Queen Liliʻuokalani had tried to replace the 1887 "Bayonet Constitution," which had stripped the Hawaiian crown of power and cut many Native Hawaiians out of the vote. A group of mostly American sugar and business interests, led by Lorrin Thurston, organised against her. U.S. Minister John L. Stevens had sailors and Marines from the cruiser USS Boston landed the day before, and on January 17, 1893 the plotters declared the monarchy abolished. The new government under Sanford B. Dole pushed straight away for annexation, which Washington finally carried out in 1898.
The coup was fast and nearly bloodless. From the steps of a government building in Honolulu, the conspirators read out a proclamation ending the Hawaiian monarchy. The troops that U.S. Minister John L. Stevens had brought ashore were not there to fight, but their presence settled the matter. To avoid bloodshed, Liliʻuokalani gave way. She did not surrender to the rebels, though. She yielded, as she put it, to the superior force of the United States, and she expected Washington to put her back on the throne.
For a moment it looked as if it might. President Grover Cleveland ordered an inquiry, concluded that the American role had been improper, and pulled an annexation treaty from the Senate. The provisional government refused to step aside and declared itself the Republic of Hawaii. After a failed royalist uprising in 1895, the queen was arrested and forced to abdicate. She spent months confined in a room of ʻIolani Palace, where she had once reigned.
In 1898 the United States annexed the islands. Exactly a century after the overthrow, Congress passed the Apology Resolution, and President Bill Clinton signed it in November 1993. It formally acknowledged that the kingdom had been overthrown with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States.
Key people: Liliʻuokalani, Sanford B. Dole, John L. Stevens, Lorrin A. Thurston