Ku'e Petitions
Anti-annexation protest
Digital scans of the originals now held in the U.S. National Archives
In 1893, a small group of American-born businessmen, with help of an American diplomat and a squad of U.S. Marines, led a coup d'etat that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy, headed by Queen Lili'uokalani. Appeals were sent to Washington, and President Grover Cleveland dispatched former Congressman James Blount of Georgia to investigate. His report was critical of the overthrow and the part played by American officials. A second investigation led by pro-annexation Senator James Morgan contradicted Blount's findings.
Faced with a strong faction in the Senate favoring annexation and the queen's reluctance to promise amnesty for the coup plotters, President Cleveland was unable to reinstate the Hawaiian monarchy and the Republic of Hawaii was declared.
In March of 1897, William McKinley, who favored annexation, became president, and the push for annexation reached its crescendo, with a Treaty of Annexation submitted to the U.S. Senate for ratification in July 1897.
The Native Hawaiian population was energized against the move to annex the islands to the United States, and a number of groups were formed to organize a mass petition of protest. In the space of only a few weeks, the organizers held rallies on the five principal islands and collected more than 38,000 signatures out of a Native population of just 40,000.
Queen Lili'uokalani and four delegates presented the 556 pages of signatures to the Senate during debate over the annexation treaty, and their lobbying was successful. The annexation treaty, which required a two-thirds majority of the Senate, was defeated.
Unfortunately the Spanish-American war provided a pretext for more direct action from the pro-annexation forces. Hawai'i's strategic value in the war with Spain and its holdings in the Philippines overrode the resistance in Congress, and a joint resolution requiring only a simple majority passed both Houses and was signed into law in July 1898.
The anti-annexation petitions were placed in the National Archives in Washington and largely forgotten about until the 1990s, when researcher Noenoe Silva rediscovered them. Her publicizing of the Ku'e Petitions helped to remind the Native Hawaiian population that their ancestors had not passively given up their nation's sovereignty and continued to fight for their nation and its people.