Foreign Relations of the United States, 1894, Appendix II, Affairs in Hawaii
Mr. Willis to Mr. Gresham.
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, March 2, 1894.
Sir: I transmit herewith the final correspondence touching the attitude of the diplomatic agent of the United States in regard to the use [Page 1308] of force, being two letters from Hon. S. B. Dole, minister of foreign affairs, dated February 5 and February 14, 1894, and my reply thereto, dated February 14, 1894.
I have, etc.,
Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary,
United States of America.
Mr. Dole to Mr. Willis.
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, February 5, 1894.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt on the 3d instant of your excellency’s letter of the 19th ultimo, in which you give me your fall and detailed résumé and explanation of such of the events and matters alluded to in my letter to you of the 11th ultimo as in your opinion require explanation on your part, and showing clearly your desire that no interpretation he placed on any of those events or matters which is inconsistent with the friendly attitude of yourself and your Government toward this Government, and insisting that your own course was not such as to arouse anxiety in this community concerning the intentions of the U. S. Government.
The subject of the letter of your excellency will receive my full consideration.
With highest esteem, I have, etc.,
Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Mr. Willis to Mr. Dole.
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, February 14, 1894.
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your communication of this date in further answer to my letter of the 19th ultimo, and to inform you that on the 20th ultimo I was notified by my Government that the Hawaiian question had been submitted to Congress and that my special instructions had been fully complied with. Copies of all the letters embraced in the correspondence have been transmitted to Washington.
With assurance of high esteem, etc.,
Mr. Dole to Mr. Willis.
Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, February 14, 1894.
Sir: Referring again to your communication of January 19, the receipt of which has already been acknowledged, permit me to say that it gives me great pleasure to accept your explanation of the circumstances referred to in my letter of January 11 regarding the deprivation of the liberty of the crews of the American men-of-war and the wearing of uniforms ashore by the officers after the arrival of the Corwin.
It would give me great satisfaction to close the correspondence at this point, but there are matters in your communication which require brief explanation for the sake of a clear understanding of some points.
It has not been my desire in any of my letters in this correspondence to charge the United States with intending to use force against this Government, but rather to show that the withholding by the United States of its intentions on that point, taken with other circumstances more or less expressive of unfriendliness to this Government, [Page 1309] had produced the unfortunate state of affairs that was brought to your attention as a reason why such information should not be longer withheld.
The first part of Minister Thurston’s interview with Secretary Gresham, quoted by you on pages 8 and 9 of your letter, standing alone, permits the construction which you have given to it. But taken with the rest of the interview, as reported in my letter of specifications, must, I submit, be considered as having been rendered somewhat problematical in meaning by the Secretary’s refusal in the latter part of the interview to answer Mr. Thurston’s direct question whether or not the United States intended to use force.
In your reference to paragraph 12 of the letter of specifications you say “you expressed your satisfaction and approval of what occurred.” Permit me to say in fuller explanation of the interview in question that I expressed my satisfaction with your assurances that you did not mean to give the impression that you had any “intention of exercising authority inconsistent with that of” the Hawaiian Government.
This assurance referred solely to your reported remarks published in the Hawaiian Star, November 16, as follows: “Until the time comes for me to carry out my instructions, the peace and good order of this community will be kept undisturbed in the interest of humanity,” etc. My satisfaction was with the temporary relief afforded by your assurance that until the time should arrive for you to carry out your instructions you had “no intention of exercising authority inconsistent with that of” the Hawaiian Government. I was still in the dark as to your instructions and as to your plans for carrying them out when the time should arrive, and my anxiety was not lessened by the natural implication of your words, that your interest in the peace and good order of the community was limited to the period before the time for carrying out your instructions should arrive.
A somewhat similar explanation may be made of my satisfaction with your assurance that my reply to the demands of your Government would be forwarded to Washington, and that nothing would be done by you until you were further instructed (p. 37 of your letter). It was simply a relief to me to learn that the unknown action of the United States toward my Government was to be delayed.
Whether your address to a delegation of the American League, referred to by you on page 15 and reported in the Hawaiian Star, November 17, taken in its “entirety,” admits of a friendly construction, in view of the contemporaneous circumstances of the following language which is a part of the address, I am content to leave where you have left it, to a reasonable construction of the whole address. The words referred to are as follows: “I have my instructions, which I can not divulge. * * * But this much I can say, that the policy of the United States is already formulated regarding these islands, and that nothing which can be said or done either here or there can avail anything now. I do not come here as did Mr. Blount. I come to act. When the proper time comes I shall act.”
You say on pages 16 and 17 of your letter, referring to my inquiries on November 24 and 29 as to the intentions of your Government and the correctness of the published reports of Mr. Gresham’s letter: “My duty, as I understood it, did not permit me to discuss with yon the letter of Mr. Gresham to the President, nor could I, under the state of facts, be questioned as to the existence or nature of the intentions of my Government. As a matter of fact, it was at that time doubtful whether my Government had any ‘intentions,’ hostile or otherwise, toward your Government.”
I confess my inability to satisfactorily weigh the last sentence of this quotation in view of the circumstances and especially of your remark to the delegation of the American League, reported in the Hawaiian Star November 17, and in my letter of specifications, “that the policy of the United States is already formulated regarding these islands.”
Your letter on pages 21 and 25 imply that my reference to warlike preparations on the American ships-of-war in the harbor of Honolulu was limited to Friday, December 15. I had no intention of limiting my statement to that or any one day. As a matter of fact, my information was based upon observations made upon a Tuesday, which I understand to have been the Tuesday following the arrival of the Corwin.
The fact, as stated by you on pages 29 and 30 of your letter, that Mr. J. O. Carter based his statement to his nephew that “restoration was certain, that force would be used by the United States for that purpose,” entirely upon Secretary Gresham’s published letter and current newspaper comments, may explain how the same sources of information may have tended to lead the rest of the community to a similar conclusion.
You stated in speaking of the general apprehension of the use of force by the United States, “furthermore, as frankly admitted by yon in this correspondence, your Government did not itself entertain this apprehension.” What I did say was this: “I am not prepared to state that the Government entertains this opinion, although the want of information to the contrary has compelled us to act as if it was correct.”
[Page 1310]I trust that these additional explanations may assist in removing all misunderstanding, if any remains in relation to the subject of this correspondence, and may assist in convincing you of the good faith of this Government and of an absence of unfriendliness on its part in attributing the disturbed conditions of affairs here in December, referred to in this correspondence, to a fear and distrust of your Government, based upon the circumstances mentioned, a feeling which you have fully recognized in your letter as the honest belief by a large part of the community, that such “hostile attack by the U. S. naval forces was imminent.”
In closing I beg to assure you that I have never intended to put upon your excellency the sole responsibility for the matters under discussion, as the correspondence will show, and to assure you of my sincere appreciation of the friendly nature of your reply to my letter of specification, and to join with you in the expressed hope “that there may be a speedy, honorable, and satisfactory adjustment of all pending questions.”
With renewed assurances, etc.,