurston made Sanford B. Dole President of the provisional
Government of Hawaii. The Dole had declined to officially be
a member of the Committee of Safety that technically overthrew
the queen. The United States minister who had approved the
marine presence during the coup, wrote the Secretary of State,
the Hawaiian pair is now fully ripe, and this is
(14:32):
the golden hour for the United States to pluck it.
But unfortunately for the conspirators, something inconvenient was happening in
the United States a presidential election. Though Benjamin Harrison had
been eager to annex Hawaii, his successor, Grover Cleveland, was
staunchly anti imperialist. Cleveland was in his second of his
(14:55):
two nonconsecutive terms, and upon taking office, he immediately with
true the treaty for annexation that Benjamin Harrison had sent
to the Senate. Cleveland also appointed former Congressman James Blount
to investigate what exactly had happened during the overthrow of
the Hawaiian monarchy. The results of that report were crystal clear.
(15:17):
Blount determined that the U. S. Minister to Hawaii had
landed the U S. S. Boston under false pretenses in
order to support the coup, and the coup was carried
out against the wishes of the majority of the Hawaiian population.
The involvement of the U. S. Military was unauthorized, and
Queen Liliuokolani should be restored to the throne. In an
(15:39):
address to Congress, President Cleveland stated that the Hawaiian government
had been overthrown by quote, an act of war committed
with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United
States and without the authority of Congress. President Cleveland's representative
met with Lilio Kolani and shared the good news. The
(16:01):
United States would be willing to help her return to
the throne under one condition that you give a full
pardon to the group of conspirators who had tried to
depose her. Lilio Klani refused. She believed that she would
need to consult with her counsel and punish the traders,
most likely with banishment and the confiscation of their property.
(16:24):
The American representative was aghast. By the time he made
it back to Washington, the story had become twisted and distorted.
Propaganda in the papers shifted public opinion until Liliuokalani was
seen as a dark skinned barbarian queen who wouldn't be
satisfied until she saw the American businessman beheaded in the streets.
(16:50):
Lu Kalani wrote about that experience in her memoir about
hearing second hand that she was calling for beheadings. She wrote,
there's an old proverb which says that a lie can
travel around the world while the truth is putting on
its boots. That offensive charge was repeated to my hurt
as often as possible, although I immediately sent my protest
(17:12):
that I had not used the words attributed to me.
Even so, in order to restore the monarchy, that December,
Liliuokalani agreed to Cleveland's original terms a full pardon. But
by then the provisional government had consolidated its hold on
the islands and Cleveland power when it came to the
(17:32):
issue of Hawaii had weakened. Congress, controlled by Cleveland. Republican
foes commissioned their own investigation, the Morgan Report, chaired by
former Confederate general and Jim Crow proponent John Tyler Morrigan.
That report concluded that America had done nothing wrong in
the coup, and so to the American government at least
(17:55):
the issue was closed. When counter revolutionaries tempted to overthrow
the new white government, Liliukolani was arrested, her home ransacked
by soldiers from Garrett to seller. Every drawer wrenched open,
their contents spilled onto the floor and swept into bags
for evidence. Though she had not been directly involved in
(18:19):
the counter revolution, She was brought in front of a
military court and convicted of misprision of treason, meaning she
had been aware of potential treason but hadn't reported it.
Hundreds of her supporters were arrested, and six were scheduled
to be hanged in order to spare their lives. Liliukolani
formally abdicated the throne, or so it appeared. When she
(18:42):
was presented with the formal contract, she signed her name
as Liliukolani Dominus, her husband's last name, which she had
never taken legally. It was the only small act of
rebellion left to the queen, who was always willing to
sack advice for her people. That might be the end
(19:11):
of Queen Lilio Collani's reign, but there's still more in
her story. Stick around after a few brief words from
our sponsors to hear about it. If the name Dole
sounded familiar, chances are you're familiar with Sandford's cousin, James Dole.
(19:35):
James Dole had been about nine years old growing up
in Massachusetts with his colonial pedigree family. When the monarchy
in Hawaii was overthrown. When James turned twenty two, he
decided to move to Hawaii, where his cousin with the
governor and began the pineapple growing business that blossomed into
the multinational Doll Food Company. But Lilio Colani has a
(19:58):
legacy that survives to the modern day as well. You see,
in addition to being a queen, Lilio Kalani was a
gifted musician and composer. She sang and played guitar, piano, organ, ukulele,
and the zither. While imprisoned, Lilio Collani was denied books
and newspapers, but she continued composing music in transcribing music
(20:21):
that she had already composed. One of the songs she
wrote was called Aloha Ai. You almost certainly know it.
It's been covered by Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley and
Johnny Cash, But if you're my age, you probably know
it for a slightly different reason. The instrumental version of
the song has been used in countless episodes of one
(20:42):
of America's most popular cultural exports. A certain cartoon character
who lives under the sea in a pineapple doll or
otherwise SpongeBob SquarePants. The song aloha Ai was inspired when
Lilio Collani saw a and some Hawaiian colonel embracing a
young woman after the coup, when Hawaii went from a
(21:06):
monarchy to a republic, and then from a territory to
a state. For many, the song became a more meaningful
ballad mourning for the loss of Hawaii as it had
been in English. The title of Lohai translates to farewell
to the one fond embrace before I depart until we
(21:28):
meet again. Noble Blood is a co production of I
Heart Radio and Aaron Minkey. The show was written and
hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick,
Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social
(21:50):
media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more
about the show over at Noble blood Tales dot com.
For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. H
Host
Dana Schwartz
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