Hawaii - James Michener [384]
"She's what?" the leader of the loyalists asked.
"She's abdicated," the young American said. Then he shouted, "Anybody here speak Hawaiian?"
A haole bystander idled up and asked, "What you want, General?"
"Tell these men that there is to be no war. The queen has abdicated."
"Sure," the haole agreed. Turning to Kimo and his men he said, "Eh, you kanaka! Liliuokalani pau. She go home. You pau too. You go home."
And so far as the actual fighting was concerned, in this manner the revolution ended. Kimo trundled his unused musket back to the poolroom and listened to the gibes of his friends. Then in great disturbance of spirit, for he knew that he had participated in the death of a world he had loved--the horses prancing in gold tassels, the royal guard marching in bright uniforms, the queen going forth in a gilt carriage--he walked slowly down Beretania Street and up Nuuanu to the small house where he lived with his wife Apikela and his Chinese family. He went directly to bed and lay there without talking or laughing until he died.
The provisional government, with Micah Hale as ostensible head and the sugar planters directing from behind, swept away the seventeenth-century anachronisms proposed by Queen Liliuokalani. Each act of the efficient new government was directed toward one clear goal: union with America. David Hale and Micah Whipple were rushed to Washington to force a Treaty of Annexation through the Senate before congenial President Harrison and his Republicans left office on March 4, because it was known that the newly elected 1 President, Grover Cleveland, opposed what had been happening in Hawaii; and soon frantic appeals for moral support were speeding back to Honolulu, for the treaty commissioners Hale and Whipple reported: "There is considerable opposition to the manner in which the revolution was carried out. Cannot Micah Hale make a strong statement, relaying upon his faultless reputation to give it force? Else we are lost."
It was under these circumstances, in February, 1893, that Micah Hale retired to his study on King Street and wrote for a New York journal: "Any sane man looking at these islands today has got to admit that they require supervision by the United States of America. The indigenous citizens are for the most part illiterate, steeped in idolatry, committed to vain shows of monarchial display and totally unsuited to govern themselves." In these harsh but true words, the son of a missionary, in his seventy-first year, summarized what his group had accomplished; but since he wrote as a profound patriot and as one who loved Hawaii above else, he did not understand what he was saying. Furthermore, he went on to point out a great truth that others both in Hawaii and America were overlooking: "Hawaii cannot lie idle and unwanted in the middle of the Pacific. The islands seem to lie close to America, but they also lie close to Canada and on the route from that great land to Australia and New Zealand. There is every reason for Hawaii to become Canadian. They also lie close to Russia-in-Asia and except for an accident of history might even now belong to that great power. And to anyone who has sailed from Honolulu to Yokohama or to Shanghai, these islands lie perilously close to Japan and China. For more than half a century I have believed that their destiny lies with America, but it is not as I once thought an inevitable destiny. If at this crucial moment of history, our logical destiny is frustrated, an illogical one will triumph and Hawaii, the gem of the Pacific, will belong to Canada or to Russia or to Japan. It is to prevent such a catastrophe that