Grover Cleveland's New Foreign Policy

Arbitration, Neutrality, and the Dawn of American Empire

N. Cleaver

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137448491
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Whereas the Spanish-American War has long been studied as a turning point in American history, Grover Cleveland's foreign policy. Nick Cleaver's study illuminates the dynamism and ideals of Cleveland's diplomatic moment, revealing their continuities with the engagement and expansionism of the McKinley presidency.

CHAPTER 1

THE HAWAIIAN REVOLUTION, 1893

One of the most important diplomatic episodes of Grover Cleveland’s second term was already well under way by the time of his inauguration on March 3, 1893. The revolution that had taken place in Hawaii in January of 1893 would prove to be the subject of some of Cleveland’s first policy decisions upon reentering the White House and indeed caused him to take action more than a week before taking the oath of office. Allan Nevins has suggested that the revolution should be considered the most important issue of Cleveland’s entire second term in regard to foreign policy. While this might be a debatable subject, it certainly cannot be denied that Hawaii set the tone for much of what was to come from Cleveland in the four years after his inauguration.¹

In many respects the term “revolution” is more convenient than accurate when applied to the events that took place in Hawaii in January 1893. The overthrow of the island nation’s monarch, Queen Liliuokalani, had almost nothing to do with popular sentiment and was instead brought about at the behest of the islands’ wealthy, landowning elite. This upper class—which dominated Hawaiian politics and finance—was exclusively white: immigrants and the sons and grandsons of immigrants dating back to the first decades of the nineteenth century. The revolution was born out of the racial politics of the islands—where the native monarchy, the white elite, the indigenous majority, and large numbers of European and Asian laborers constituted a fractured and turbulent population—but the immediate trigger was probably economic in nature. Reciprocity treaties signed in 1876 and 1887 had seen the already American-oriented islands develop an economy dominated by the export of sugar to the United States.² Beyond dominating Hawaii’s trade, Americans—or those of American descent, along with some whites of European origin—also owned two-thirds of the islands’ sugar plantations, and this granted them a wildly disproportionate share of the kingdom’s wealth.³ This wealth came under threat in 1890 after the U.S. Congress passed the McKinley Tariff, which abolished duties on sugar imports and provided a subsidy of two cents per pound for domestic American sugar producers. Furthermore, a subsequent treaty granted Cuban sugar preferential entry to the United States. Practically at a stroke the Hawaiian sugar growers saw their position of strength demolished as their competitors in the United States and Cuba suddenly gained a huge commercial advantage. The Hawaiian economy suffered terribly, and the wealthy white minority saw the source of their prosperity disappear. As such they became some of the earliest victims of a new reality in global politics: the ability of the rising American giant to build or break the financial fortunes of other nations as an unintended consequence of its decisions.

Running parallel to the economic calamities, the wealthy American and European minority was experiencing political setbacks. On July 1, 1887, a minor uprising by the white elite against King Kalakaua led to the creation of a new constitution granting much greater powers to those members of the white minority who fulfilled certain property qualifications.⁴ In July 1889, the new white-dominated cabinet survived an abortive attempt by the monarchy’s supporters to overturn the 1887 constitution but came under increasing pressure when Kalakaua died and was succeeded by his sister, Liliuokalani, in January 1891.⁵ Queen Liliuokalani hoped to restore Hawaii to the control of its native monarchy and remove white control of government. The economic turmoil created by the McKinley Tariff granted her the opportunity to do so, but initial gains were undone in November 1892, when the American-led legislature forced the creation of a new cabinet comprising some of Hawaii’s wealthiest men, three of them of American descent.⁶ Queen Liliuokalani waited until January 1893 to respond: On January 12 she removed the white cabinet and two days later prorogued the legislature and proclaimed a new constitution that would grant the monarchy near-absolute power.⁷ The new regime lasted for two days. On January 16 Liliuokalani took the advice of her ministers and withdrew the new constitution, but her actions were too late to stop the planter community from moving against her.

In 1892 a small group of white Hawaiian planters had established the Annexation Club, a body that sought to bring about Hawaii’s annexation by the United States, by force if necessary. The club maintained a representative in Washington D.C., who consulted with senior members of Benjamin Harrison’s cabinet, including Secretaries of State James G. Blaine and John W. Foster and Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy.⁸ As tensions mounted in Honolulu, Secretary of State Foster informed the club’s representatives that, should the monarchy be deposed that winter, there would be insufficient time left for the Harrison administration to confirm annexation.⁹ It is unclear whether this message arrived too late to change the Annexation Club’s plans or whether the members simply chose to ignore it, but on January 16 they responded to Queen Liliuokalani’s proroguing of the legislature by organizing a committee of safety and requesting military protection from the USS Boston stationed at Honolulu. American marines landed on the afternoon of January 16 with orders to protect American lives and property and to preserve public order. Instead, however, they took up positions near the government buildings in the city. On January 17 these buildings were occupied by the revolutionists, who proclaimed a provisional government and asked U.S. minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, for official recognition, which he provided the same day. Stevens’s role in the Hawaiian revolution is open to a degree of debate, but it is certain that he was in close communication with the Annexation Club, and his official dispatches to Blaine and Foster at the State Department during 1891 and 1892 demonstrate his strong support for American annexation of the islands: Indeed, it is very possible that he was selected for the position because he shared such views with his friend, Blaine.¹⁰ On February 1, Stevens followed this recognition by declaring an American protectorate over the islands, once again at the provisional government’s request. In the meantime the provisional government had sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate a treaty of annexation, which was drawn up, signed, and delivered to the Senate for approval by February 15.¹¹

It is at this point that Grover Cleveland first exerted his presidential authority—despite the fact that such authority would not officially be his for several more weeks. On February 22, Cleveland met with Walter Q. Gresham, the new secretary of state, and John G. Carlisle, the future secretary of the treasury at the president-elect’s house in Lakewood, New Jersey. As a result of the meeting, Carlisle traveled to Washington in order to indicate to the Senate that Cleveland wished to study the Hawaiian situation in greater detail before acting.¹² The treaty was shelved until the inauguration, and Cleveland withdrew it from Senate consideration on March 9.¹³ It is unclear exactly what prompted Cleveland to intervene in this way, and it may simply have been a result of his instinctive opposition to overseas expansion. That said, the existence in the Grover Cleveland Papers of an undated letter, apparently written by a representative of Liliuokalani and forwarded to Cleveland by Secretary of State Foster, may suggest another possibility. The letter described the events that had taken place and clearly stated that the revolution could not have succeeded without the complicity of Minister Stevens and the armed force of the USS Boston and its marines. Although it is unclear when this letter was received, a reasonable supposition would be mid-February, exactly the time Cleveland chose to intervene. This being the case, it is possible that reading the allegations made against American officials in the letter may have been sufficient to convince Cleveland to halt the annexation process until he entered office. At the very least, the subsequent emphasis placed on matters of legality and morality by the Cleveland administration give reason to speculate that hearing the allegations at this early stage affected his thinking in the months ahead.¹⁴

Two days after withdrawing the treaty, Cleveland named James H. Blount, a retired congressman from Georgia who had served as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, as his special commissioner to investigate the circumstances of the revolution.¹⁵ Blount reached Hawaii on March 29 to discover American flags flying over the government buildings and American marines still deployed on the islands, and he immediately ordered both practices stopped.¹⁶ In an investigation lasting over three months, Blount conducted interviews with a cross section of Hawaiian society and examined a wide array of documents relating to the government, economy, and demographics of the islands.¹⁷ The final report that was received in Washington in early August was uncompromising in its conclusion that the Hawaiian revolution could not have succeeded but for the exercise of American military force and that Minister Stevens had been complicit in all that had occurred.¹⁸ It also stated Blount’s belief that the majority of public opinion in Hawaii supported Queen Liliuokalani and opposed the provisional government.

It was not until October 18 that Secretary of State Gresham presented Cleveland and the cabinet with a plan of action. In a memorandum for a cabinet meeting, Gresham proposed that, since American military forces had been complicit in the revolution, the United States should repair the wrong that had been done to Liliuokalani, and he argued that the monarchy should be restored.¹⁹ Despite opposition from members of the cabinet the decision was made that the Gresham memorandum should become the basis for U.S. policy in Hawaii, and the new minister to Hawaii, Albert S. Willis, was dispatched to the islands with orders to begin negotiations with the queen and the provisional government in order to bring such a restoration about. Perhaps unfortunately for the new policy’s chances of success, the cabinet also decided that it was beyond the president’s authority (and against the interests of the Hawaiian people) to use force to achieve its goals.

Almost immediately, the flaws in the new policy were exposed. In a letter to Gresham written on October 9, the attorney general (and future secretary of state), Richard Olney, had pointed out that if the United States held a responsibility to the queen for deposing her, then it also held a responsibility to the members of the provisional government for encouraging them to rebel; it would seem likely that Olney raised this objection again in the cabinet meeting.²⁰ The result was an order to Willis that he should not approach the provisional government to suggest its resignation without assurances from the queen that she would not seek to exact revenge upon them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, when Willis met with Liliuokalani for the first time on November 13, he found that the queen had no intention of showing clemency toward the men who had ousted her from power and, on the contrary, that she intended to follow the letter of Hawaiian law and have the rebels beheaded for treason.²¹ It took two further interviews with Liliuokalani before Willis was able to extract a written statement that the queen would grant an amnesty to the rebels and restore the constitution of 1887. With the first half of his mission accomplished at long last, Willis met with Sanford Dole, president of the provisional government, only to be told, with defiant hypocrisy, that the United States had no right to interfere in Hawaiian affairs and that Cleveland could either annex the islands or accept the provisional government as the rightful leaders of an independent state.

It is unclear whether Dole knew that Cleveland had resolved not to use force to restore the Hawaiian monarchy or whether his refusal to accede to American demands was a genuine gamble that Cleveland’s conscience, the prospect of a bloody battle to overthrow the provisional government (which by then controlled the Hawaiian nation’s admittedly meager arsenal), or public opinion in the United States would compel him to back down.²² The question is moot, though, since Cleveland had already changed his government’s course before Willis met with Dole. Indeed, it appears that Willis’s report of his first meeting with Queen Liliuokalani was sufficient to convince the American president that his plan for a restoration would not succeed, and that another approach was required. It was decided that the entire matter (with the exception of the proposed annexation treaty) should be placed in the hands of Congress. On December 18, Cleveland sent a special message to Congress accompanying Blount’s report and all other relevant documents. The islands would not again be the subject of active American foreign policy until after Cleveland left office in 1897. Through these events we can clearly see three key points of policy decision: the withdrawal in March of the treaty of annexation; the instruction to Willis in October to attempt negotiations aimed at restoring the Hawaiian monarchy; and the move in December to abandon restoration and pass the matter to Congress. As it addressed these moments of decision, the Cleveland administration set out the key precepts that would come to define the way it perceived American foreign policy at the end of the nineteenth century: respect for international law and the sovereignty of nations; the right of government by popular consent; and moral foundations for American actions.

* * *

As secretary of state, Walter Q. Gresham can be seen as the man most involved in the day-to-day running of administration policy, most importantly as the focal point of diplomatic correspondence, both from the U.S. representatives in Hawaii and from the provisional government. It is also clear that Gresham was largely responsible for the formulation of policy, most notably in his cabinet memorandum of October 18, 1893. This is not to say that Gresham had a free hand in the creation of policy, however. Richard Olney’s letter of October 9 to Gresham demonstrates that the attorney general wished to have his opinion considered, and it is notable that several important policy decisions were presented for discussion in cabinet meetings, although it is not always possible to be sure to what extent the decisions were left open to debate rather than simply presented as a fixed intention. By taking these decisions to cabinet meetings, Grover Cleveland positioned himself as the final arbiter on foreign policy decisions. While in the Hawaiian matter he specifically sought advice from at least three members of his cabinet (Gresham, Olney, and Carlisle), Cleveland did not simply elect to follow in its entirety the advice of any one of these advisors, but instead formulated policy based on the advice of all. This would form the basis for the handling of future major foreign-policy decisions throughout the second term, with the secretary of state largely responsible for suggesting the policy direction—consulting, to a greater or lesser degree, with Cleveland. Cabinet meetings would play less of a role in policymaking as the term continued, but major decisions would usually be discussed before Cleveland gave his assent.

When discussing the relative power of Cleveland and Gresham in formulating policy relating to Hawaii in 1893, it is important to remember that this was the first problem facing Cleveland when he returned to the White House. Under these circumstances it would appear certain that the Hawaiian situation would have been very much on his mind in January and February 1893 as he selected his cabinet, and particularly so in the case of his future secretary of state. Gresham was not Cleveland’s first choice for the role; he initially offered it to Thomas F. Bayard, who had served in that capacity dur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Hawaiian Revolution, 1893
• 2 Walter Q. Gresham, 1893–1895
• 3 Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Monroe Doctrine
• 4 The Cuban War of Independence
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index