Foreign Relations of the United States, 1894, Appendix II, Affairs in Hawaii

Mr. Blount to Mr. Gresham.

No. 3.]

Legation of the United States,
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, May 29, 1893.

Sir: Just before the leaving of the Australia, on the 24th instant, there came to me, too late for mailing to you, a communication from President Dole, a copy of which I inclose (No. 1).

At this date (May 29) nothing further has been heard.

I suggested to President Dole and the attorney-general, in conversations with them, that if Mr. Nordhoff was so obnoxious they might possibly require him to leave the country. This did not seem to impress them favorably. Indeed, the whole proceeding in relation to him seems to have been animated by the spirit of crushing out all opposing opinions by forceful methods.

I do not expect the Government to recur to this matter again until a mail from the United States brings some letter to the Herald from Mr. Nordhoff, criticising the action of the annexationists. Then I expect it to be very much stirred again with anger toward him.

The action I have already taken will restrain it from excesses.

The Hawaiian Star, which is the annexation organ, commenting on the stay of proceedings against Mr. Nordhoff, published an editorial entitled “The Cutting Precedent,” a copy of which I inclose herewith. (No. 2.)

I also inclose another comment from the same paper, entitled “The Farce of Protection.” (No. 3.)

The editor-in-chief of this paper, prior to my taking any notice of the temper of the community towards Mr. Nordhoff, went to Admiral Skerrett late in the afternoon and informed him that he had been all day endeavoring to prevent the people from tarring and feathering Mr. Nordhoff; that up to that time he had been able to prevent it, and called on Admiral Skerrett to do what he could with the same view.

Admiral Skerrett communicating the facts to me I communicated them to President Dole. On his motion he sent the police to Mr. Nordhoff’s house.

The situation, therefore, will, appear somewhat graver than in my former dispatch, in which the statement of Admiral Skerrett was not as full as herein contained.

I hope you will not underrate the excitement which prompted all my actions in regard to Mr. Nordhoff.

I am, sir, your obedient servant,

James H. Blount,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States.

[Inclosure 1 in No. 3, Diplomatic Series.]

Department of Foreign Affairs,
Honolulu, May 24, 1893.

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 22d instant elating to Mr. Nordhoff, and to state in reply that upon full consideration of the questions involved this Government has decided to take no criminal proceedings against Mr. Nordhoff for what was suggested as contempt against the advisory council of this Government.

In respect of the matters referred to in the attorney-general’s letter to Mr. Nordhoff, this Government does not propose to take any proceedings in contravention of the view of international law expressed by the United States Government in the Cutting case; hut there is apparently this distinction to be noted in the two matters, viz, That Mr. Cutting was in the United States when he made the publication objected to by the Mexican Government, whereas Mr. Nordhoff, while in the Hawaiian Islands and under the jurisdiction of its courts, has written articles defamatory of this Government, which were published in the United States in a newspaper which is freely circulated in the Hawaiian Islands, and which articles have been republished here.

I beg to inform you that this Government will rigidly adhere to the rules of international law in respect of this matter as in all other matters, and in that view has referred to its law advisers the question of Mr. Nordhoff’s civil liability in the premises.

I have the honor to be Your Excellency’s obedient servant,

Sanford B. Dole,
Minister of Foreign Affairs.

To His Excellency J. H. Blount,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States at Honolulu.

[Inclosure 2 in No. 3.]

[From the Hawaiian Star, May 24, 1893.]

the cutting precedent.

The Cutting case, which was cited by United States Minister Blount in behalf of Charles Nordhoff, is a well-remembered episode in the criminal practice of international law. Mr. Cutting was a citizen of the United States, who lived at Juarez, formerly Paso del Norte, on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande border. At outs with an official of the Mexican Government, he assaulted him bitterly in a paper published on the Texas side of the line at El Paso, for which offense he was arrested by the Mexican authorities and thrust into jail. The American Secretary of State thereupon demanded and enforced his release on the ground that a citizen of the United States could not be criminally punished by the Government of a foreign country for a libelous publication made on American soil holding that the injured party must seek redress in the courts within the jurisdiction of which the offense of publication had been committed.

Such a rule as this would, for example, apply to George Kennan, author of the Century papers on Siberia, in case he should, upon another visit to Russia, be criminally prosecuted by the Czar for the libels which the Russian Government claim he committed in his accounts of official cruelties practiced upon Siberian convicts. The Imperial Government would doubtless be informed by the American Foreign Office that its only remedy—except the deportation of Mr. Kennan as an undesirable visitor—lay in his prosecution in the courts of the United States and before a jury of his peers. No doubt in Mr. Kennan’s case the validity of this argument would be as promptly admitted by Russia as it was when applied a year ago to Poultney Bigelow and Frederick Remington, who went into the Empire on a mission similar to that of Kennan, but were arrested for it and expelled from the country. That they would have been otherwise punished but for the force of the international rule laid down in the Cutting case can hardly be doubted by any one who is familiar with the tendencies of the Czar towards those who write, speak, or act against his mode of government.

Mr. Nordhoff is of course fortunate that by appeal to American precedent he has escaped another humiliation; but that fact does not alter the circumstances that, morally speaking, and in a way amenable to civil damages, he libeled Minister Stevens and President Dole and deserved the punishment which Hawaiian criminal law would have been likely to inflict upon him. His guilt is patent, though the consequences of it may have been avoided. The only gratification he can feel is that of an apprehended miscreant who escapes his deserts through a merely technical plea against the jurisdiction of the judge.

[Inclosure 3 in No. 3, Diplomatic Series.]

[From the Hawaiian Star, May 23, 1893.

the farce of protection.

A broad smile of amusement went across the face of the town last evening, when it was learned that Mr. Nordhoff had applied for protection to the United States minister, and that, at the request of the latter, the Provisional Government had detailed two native policemen to guard the Herald correspondent’s lodgings. In view of the fact that Mr. Nordhoff is as safe in Honolulu as he could he at his sequestered home on Coronado Beach, the whole episode becomes a tax upon the risibles.

Careful inquiry shows that the only basis for the Herald man’s fears—apart from that conscience which, as the poet says, “Doth make cowards of us all”—was a stray remark here and there that he ought to be tarred and feathered. As Mr. Nordhoff is well aware, such talk is often heard in times of political debate, and is but the smallest of small change in the circulation of public opinion. It is the coinage of idle chat merely; in this case particularly so, as the annexation party is standing on its dignity as a representative Hawaiian body, asking admission to the American brotherhood on the ground, among other grounds, that in civilization, Christianity, and moral purpose it is worthy of the fellowship. It could not be induced to do or permit a ruffianly act, a fact which we believe Mr. Nordhoff himself appreciates as well as anyone else.

Why, then, did he ask protection? Wait and see! If he doesn’t use the fact that he got it to fill the columns of the Herald with a lurid tale of how he escaped death at the hands of an infuriated annexation mob, only to be saved by the intervention of Minister Blount and the reluctant display of provisional force, then the Star misses a reasonable guess. The two shirt-sleeved native policemen who dawdle about his palace dozing and yawning will doubtless be magnified into a garrison of men in buckram surrounded and besieged by bloodthirsty planters or missionaries all eager to flesh their daggers in the heart of the one bold correspondent who had exposed their foul conspiracies and haled their cause to the bar of public judgment. Life will hardly be worth Mr. Nordhoff’s living until he can get some such phantasmagoria before the Herald’s readers, as evidence that all he had previously said against the nature and personnel of the annexation movement is true.

In the meantime it is to be hoped that the two native guardians of Mr. Nordhoff’s person and peace will manage to keep awake during the drowsy days and soporific nights which envelop the pastoral region of Nuuanu street.