Download The American Civil War and the Kingdom of Hawaii

The American Civil War and the Kingdom of Hawaii:
Islands in the Wake
A Professional Paper Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts
in
Diplomacy and Military Studies
Spring 2002
Hawaii Pacific University
By
Justin Wayne Vance
Committee
Jon Davidann, Ph.D. (First Reader)
Michael Pavkovic, Ph.D. (Second Reader)
Copyright 2002
2
Abstract
The American Civil War had worldwide effects.
For the
United States, it completely transformed the basic political,
economic, and social fabrics of society.
By 1861, although
Hawaii would not become part of the United States for another
thirty-seven years, it had already developed a very close
relationship with the United States.
This relationship ensured
that the Civil War would make its way even to the Hawaiian
Islands.
This study attempts to bring into focus and set the
parameters of the effects that the American Civil War had on the
Kingdom of Hawaii.
Diplomatic decisions had to be made,
Hawaiian residents showed partisan support, domestic politics
took a major turn, Hawaiian property and citizens became
casualties of war, sugar became the economic king in Hawaii as
whaling died, social values were questioned through the lens of
abolitionism as plantation contract labor came under attack, and
Hawaii was drawn closer to the United States.
When the Civil
War ended the United States was a changed country and so also,
it may be argued, was the Kingdom of Hawaii.
3
To My Parents
4
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Historiography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Chapter 1. Diplomatic and Political Impacts . . . . . . . .15
Chapter 2. Hawaii and the CSS Shenandoah: Impacts of the
Fighting in the Pacific . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 3. From Whaling to Sugar Plantations: Economic
Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Chapter 4. From Slave Abolition to Coolie Abolition: Social
Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .57
5
Introduction
When the first shot of the Civil War was fired at Fort
Sumter off the coast of South Carolina, nearly six thousand
miles away, the Kingdom of Hawaii was a sovereign and quickly
developing nation.
Although Hawaii would not be a part of the
United States for another four decades, its close relationship
politically, economically, and socially with the United States
ensured that the wake of the American Civil War made its way
even to the Hawaiian Islands.
Diplomatic decisions had to be
made, Hawaiian residents showed partisan support, and domestic
politics took a major turn.
Hawaiian property and citizens
became casualties of war, sugar became the economic king in
Hawaii, and in the light of slave emancipation, social values
were questioned as plantation contract labor came under attack.
When the Civil War ended the United States was a changed country
and so, it may be argued, was the Kingdom of Hawaii.
The Civil War defined the United States as a nation.
Most
historians would agree, including current leaders in the field
such as James McPherson and Gary Gallagher, that the United
States entered into the conflict as one nation and emerged
another.
Hawaii at the time was not part of the United States,
but had already established close ties with it by the 1860s.
6
Although Hawaii had been visited and influenced by the British,
the Russians, the French, and possibly the Spanish, it was the
Americans who influenced the Hawaiian Islands and their people
the most.
America‟s closer proximity, its early missionary
migration to Hawaii, and its economic relations with Hawaii gave
it the advantage.
American missionaries began to arrive from New England in
1820 and gained much spiritual and political influence over the
Hawaiian royalty.
Over the next decades most of the native
population was exposed to American-style Protestantism and many
Hawaiians, including the royal family, were educated in
missionary schools.
The missionaries, using English sounds and
characters, wrote down the Hawaiian language, which up to that
point had only been spoken.
The American missionaries also
printed the books and pamphlets available to Hawaiians for
reading and the English language, as well as New England values
and customs, were encouraged if not coerced.
Additionally,
American missionaries became the top advisors to the Hawaiian
Monarchy in all capacities through the 1840s.
One of the most
famous of such was Dr. Gerrit Judd who had so much influence in
the government that foreign diplomats sometimes referred to him
as “the despotic Dr. Judd.”1
1
Gavin Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands,
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974), p. 129.
7
By the 1840‟s, the vast majority of foreigners living in
Hawaii were American missionaries and businessmen.
Their
greatest influence was not spiritual or political however, but
economic.
Beginning in the 1820s, Hawaii became economically
linked to the United States.
By the 1820s, whaling in the Atlantic had become
unprofitable because of over whaling and New England whalers
turned toward the Pacific.
For the next fifty years the New
England whaling fleet used Hawaii as its port in the Pacific.
At the height of the Whaling industry in 1846, 596 ships arrived
at Honolulu, Oahu and Lahaina, Maui-the vast majority American.2
The whaling industry flourished in Hawaii with the aid of
American whalers.
The gold rush in California and subsequent statehood of
California drew Hawaii and the United States another step
closer.
Communication improved as more regular shipping was
established between Honolulu and San Francisco and Hawaii
exported great quantities of goods to California.
Americans also became landowners disproportionately.
In
1850, legislation was passed allowing foreigners to purchase
property in the Kingdom and Americans were quick to make their
claims unlike the Native Hawaiians when land ownership had been
2
Maxine Mrantz, Whaling Days in Old Hawaii, (Honolulu: Aloha Graphics
and Sales, 1976), p. 9.
8
opened up to them two years earlier.
Regarding this Daws
asserts “by the end of the nineteenth century white men owned
four acres of land for every one owned by a native, and this
included the chiefs‟ lands.”3
Given the importance of American influence, one might guess
that the Civil War had certain impacts on the Kingdom of Hawaii.
However, those impacts have never been fully explored.
A full
exploration and analysis of the impacts that the American Civil
War had on Hawaii is necessary to bring about a more complete
understanding of nineteenth century Hawaiian History.
The goal
of this paper is to set the parameters of those impacts.
To
better analyze the impacts they will be divided into four areas:
diplomatic and political impacts, impact of the fighting in the
Pacific, economic impacts, and social impacts.
Along the way,
some questions will also be addressed that will help measure the
importance of those impacts.
the war on Hawaii?
What were the immediate effects of
What long-term effects did the American
Civil War have on Hawaii?
One long-term issue that will be
specifically discussed is any impact that the Civil War may have
had on the future annexation of Hawaii by the United States.
By
breaking down the effects into the four areas outlined above and
answering the adjacent questions, the effects of the Civil War
on the Kingdom of Hawaii can be brought into focus.
3
Daws, p. 128.
9
Historiography
The ways in which the American Civil War effected and
influenced Hawaii have never been fully explored.
Moreover,
Hawaiian History in general during the mid-nineteenth century
has been badly neglected.
Most studies have focused on the
first part of that century after white missionaries and settlers
began to arrive or the last part of that century when Hawaii was
annexed by the United States.
However, some scholars have
analyzed the period.
Ralph S. Kuykendall, published The Hawaiian Kingdom: 18541874 in 1953.
It was the second volume in a three-volume
history of Hawaii.
The impact of the Civil War is implied in
his work as he notes political, economic, and social influences.
Despite its age, Kuykendall‟s three-volume set is still
considered the leading source on nineteenth century Hawaiian
history.
Many, however, criticize that his work omits the
native Hawaiian point of view to a large extent.
Around the
same time, Theodore Morgan published Hawaii: A Century of
Economic Change, 1778-1876, which focused on the development of
Hawaii‟s economy in the nineteenth century.
One of the key
arguments in the book is that the Civil War was the catalyst
that helped transition Hawaii‟s main industry from whaling to
agricultural production.
During the 1960s, Merze Tate published
10
two books on nineteenth century Hawaii titled The United States
and the Hawaiian Kingdom: A Political History and Hawaii:
Reciprocity or Annexation.
Both books focus on the diplomatic
relations from the 1840s until 1900 between the United States
and Hawaii that led to a reciprocity treaty and later
annexation.
The diplomatic relations between the Kingdom of
Hawaii and the United States during the Civil War are included.
In 1968, Gavin Daws wrote a massive one volume history of Hawaii
titled Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands.
In the
book, Daws captures the domestic politics of Hawaii in the
nineteenth century better than any historian before including
the domestic sentiment that existed in Hawaii during the Civil
War.
A few years later, in 1972, Edward Joesting published
Hawaii: An Uncommon History, another attempt to create a onevolume history of Hawaii.
In the book, he devotes nearly an
entire chapter to the Civil War in regard to Hawaii titled
“Honolulu Has Not Been the Same Since.”
The chapter,
unfortunately, is devoted mostly to an assembly of facts and
offers little meaningful analysis.
Several books and articles have also been published
specifically on the Confederate raider that terrorized American
and Hawaiian commerce in the Pacific during the Civil War.
The
most complete work on the C.S.S. Shenandoah is Confederate
Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of the C.S.S. Shenandoah,
11
1864-1865 by Murray Morgan last published in 1992.
It is well
researched and utilized the broadest range of sources of any
work on the subject.
The most recent book on the subject,
however, is Gray Raiders of the Sea: How Eight Confederate
Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce by Chester G.
Hearn published in 1995 which contains valuable insight on
Confederate Raiding.
Also available are the personal memoirs of
the captain of the Shenandoah, James I. Waddell.
Published in
1960, they contain a valuable, but biased, first hand account.
In addition to these major secondary sources and other
minor secondary sources not listed, many primary sources
including newspapers, diplomatic correspondence, and state
papers are available.
12
Methodology
Throughout my academic career, the American Civil War has
been my primary area of interest.
Already familiar with the
events and concepts that go along with studying the Civil War
era, I decided to explore how the war affected the state in
which I live-Hawaii.
Although Hawaii was not a state or even a
territory of the United States during the Civil War, I set out
to find if American influence upon the Hawaiian Islands had been
great enough by the 1860s to make the impact of the American
Civil War felt in Hawaii, and if so, define the parameters of
those impacts.
In approaching the topic of the impact that the American
Civil War had on the Kingdom of Hawaii I began by reading
standard sources on nineteenth century Hawaiian History.
After
familiarizing myself with Hawaiian History in this era and what
authorities such as Kuykendall and Daws had to say about the
topic of the Civil War and Hawaii, I branched out analyzing
other relevant secondary sources.
When more details or insight
were necessary to understand certain aspects of the Civil War‟s
impact, I moved on to newspaper articles and other primary
sources.
13
I consulted the two major English newspapers were published
regularly during the war.
The Pacific Commercial Advertiser
(the present day Honolulu Advertiser) was published weekly
during the Civil War and the Polynesian, an English/Hawaiian
newspaper published by the Kingdom of Hawaii, was published for
the first three years of the war.
It should be taken into
account, however, that there were several newspapers printed
only in Hawaiian during this era, including the well-known Ka
Nupepa Kuokoa, which I was not able to utilize because I do not
read Hawaiian.
I also looked at pertinent diplomatic
correspondence available in the Foreign Relations of the United
States.
The papers from that series regarding Hawaii have been
organized into four department files and eight legation
archives.
The department files have been organized by volume
and are available on microfilm.
Finally, I analyzed state
papers available in the state archives of Hawaii and include
such documents as the Privy Council Record.
I chose to organize the paper into four impact areas:
diplomatic and political, fighting in the Pacific, economic, and
social, because all the evidence I gathered seemed to logically
fit into these categories and the categories offer an organized
structure in which to analyze the war‟s impacts.
In order to
help measure the importance of those impacts, I chose to discuss
the short and long-term effects and changes that the Civil War
14
brought to Hawaii and also explore those effects in terms of
Hawaii‟s future annexation by the United States.
15
Chapter 1
Diplomatic and Political Impacts
16
One area in which the Kingdom of Hawaii felt the
repercussion of the Civil War was in its diplomatic and
political affairs.
The Kingdom‟s diplomatic efforts were
impacted as decisions had to be reached regarding Hawaii‟s
status in the conflict and its treaty negotiations with the
United States were delayed.
Its international political affairs
were influenced as Hawaii was drawn closer to the United States
and its domestic politics were influenced while a new
constitution was proclaimed in the Kingdom.
On May 9, 1861 the news of the outbreak of the American
Civil War reached Honolulu by way of the Pacific Commercial
Advertiser.4
In 1861, King Kamehameha IV ruled Hawaii as a
constitutional monarchy.
Under the Constitution of 1852, every
male adult had the right to vote for representatives to the
lower house of the national legislature but much of the power
lay with the King and his appointed advisors who out of
necessity were mostly foreigners: American, British, and French.5
Internationally, the Kingdom‟s sovereignty had been recognized
in the previous decades by the three most influential powers in
the Pacific.
In early 1843, Secretary of State Daniel Webster
and President John Tyler of the United States pronounced that
4
“Commencement of Civil War!” Pacific Commercial Advertiser 9 May
5
Daws, p. 106-109.
1861.
17
“no nation should... tamper with the independence of the
kingdom” and later in 1843, Britain and France signed a dual
agreement recognizing “the Sandwich Islands an independent
state.”6
Throughout the thirty year reign of Kamehameha III,
1825-1854, the King “generally relied on the advice and counsel
of American missionaries for problems of state.”
However,
Kamehameha IV, who ascended the thrown in 1854, definitely had
anti-missionary feelings.7
Kamehameha IV replaced nearly all of his advisors with men
of British origins and the few Americans that served him during
his reign could be considered anti-missionary.
A conglomeration
of reasons contributed to the King‟s apparent pro-British and
anti-American tendencies.
His travel to England in 1849-1850
“had made him a great admirer of English institutions; and
certain conditions and developments during his reign tended to
increase his regard for England and to lessen his regard for the
United States.”
Among those conditions and developments were
the desire among many Americans living in Hawaii for the
annexation of the Islands by the United States and frequent
attacks on government policies by the Pacific Commercial
Advertiser, a newspaper that often voiced American interests in
the islands.
6
Also influencing the King‟s attitude was the
Daws, p. 118-119.
Merze Tate, Hawaii: Reciprocity or Annexation, (East Lansing: Michigan
State University Press, 1968), p. 13.
7
18
slavery controversy in the United States and eventually the
Civil War, “which to many people seemed to demonstrate the
failure of the American system.”8
Thus was the state of affairs
when the Civil War began.
In the international realm of politics, the Civil War
obliged Hawaii to make certain diplomatic decisions.
The
outbreak of hostilities in the United States forced the Hawaiian
Kingdom to decide if it would choose sides in the conflict or
declare its neutrality and whether or not it would recognize the
independence of the Confederate States of America.
At the time, R.C. Wyllie served as Kamehameha IV‟s Minister
of Foreign Affairs and David L. Gregg, who Kuykendall argues,
“at this particular time appears to have been one of the king‟s
most intimate advisors,” served as the King‟s Minister of
Finance.9
None of these men cared much for the experiment of
American democracy whose failure seemed to be demonstrated to
many in Europe and abroad by the Civil War.
Merze Tate writes of the King that “the violent slavery
controversy on the mainland, the bleeding Kansas episode, and
the Civil War, which appeared to demonstrate the weakness and
vulnerability of the American democratic system, did not add to
8
Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, vol. II, 1854-1874: Twenty
Critical Years, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1953), p. 35.
9
Ibid, p. 65.
19
the esteem and admiration of the United States.”10
Further,
Kuykendall asserts that Kamehameha IV “was fully imbued with the
aristocratic idea of the right and the duty of the higher class
to direct and govern the lower.”11
This is further evidenced by
the King‟s push to amend the Constitution to increase the power
of the throne at the expense of the lower house and put more
stringent restrictions on suffrage in the 1858 and 1859
legislative sessions.
Helping the King to accomplish these
goals were Wyllie and Gregg.
R.C. Wyllie, with aristocratic ties to Scotland, also
worked to “reduce the power of the privy council and increase
that of the cabinet... to prescribe a property qualification for
representatives and a similar but smaller property qualification
for voters.”12
On the eve of the Civil War he wrote that
“establishing Universal Suffrage virtually hands over the power
of the Kingdom to its ignorant & its poverty-a principle which,
I believe will soon, unless corrected, destroy the United
States‟ Great Confederation & will eventually destroy every
Country where it becomes the fundamental law.”13
David Gregg, although American, was not of the same mind as
the Protestant New Englander missionaries who helped draft the
10
Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom: A Political
History, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), p. 19.
11
Kuykendall, p. 34.
12
Ibid, p. 123.
13
Daws, p. 184.
20
democratic Constitution of 1852.
He wrote in his diary “it
would be greatly to the public interest if the H. of
Representatives could be abolished.
It is now a nuisance of the
worst description...the nation is unfit for representative
government.”14
It is not surprising then, that the leaders of
the Hawaiian Government held similar views to the establishment
in Europe in regards to the American Civil War.
Just as the old
regime in Europe had an interest in seeing the American
experiment in democracy fail, so did the King of Hawaii and the
political elite who ruled with him.
As did many in Europe, Foreign Minister Wyllie believed
that the Confederacy would succeed in securing its independence15
and that “belligerent rights should be accorded to the
Confederacy under the rules of international law.”
He was wise
enough, however, not to advocate “an immediate recognition of
independence” and secured an opinion from the supreme court
advising the King that a declaration of neutrality would be “in
accordance with our rights and duties as neutrals.”
Despite
Wyllie‟s advice, Kamehameha IV hesitated to declare Hawaii‟s
neutrality and was supported in this by Gregg.
The King‟s
failure to act carried with it a tacit recognition of the
14
Kuykendall, p. 120.
See Lynn Case and Warren Spencer, The United States and France: Civil
War Diplomacy, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970) for
French attitudes toward the Confederacy and Howard Jones, Union in Peril: the
Crisis over British Intervention in the Civil War, (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1992) for British attitudes toward the CSA.
15
21
Southern Confederacy.
Pressure mounted on the King as the
United States commissioner in Hawaii, Thomas Dryer, acting on
instructions from Secretary of State William Seward, put
pressure on the foreign ministry to declare the Kingdom‟s
position.
News also arrived that Britain and France had issued
proclamations of neutrality.
Finally, on August 26, 1861, five
months after the outbreak of hostilities and four months after
the news of Civil War arrived in Honolulu, the King signed a
proclamation promising neutrality.16
The proclamation covered
many topics but most pertinently made all captures and seizures
made within the Kingdom‟s jurisdiction by a belligerent unlawful
and prohibited all subjects of the King and residents in the
Kingdom from privateering against the shipping of any
belligerents.17
Contrary to the lack of support shown for the Union by the
King and his cabinet, the vast majority of foreigners in Hawaii
were Americans from New England who supported the Union cause
with great fervor.
Gavin Daws tells us that:
Honolulu, the capital city of a neutral kingdom, was decked
out in bunting; American women wrapped bandages for the
gallant wounded lying in hospitals thousands of miles away
and news of every important battle was greeted with
torchlight parades, fireworks, flag hoistings, speeches,
champagne toasts, and patriotic singing.
16
17
Kuykendall, p. 65-66.
Ibid, p. 57-58.
22
He also tells us that “Abraham Lincoln did better in mock
elections at Honolulu in 1860 and 1864 than he did in most of
the United States” and that “Union Must Be Preserved” envelopes
in red, white, and blue could be purchased from local merchants
along with copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
The November 10, 1860 Polynesian reported that Lincoln
received 131 out of the 294 total votes in Honolulu‟s mock
election, a 45% popular vote compared with Lincoln‟s 40% in the
actual election.
Stephen A. Douglas, the Northern Democratic
candidate, also did relatively better winning 37% in the mock
election compared to an actual 30%.
Breckinridge, the Southern
Democratic candidate, only received 11% of the votes in the mock
election compared to his actual 18%.18
Since those who voted
Republican and Northern Democratic were both in opposition to
Southern secession, the mock election suggests that perhaps more
than 85% of Honolulu‟s American population, which numbered over
1,000 by 1860, were in favor of preserving the Union.
Abolitionism was also exceptionally strong in the Kingdom
among the transplanted New England Protestants and many young
men of American descent returned to their homeland to enlist in
Union regiments.
Additionally in the Kingdom, as in the
northern United States, there were many strong Unionists who
18
“A Mock Election for the Presidency of the United States,” Polynesian
10 November 1860.
23
were staunch racists.
No doubt many of this camp were involved
in the sugar industry, which required contract labor, a cousin,
many argued, of racial slavery.19
Despite the disagreement between the King and the Americans
living in Hawaii on the value of American style democracy,
everyone agreed that Hawaii‟s future economic prosperity lay in
a treaty of reciprocity with the United States.
The Civil War,
however, interrupted Hawaii‟s diplomatic negotiations for such a
treaty.
Talk of an economic treaty of reciprocity that would
allow Hawaii to import its products, most importantly sugar, to
the United States with no tariff first began in 1848.
In 1852,
Wyllie, Minister of Foreign Affairs, discussed reciprocity with
the United States Commissioner Luther Severance and although
Severance was cooperative, Washington was unresponsive.
Then,
in 1855, Chief Justice William Lee was commissioned to go to the
United States and negotiate a treaty of reciprocity.
A treaty
was drafted on his mission and was submitted to Congress in 1856
and 1857 but failed to secure approval by the U.S. Senate within
the time stipulated for the exchange of ratifications.
Still,
Hawaii did not capitulate on the issue of reciprocity.
Subsequently, in 1861, the Hawaiian sugar industry received
a boost from a different source.
With the start of the Civil
War, “Prices in the North rose extravagantly due to cutting off
19
Daws, p. 183-184.
24
of the supply of Louisiana sugars and inflation of currency” and
the amount paid for exports rose from less than seven cents per
pound in 1859 to over seventeen cents per pound in 186420 and
total exports rose from 1,444,271 pounds in 1860 to 17,729,161
pounds in 1866.21
The prosperity from the stimulus of the war
was welcome but all concerned parties knew when the war was over
there would be a drop in prices and a reciprocity treaty would
be more important than ever.
In 1863, Secretary of State Seward, “in an effort to
restore American political dominance and to promote American
interests in Hawaii...raised the rank of its diplomatic
representative in the Islands from Commissioner to Minister
Resident, an act greatly appreciated by the Hawaiian Kingdom.”22
The new representative, James McBride, now held “the highest
diplomatic rank of all countries having representatives in
Honolulu at that time.”23
He quickly saw the benefits of a
treaty of reciprocity between Hawaii and the United States and
in December of 1863, wrote to Seward that such a treaty:
Would be singularly beneficial to the States and
Territories bordering on the Pacific Ocean, and would tend
to secure for the United States the friendship of the
Hawaiian Government and people...would place these islands,
in their social and commercial relations with the United
20
Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change, 1778-1876,
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), p. 180.
21
Kuykendall, p. 141.
22
Tate, Hawaii: Reciprocity or Annexation, p. 46.
23
Potter, Norris, Lawrence Kasdon, and Ann Rayson, The Hawaiian
Monarchy, (Honolulu: The Bess Press Inc., 1983), p. 177.
25
States very much in the attitude of a State in the Union
which, I presume would not be considered injurious to us.24
With this encouragement Hawaii appointed a new diplomatic
mission to Washington in March of 1864, this time led by Chief
Justice Elisha Hull Allen to secure a treaty of reciprocity.
Allen was received by President Abraham Lincoln and participated
in long interviews with Secretary Seward but in the end was told
that it “is of the opinion that the present state of civil war
renders such a negotiation inconvenient and inexpedient.
We
hope for a change at no very distant period, and, then the
subject will be resumed with pleasure.”25
Thus, the United
States Government postponed the negotiations until after the war
and a depression fell upon Hawaii in 1866 and 1867 as sugar
prices and inflation of U.S. currency fell.
The cause was
eventually resumed in 1867, and after several years of give and
take, a treaty of reciprocity was finally achieved in 1876.
Moreover, domestic politics in Hawaii took a major turn in
the 1860s.
In 1863, Kamehameha IV died and his younger brother
became King under the title Kamehameha V.
Historians assert
that Kamehameha V had a more Hawaiian point of view than his
brother, who Kuykendall says, “had the outlook and manners of a
European gentleman.”
24
25
Their political ideas, however, were very
Tate, Hawaii: Reciprocity or Annexation, p. 46.
Ibid, p. 47-49.
26
similar.26
Kamehameha V did not take the oath to maintain the
Constitution of 1852 and in 1864 he proclaimed a new
constitution.
Under the Constitution of 1864 voters and
candidates had to meet certain property requirements and the
power of the King and his personally appointed cabinet ministers
was greatly strengthened.
Though the constitutional change was not directly due to
the Civil War, arguably the potential weakness of American
democracy demonstrated by the outbreak of the Civil War and the
reduced influence that the United States could project in
international affairs because of the war may have helped the new
King in gaining acceptance for his new, less democratic
constitution.
Indeed, James McBride, the U.S. diplomatic
representative in Honolulu when the Constitution of 1864 was
proclaimed “expressed the opinion that the presence in Honolulu
harbor of an American warship of imposing dimensions would have
prevented the moment and induced the king to take the oath to
maintain the Constitution of 1852.”27
However, the United States
did not have a lot of extra warships available in 1863 and 1864
as its navy was fighting a war and blockading a coastline that
stretched thousands of miles.
The Daily Pacific Commercial
Advertiser reported that between „61 and ‟65 no American man-of-
26
27
Kuykendall, p. 125.
Ibid, p. 200-201.
27
war had made an appearance at Honolulu.28
In fact, although
“there was usually an American man-of-war in Honolulu or at
Lahaina” before the war, the USS Saranac was the first U.S.
Naval vessel to visit Honolulu since 1861 when she dropped
anchor in September of 1865 on her way to the North Pacific in
search of the Confederate Raider CSS Shenandoah.29
Short-term effects then, included the diplomatic decisions
made by the Kingdom as it declared its neutrality and the delay
of the negotiations for a treaty of reciprocity between the
Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States.
Also immediate, was
the King‟s ability to more easily gain acceptance for the
Monarchy strengthening Constitution of 1864 because of the
potential weakness of American democracy made evident by the
Civil War and the inability of the American Navy to show the
flag in Hawaiian ports during the Civil War.
The long-term effects, however, may have been more
profound.
Although the state of civil war in the United States
delayed negotiation of a treaty of reciprocity, the increased
trade that the Civil War encouraged between the two nations,
especially in the form of sugar, increased the economic ties of
the two nations and made such a treaty more important than ever
for both nations.
28
The reciprocity agreement reached in 1876
“The Burning of the Hawaiian Whaling Fleet,” The Daily Pacific
Commercial Advertiser 27 August 1911.
29
H.G. Purcell, “Hawaii and the Pacific Fleet,” Nautical Research
Journal v. 7 no. 1-2. (1955): p. 4.
28
would guarantee Hawaii‟s economic future but would also increase
its political ties with the United States.
As a result of the
increased sugar trade and the reciprocity treaty, American sugar
growers in Hawaii gained economic and political influence in the
Kingdom bringing it a step closer to annexation by the United
States.
In addition, the less democratic Constitution of 1864 that
was made at least partially possible by the Civil War would
leave Hawaii with a less liberal constitution and greater
political unrest in the Kingdom, especially among the American
population.
On July 30, 1864, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser
embodied their concerns during the debate for a new constitution
by printing “opposition to the liberal constitution” had
historically ended in revolution in Europe and abroad and
warning that the action would “surely bring a reaction at some
future day to disturb the peace of Hawaii, as evening follows
morning.”30
International and domestic politics in the Kingdom of
Hawaii were affected by the Civil War but that was not the
extent of influence.
In 1865, the Civil War impacted the
Kingdom of Hawaii more directly as hostilities spread to the
Pacific Ocean.
30
The Daily Pacific Commercial Advertiser 30 July 1864.
29
Chapter 2
Hawaii and the CSS Shenandoah: Impacts of the Fighting in the
Pacific
30
By November of 1861, news regarding the Civil War was
reaching Hawaii in about two weeks instead of the month that the
news of the war‟s commencement had taken to reach Honolulu.
This was due to the completion of the transcontinental telegraph
line which placed San Francisco “in instant communication with
the East.”31
From the outset of the war, news of Hawaii bound
ships sunk by Confederate privateers caused head shaking in the
Kingdom.
“The Contest, a vessel well known in Hawaii, was sunk
late in 1863 by the privateer Alabama.”32
All the sinkings were
in the Atlantic, however, until the CSS Shenandoah entered the
Pacific in the spring of 1865.
The Confederate States Ship Shenandoah was built by England
and launched in 1863 under the name of Sea King.
In late 1864,
it set out on its “mission to disrupt the Yankee whaling fleet
in the Pacific and decrease the flow of whale oil to the North.”
On January 15, 1865 the Shenandoah reached Melbourne, Australia
by way of the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian Ocean where it
was refitted and enlisted additional crewman.
“She sailed from
Australia on March 10, a man-of-war still clothed as a British
Merchant ship.”
31
33
“Completion of the Telegraph,” Polynesian 16 November 1861.
Edward Joesting, Hawaii: An Uncommon History, (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1972), p. 177.
33
Gene Ashby, “Shenandoah Fought Dixie‟s Last Battle,” Pacific Magazine
v. 20 no. 5 (1995): p. 48.
32
31
The CSS Shenandoah was 230 feet long, had a thirty-two foot
beam, carried three rigged masts and was equipped with steam
power as well.
Sleek and swift, she could make sixteen knots
under sail and nine knots with her 150-horsepower engines.34
Her
armament included two 32-pound rifles and two 12-pound rifles.
Her Captain was James I. Waddell, formerly a Lieutenant in the
U.S. Navy with over twenty years experience.
Waddell‟s exact
orders were as follows:
"Sir: You are about to proceed upon a cruise in the fardistant Pacific, into the seas and among the islands
frequented by the great American whaling fleet, a source of
abundant wealth to our enemies and a nursery for their
seamen. It is hoped that you may be able to greatly damage
and disperse that fleet, even if you do not succeed in
utterly destroying it." Detailed Instructions from
Commander Bulloch, C.S. Navy, to Lieutenant J.I. Waddell,
C.S. Navy, October 5, 1864.35
On March 30, 1865, the Shenandoah came across the Hawaiianbased trading schooner Pfiel on the open seas and learned of the
presence of American whalers at Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands,
known then as Ascension.36
Under full sail and steam, the raider
raced toward Pohnpei and on April 1, 1865, the CSS Shenandoah
34
Murray Morgan, Confederate Raider in the North Pacific: The Saga of
the C.S.S. Shenandoah, 1864-1865, (Pullman: Washington State University
Press, 1995), p. 15.
35
U.S. Naval War Records Office, Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Navies in the War of the Rebellion. Series I vol. 3:
The Operation of the Cruisers (April 1, 1864-December 30, 1865, (Washington,
DC: Government Printing Office, 1896), p. 749.
36
David Hanlon, Upon a Stone Altar: A History of the Island of Pohnpei
to 1890, (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), p. 123.
Some sources list the Schooner that Waddell learned the presence of the
whalers of as the Pelin including Morgan. Waddell himself does not refer to
the schooner by name.
32
caught four whalers in port at Madolenihmw Harbor.37
“As the
Shenandoah slid into the harbor, the whalers raised their flags
in her honor.”
The raider flew no flag so they had no idea of
her disposition until after it was too late.
The Edward Carey
of San Francisco, the Pearl of New London, and the Hector of New
Bedford raised American flags. The Harvest of Oahu raised a
Hawaiian flag.
Lieutenant James I. Waddell, captain of the
Shenandoah, sent prize crews to board the four ships and secure
their papers, which included the ships‟ whaling charts.
Waddell
now had the key to finding the entire New England whaling fleet.
All four ships were striped of value and burned including the
Harvest.38
Among the booty collected from the Harvest were 300
barrels of whale oil from its recent cruise in the Western
Pacific.39
Harvest flew a Hawaiian flag, was owned by the
Honolulu firm H. Hackfield & Co., and was manned by native
seamen.40
Some of Waddell‟s officers thought Harvest’s claim
legitimate but “Waddell, noticing some technical irregularities
in the transfer, declared the Harvest forfeit.”41
In his journal
Waddell justifies the taking of the Harvest by claiming “she
bore the name Harvest of New Bedford, carried an American
37
Madolenihmw Harbor has been the accepted location of the incident
although there has been some debate. For a discussion on this see Ashby,
“Shenandoah Fought Dixie‟s Last Battle.”
38
Murray Morgan, p. 168-169.
39
Wayne Butterbaugh, “Island Whaling-War Casualty,” Paradise of the
Pacific v. 74 no. 5 (1962): p. 23.
40
Daws, p. 172.
41
Murray Morgan, p. 170.
33
register, was in charge of the same master who had commanded her
on former whaling voyages, and her mates were American.”42
The
bark Kamehameha V was sent to rescue the American and Hawaiian
seamen stranded at Pohnpei and nearly 100 of them arrived safely
back in Honolulu on November 18.43
Next, Waddell pursued the New England Whaling fleet into
the Arctic Ocean where he captured twenty-three additional
whalers during the month of June-two months after the Civil War
had ended.
All but four were burned.
The remaining four were
placed in bond with the idea of collecting ransom, loaded with
prisoners, and sent to San Francisco.
Waddell had received the
news of General Lee‟s Surrender to General Grant at Appomattox
on April 9, from the clipper bark Victoria of Honolulu on May
10,44 but had also received a copy of the Danville proclamation
through captured newspapers in which Jefferson Davis had urged
continued resistance just days before he was captured.45
Waddell
finally accepted that war was over on August 2, 1865 after being
informed by a British captain that this was the case.
He
surrendered his ship to British forces in Liverpool, England on
42
James Waddell, C.S.S. Shenandoah: The Memoirs of Lieutenant
Commanding James I. Waddell, (New York: Crown Publishers, 1960), p. 148.
43
Ashby, p. 49.
44
“The Burning of the Hawaiian Whaling Fleet,” The Daily Pacific
Commercial Advertiser 27 August 1911.
45
Murray Morgan, p. 223.
34
November 6.
In all, the Shenandoah captured thirty-eight
vessels in 1864 and 1865.46
Although the whalers captured and burned in the Arctic were
American vessels, there were immediate sharp impacts felt in
Hawaii.
The whaling fleet was undoubtedly crewed by many
subjects of the King of Hawaii.
David Chappell, in his
dissertation about Hawaiians abroad asserts that “perhaps onefifth of the sailors in the American whaling fleet were Kanakas
[Native Hawaiians].”47
Additionally, it was reported that at
least a dozen native Hawaiians served onboard the Shenandoah.48
Moreover, the whalers that the Shenandoah sank translated into
fewer ships to do business back at their Pacific ports in
Honolulu and Lahaina.
There were fewer purchasers for supplies,
hundreds fewer sailors to spend their wages, and a reduction in
the commissions for Honolulu businessmen in the transshipment of
oil.
Long-term consequences of the sinking of the New England
whaling fleet by the CSS Shenandoah were also experienced.
The
blow to the whaling industry both in New England and Hawaii
helped contribute to the economic transition that was occurring
46
Chester G. Hearn, Gray Raiders of the Sea: How Eight Confederate
Warships Destroyed the Union’s High Seas Commerce, (Camden: International
Marine Publishing, 1992), p. 271.
47
David Chappell, “Beyond the Beach: Periplean Frontiers of Pacific
Islanders Aboard Euro American Ships,” (Dissertation. University of Hawaii,
1991), p. v.
48
“The Burning of the Hawaiian Whaling Fleet,” The Daily Pacific
Commercial Advertiser 27 August 1911.
35
in the Kingdom of Hawaii as its main industry shifted from trade
resulting form whaling to agricultural sugar production.
36
Chapter 3
From Whaling to Sugar Plantations: Economic Impacts
37
The economic impact made by the Civil War on the Kingdom of
Hawaii forever changed the course of Hawaiian History.
In 1860,
whaling and servicing whalers was Hawaii‟s predominant industry.
By 1866, sugar cultivation was the undisputed economic king.
Dozens of historians have briefly credited the Civil War with
the decline of whaling and the rise of the sugar industry in
Hawaii but the assertion has scarcely been analyzed.
New England whalers first began voyaging to the Pacific in
the 1820s when whales in the Atlantic became scarce and
continued regularly until the 1870s.
Pacific whaling began near
the Equator, then moved to the western Pacific and the Sea of
Japan, then further and further north in the Pacific as hunting
grounds were exhausted until finally into the Arctic Ocean by
the 1850s.
Kuykendall reports that “the number of American
vessels engaged in the business” and “the quantity of whale
products brought into American ports” was greatest in the 1840‟s
(736 ships in 1846 and 16,000,000 gallons in 1845) “but the
total value of such products was greater in the 1850s
($10,800,000 in 1854) because the prices of whale oil and
whalebone were higher.”49
During this period, Hawaiian industry was based on whaling
as almost every vessel in the Pacific whaling fleet (around 500
ships per year in the 1840s and 1850s) visited Hawaiian ports
49
Kuykendall, p. 135.
38
twice per year to restock and refit.
Honolulu and Lahaina were
the main ports but ships also stopped at the lesser ports of
Hilo and Kealakekua on Hawaii and Waimea and Koloa on Kauai.
Gavin Daws writes:
All this meant money in hand, and not only for Hawaiian
women. It became commonplace to say that no one could do
business in the islands without the whalers. The wages of
native seamen, profits on the sale of supplies, commissions
on the transshipment of oil and bone from the islands to
the United States, speculation in bills of exchange, and
returns on all sorts of services from ship chandlering to
boardinghouse keeping made whaling indispensable.
Daws also asserts that native constables made money from
percentages of fines imposed by police courts.50
Supplies would
have included hardware such as harpoons, rope, barrels, sails,
and also foodstuffs such as fresh fruits and vegetables and beef
and pork.51
Bills of exchange, also called “whalers bills,” were
documents received by Honolulu businessmen from shipmasters in
exchange for the cash they needed for paying sailors and
purchasing supplies.
The bills were then remitted to the United
States or Europe for a “handsome profit”.52
These refitting visits became even more profitable to
Hawaii as whales became harder to find and whaling voyages
became longer.
50
Instead of a voyage of one or two years, a
Daws, p. 169.
MacKinnon Simpson and Robert B. Goodman, Whale Song: The Story
of Hawaii and the Whales, (Honolulu: Beyond Words Publishing Co., 1989), p.
102.
52
Kuykendall, p. 138-139.
51
39
voyage of four years became common.53
This meant more dependence
by the whaling ships on Hawaii as voyaging ships were forced to
make more stops.
Eventually though, this led to lower profit
margins for New England businessmen and by the late 1850s the
number of whale ships began to decline.
There are at least three different factors that led to the
decline of whaling.
in 1859.
One was the birth of the petroleum industry
A second was the progressive scarcity and shyness of
whales, and the third was the American Civil War.
Edwin L. Drake drilled the first oil well in Titusville,
Pennsylvania in 1859.
Since the first oil well appeared at the
same time as the decline of whaling, it is tempting to conclude
that whaling declined because petroleum replaced whale oil in
oil lamps and machine lubrication.
A closer look, however,
shows that this may have not been the case.
Theodore Morgan
argues that “the only direct effect of petroleum [on the whaling
industry] was upon price; and the price [of whale oil] continued
its upward trend until the end of the Civil War” and prices
continued to rise through 1880 and did not drop through 1890.
Further, he evidences that “the price of whale bone free from
the depressing effect of petroleum competition, soared to
unheard-of heights-$4 and $5 a pound-by the end of the
53
Kuykendall, p. 136.
40
century.”54
Kuykendall also concedes that the “development of
the petroleum industry...was second” and not the most potent
cause of decline but disagrees with Morgan asserting that it
“marked the beginning of...the oil industry whose products were
to be deadly competitors of the products (except whalebone) of
the whale fishery.”55
Therefore, it seems that the development
of the petroleum industry was not the main cause of the decline
of whaling although it was a minor cause at least in the long
term.
The increased scarcity and shyness of whales is cited by
Morgan and Kuykendall as the preeminent contributing factor to
the decline of whaling which, had been a concern since the
beginning of the whaling industry.
Increasing the length of
voyages and continually pursuing new hunting grounds had always
solved the problem.
By the late 1850s, however, “no new ground
remained to be found in the world.”56
Longer voyages for the
same amount of whale oil or less made whaling less profitable
even though the price brought by whale oil remained high.
As a
result, fewer and fewer investors were willing to outfit
voyages.
Nevertheless, several-hundred whale ships continued into
the 1860s when whaling received a more abrupt blow from the
54
55
56
Theodore Morgan, p. 143.
Kuykendall, p. 137.
Theodore Morgan, p. 145.
41
Civil War.
“A 60 per cent drop in numbers of whale ships afloat
occurred between 1860 and 1866.”57
As was discussed in Chapter
Two, Confederate raiding took a heavy toll on the whaling
industry.
Around fifty whale ships were captured, most of them
by the raiders, Shenandoah and the Alabama.
The raiding also
led to the sale of many more whalers to foreign owners for fear
that they would be captured flying under American flags.58
Additionally, at the outset of the war, forty-five ships
from the American whaling fleet were purchased by the United
States Government for use in the war.
Of those, forty were sunk
at the entrance to Charleston Harbor in an effort to blockade
the port.
Sixteen are recorded to have been sunk in the main
channel and twenty more in Maffitt‟s Channel.59
“Holes were
drilled, then plugged, in the vessels‟ hulls, and the holds were
filled with New England granite.”
They were sailed to the mouth
of the harbor where their plugs were pulled and they were
scuttled.60
By all accounts the “Stone Fleet” was ineffectual as
a blockade but devastating to the whale industry.
The Civil War
played a significant role in the demise of whaling as it brought
a sharp and irreversible depression on an industry that had
57
Theodore Morgan, p. 143.
Murray Morgan, p. 212.
59
Sidney Withington, Marine Historical Association Publication
no. 34, The Sinking of the Two “Stone Fleets” During the Civil War, (Mystic,
CT: Marine Historical Association, 1958), p. 62.
60
Simpson, p. 107.
58
42
begun a slow decline but otherwise may have continued to endure
decades longer.
Although the Civil War played a significant role in
destroying the whaling industry for the United States and
Hawaii, it helped make sugar the Kingdom‟s number one export.
When Europeans arrived, sugar already grew naturally in the
Hawaiian Islands.
It was probably brought by the early
Hawaiians on their great voyages of migration.
Sugar planting
and cultivation was pioneered seriously in the 1830s and 40s.
By the 1850s, technology and growing methods had advanced enough
to make sugar production profitable but it was the American
Civil War that stimulated sugar production into Hawaii‟s main
industry.
Nearly all historians agree with this position.
Kuykendall states “the greater part of the expansion [of
the sugar industry] occurred in the six years 1861-1866,
reflecting the influence of the American Civil War upon Hawaii‟s
economy”.61
Carol Wilcox concurs in her book on the use of water
for sugar production as she states “then sugar fortunes started
to rise-due mainly to the emerging market of the West Coast as a
result of the Civil War, when the Northern states boycotted
Southern sugar producers and looked abroad for new sources.”62
Moreover, Gavin Daws proclaims, “the Civil War, which crippled
61
Kuykendall, p. 140.
Carol Wilcox, Sugar Water: Hawaii’s Plantation Ditches,
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996), p. 2,5.
62
43
whaling in the Pacific, made the Hawaiian Sugar industry.”63
The
authors of The Hawaiian Monarchy in regards to the Civil War
say, “the sugar industry boomed because of heavy demands and
higher prices.”64
Morgan, speaking of the sugar industry, says,
“the Civil War had furnished the major stimulus.”65
And most
recently, William Dorrance and Francis Morgan stated in their
complete history of sugar in the islands “the U.S. Civil War of
1861 to 1865 created a strong new market...when the northern
states were cut off from Louisiana-grown sugar.”66
The reasons for the agreement of so many historians are
clear.
The growth of the sugar industry of the Kingdom of
Hawaii is well documented.
The war drove market prices through
the roof, as Southern grown sugar was no longer available to the
markets of the free states.
Morgan reports “Prices in the North
rose extravagantly due to cutting off of the supply of Louisiana
sugars and inflation of currency” and the amount paid for
exports rose from less than seven cents per pound in 1859 to
over seventeen cents per pound in 1864.67
It should be conceded,
however, that “the high prices were partially off set by higher
63
Daws, p. 174.
Potter, p. 168.
65
Theodore Morgan, p. 180.
66
William Dorrance and Francis Morgan, Sugar Islands: The 165Year Story of Sugar in Hawaii, (Honolulu: Mutual Publishing, 2000), p. 12.
67
Theodore Morgan, p. 180.
64
44
tariff rates imposed [by the U.S.] to meet war costs.”68
Nevertheless, the industry enjoyed rapid expansion through 1866.
Total amount of sugar produced increased from 277 tons in 1856
to 12,115 tons in 1867.69
Proportionally, total sugar exports
rose from 1,444,271 pounds (722 tons) in 1860 to 17,729,161
pounds (8,864.5 tons) in 186670 -an average growth rate of total
exports of 175.36% per year between those years!
The number of
sugar plantations operating increased as well as new plantations
appeared on all four of Hawaii‟s main islands.
“By 1866 there
were thirty-two plantations and mill companies at the islands
compared with twelve in 1860.”71
Additionally, acres of
sugarcane being cultivated in Hawaii increased from 2,150 in
1856 to 10,006 in 1867 and tons produced per acre increased form
.20 to 1.21 during those same years.72
Moreover, not only did the quantity of sugar produced and
exported grow during the Civil War, so did the quality.
Kuykendall reports that “a statement for the years 1860-66
furnished by the secretary of the treasurer of the United States
shows that in the first three years of this period nearly all
the sugar imported into the United States from Hawaii was of low
grades not above No. 12, Dutch standard, but in the last four
68
69
70
71
72
Kuykendall, p. 142.
Dorrance, p. 6.
Kuykendall, p. 141.
Daws, p. 175.
Dorrance, p. 6.
45
years much more than half was of grades above No. 12.”
Grades
above No. 12 went directly into consumption without further
refining.73
The impact of the Civil War on the sugar industry in
Hawaii cannot be denied.
It is a safe assertion to say that the
Hawaiian sugar industry was born out of the American Civil War.
After General Lee‟s surrender at Appomattox and the end of
the war, however, the American market temporarily contracted.
Prices dropped and the inflation of U.S. currency caused by the
war ended.
The Kingdom of Hawaii fell into a depression during
the later half of 1866 and 1867.
By 1872, at least seven
plantations “had gone out of business.”74
Prices remained close
to ten cents a pound,75 however, and although a renewed attempt
to obtain a reciprocity treaty was not reached, a working
agreement was struck with San Francisco refineries by many
growers that allowed the sugar industry to continue slow but
steady growth.76
Hawaii‟s newfound industry was profitable but
it made the proposal of an economic treaty of reciprocity with
the United States that would allow Hawaii to import its products
to the United States with no tariff more attractive than ever,
as it would increase profits even more.
When a treaty of
reciprocity was reached in 1876, many sugar producers “gained an
immediate 50-percent increase in sales proceeds” on exports to
73
74
75
76
Kuykendall, p. 143.
Dorrance, p. 6.
Theodore Morgan, p. 181.
Daws, p. 176-177.
46
the United States.77
By the turn of the century, Hawaii was
exporting 500 million pounds of sugar per year.
Other agricultural crops were experimented with as well in
mid-nineteenth century Hawaii including cotton, coffee, and
rice.
Cotton and rice cultivation were both encouraged by the
Civil War, as those industries were devastated in the South
during the war.
Cotton production rose from 600 pounds exported
in 1862 to 22,289 pounds in 1866, which was its peak year.
Profits fell off quickly after the war, however, and by 1875,
none was exported.78
Rice production too benefited from the war
as Southern production dropped from 187 million pounds per year
down to only 74 million pounds in 1869.
Rice production also
benefited, however, from the number of Chinese laborers being
brought to the islands to work the rising number of sugar
plantations and as a result was able to continue to grow after
the war.79
The Civil War brought an abrupt decline to the whaling
industry in Hawaii and gave an immediate boost to the sugar
industry.
The transition in Hawaii‟s economy was a sharp
immediate impact but also one that left a lasting legacy.
Sugar
would be Hawaii‟s main industry until tourism superceded it in
the later half of the twentieth century.
77
78
79
Dorrance, p. 21.
Theodore Morgan, p. 160.
Ibid, p. 164-168.
Additionally, the
47
increased sugar trade that the Civil War encouraged between the
Kingdom of Hawaii and the United States made a reciprocity
treaty more important than ever for both nations causing it to
be pursued with even more fervor.
The free trade agreement
reached in 1876 would guarantee Hawaii‟s economic future.
But
it would also increase its economic ties to the United States
and give the haole growers in Hawaii more economic and political
influence in the Kingdom bringing it closer to annexation by the
United States.
Annexation was a proposal that many sugar
growers in Hawaii had been seeking, even in favor of
reciprocity, since the first days of sugar growing.
The lifeblood of the sugar industry was the plantation and
plantations required labor.
The importation of contract labor
from China, Japan, and later the Portuguese islands to work the
plantations was another immediate phenomenon that began with the
rise of the sugar industry.
The importation of contract labor
was also a long-term change, as by the 1880s more foreigners
would live in Hawaii than Hawaiians.
The labor imported from
all over the world to work the plantations can still be seen in
Hawaii‟s diverse population today.
The impact of the Civil War
on that labor system will be more fully explored in the next
chapter.
48
Chapter 4
From Slave Abolition to Coolie Abolition: Social Impacts
49
The development of the sugar industry and the rise of sugar
plantations in the 1860s meant that there would be a great deal
of extra work to be done in the islands and large numbers of
unskilled laborers would be needed to do it.
As early as 1850,
it was realized there was not enough labor available in the
Kingdom of Hawaii to supply an agricultural economy.
Slavery
was specifically outlawed in the Kingdom by the Constitution of
1852.
A form of indentured servitude known as contract labor
became the answer to Hawaii‟s labor needs.
The American Civil
War, however, brought the contact labor and the “coolie trade”
in Hawaii under attack from within and abroad.
At first, planters used Native Hawaiians for labor.
Daws
reports that among them, “about one in every two able bodied
men” worked on the plantations.80
But with the growth of the
Island‟s agricultural industries more labor was needed.
Compounding this problem was a decreasing Native Hawaiian
population.
The population of the archipelago is estimated to
have been 200,000 when Captain James Cook discovered the islands
in 1778.
By 1860, there was less than 70,000 Native Hawaiians
and by 1866 less than 60,000.
The Hawaiian population continued
to decrease until reaching its lowest point of less than 35,000
by 1890.81
80
81
Most agree that imported diseases were the main
Daws, p. 188.
Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom, p. 43-44.
50
contributing factor to the decline.
Also often written about by
sugar planters as a reason for the desire to import labor to the
Islands, was “the aversion to plantation labor commonly ascribed
to the Native Hawaiian.”82
Whether the Hawaiians lack of
ambition to work was real or imagined it did not change the
situation that the sparsely populated islands needed more labor
to convert to an export economy of agricultural goods.
The answer that the Kingdom of Hawaii devised to solve its
labor problem was the “Act for the Government of Masters and
Servants” drafted by the Chief Justice of the Superior Court,
Judge William L. Lee, a planter himself.
to import contract labor.83
June 21, 1850.84
The bill made it legal
It was enacted by the legislature on
Under the Masters and Servants Act, labor
contracts could be made for a period of up to five years with
preset wages.
If a person bound by such a contract was absent
without leave they could be brought back and required to serve
double the time of the absence.
If a laborer refused to work
they could be committed to prison at hard labor until they
consented to serve and court costs could be added to their
contract.
82
Laborers were also protected under the contracts, at
Kuykendall, p. 178.
Dorrance, p. 126-127.
84
Edward Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History, (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 42.
83
51
least in theory, as masters could be fined by the courts for any
cruelty, misusage, or violation of the contract.85
These laborers, commonly known as “coolies,” began to be
imported to Hawaii under the Masters and Servants Act in 1852
when 500 Chinese were brought to Hawaii from China.
“They
contracted for five years of labor in return for their
transportation, housing, food, and pay of $3.00 per month.”
The
importation of labor ceased, however, as Hawaii‟s infant
agricultural economy struggled in the 1850s after California was
admitted as a state to the United States and a 30-percent tariff
was applied to its imported sugar.
But, Dorrance tells us “when
the Civil War broke out in 1861, this was a windfall for Hawaii
sugar producers” and again “labor recruiters were sent to Hong
Kong and other Chinese port cities.”
The need for labor was so
great that, in 1864, the Bureau of Immigration was established
by the Kingdom “to control the new flow of workers and put an
official stamp on the effort.”86
Dr. William Hillebrand was the
first agent appointed by the board.
With instructions to
recruit contract laborers from Asia, he engaged the services of
a Chinese company in Hong Kong to enlist laborers and in the
fall of 1865, 522 more Chinese Coolies arrived in Honolulu on
85
Kuykendall, p. 185 for a summary or Lawrence McCully, Statutes of the
Hawaiian Kingdom Relating to Apprentices and Contract Laborer: With Synopsis
of Rulings and Decisions of the Supreme Court Thereon, (Honolulu: P.C.
Advertiser Co. SteamPrint, 1882), for specifics.
86
Dorrance, p. 126-127.
52
two ships.87
By 1897, 56,700 Chinese had arrived in Hawaii.
Importation of Japanese labor began in 1868.
lived in Hawaii by 1897.
68,279 Japanese
Additionally, thousands more
Portuguese labors began to arrive in 1878.88
In the beginning there was not much discussion on the
matter of contract labor in the Kingdom.
But, in the 1860s,
when the importation of labor increased to supply the needs of
the expanding sugar industry, opposition to the Masters and
Servants Act arose.
The fundamental morality of the contract
labor system and the coolie trade began to be debated.
Kuykendall credits the Civil War in the United States with
bringing “arguments of this kind to a focus.”
Many began to
oppose contract labor and the coolie trade based on the argument
that contract labor was a new system of slavery.
Some of the
sharpest attacks were directed against the penal sanctions
contained in the law and “the practice of assigning contracts,
as if the laborer was a mere chattel.”
89
Furthermore, Morgan
reports that the coolie trade “was often denounced as man
stealing, or black-birding” and that trickery and kidnapping may
have been occasionally practiced in getting Chinese coolies
about 1860 and after.
He goes on to argue, however, that “in
general careful supervision by the Board of Immigration of
87
88
89
Kuykendall, p. 180-181.
Dorrance, p. 127-129.
Kuykendall, p. 186.
53
recruiting and transportation kept the trade on a fairly high
level” in Hawaii.90
Nevertheless, pressure on the system came
from within and abroad.
Daws reports that during the Civil War, abolition among
Americans in the Kingdom was generally strong, “among the old
Protestant missionaries it was stronger still and among some of
their children it was strongest of all.
Henry Whitney, Luther
Gulick, Curtis Lyons, and Sanford Dole unhesitatingly applied
New England principles to Hawaiian practices in the debates over
contract labor.”
Members of the old missionary families who had
gone into the sugar business “could see nothing much wrong with
a [labor] contract that contained penal clauses, but other
members of the old missionary family who did not have a vested
interest in sugar began to talk about coolie labor and slave
labor in the same breath.”
Daws reminds us “they were
transplanted abolitionists and one kind of servitude looked like
another as far as they were concerned.”91
Henry Whitney was the
editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser and used his
newspaper to mount a campaign “against certain features of the
contract labor system and against the government‟s direct
participation in the importation of laborers.”
He wanted the
penal clauses of the Masters and Servants Law abolished and
90
91
Theodore Morgan, p. 192.
Daws, p. 181-183.
54
advocated free immigration of laborers who were capable of
making contracts intelligently and of their own free will.92
Luther Gulick was another newspaper editor who went further
declaring in his paper, the Ka Nupapa Kuokoa, that “the Coolie
system should be abolished.”
Newspaper editorials led to the
debate of the question at public meetings in Honolulu in 1869,
where proponents of contract labor argued that it was necessary
to the successful operation of the sugar plantations and
therefore, to the economic prosperity of the Kingdom.
Others
such as Sanford Dole argued that “tried in the balance of the
free and equal rights principle, the contract system is found
wanting.”93
Pressure also came from the international scene beginning
in the 1860s.
Kuykendall states that “an important influence on
Hawaiian public opinion on the labor system and the masters and
servants law was the widespread disapproval, especially in the
United States and Great Britain, of the notorious coolie trade
and Kanaka labor trade which were carried on during the middle
of the nineteenth century.”
“The Congress of the United States
in 1862 passed an act to prohibit the coolie trade by American
Citizens in American vessels and in January, 1867, adopted
resolutions which condemned the trade as inhuman, immoral, and
92
93
Kuykendall, p. 187-188.
Ibid, p. 189.
55
abhorrent to the spirit of modern international law and policy
and declared it to be the duty of the government to give effect
to the moral sentiment of the nation for the purpose of
preventing the further introduction of coolies into this
hemisphere or the adjacent islands.”
In 1868, when the Board of
Immigration began recruiting contract labor from Japan, the U.S.
diplomatic representatives in Japan and Hawaii worked
unsuccessfully to discourage the activity by invoking this act.
Additionally, Kuykendall asserts “the British government
maintained a tight control over emigration of Chinese coolies
from its port of Hong Kong and kept a watchful eye on the
Hawaiian attempts to recruit laborers from the Polynesian
islands.”
94
The public and international pressure was carried into the
Kingdom‟s legislative session of 1870 and changes to the Masters
and Servants Act were considered but postponed.
In 1872, three
acts were passed “which placed some additional safeguards around
the rights and interests of the laborer.”95
During the period of
1872-1884, the reform movement led to several increased
safeguards.
Some of the reforms included that “contracts had to
be acknowledged by both master and worker before an officer of
the government, flogging was banned, extension of the term as a
94
95
Kuykendall, p. 186-187.
Ibid, p. 191.
56
penalty for desertion was prohibited, penalty for misusage of
the worker specified, a nine hour day established where length
of the working day was not otherwise agreed on, and sanitary
standards set up for plantation camps.
Labor historian Edward
Beechert summarizes it best as he says, “the continual outcry
against the contract labor system, both in Hawaii and elsewhere,
undoubtedly had the effect of mitigating the harshness of the
system and the abuses inherent in this form of labor.”96
Contract labor did not end, however, until American law
superceded the Masters and Servants Act after the annexation of
the Islands at the turn of the century.
As a result of the American Civil War and the growth of the
Hawaiian sugar industry, thousands of contract laborers were
brought to Hawaii.
The war, which ended slavery in the United
States, helped bring criticism to the same contract labor system
that it had encouraged in the Kingdom of Hawaii.
Abolitionists
in Hawaii and abroad shifted their energies from slave
emancipation to coolie emancipation.
The struggle that followed
resulted in greater safeguards upon the rights of coolies and
contract laborers.
The descendents of the thousands of laborers
brought to Hawaii to work on the sugar plantations during and
after the Civil War continue to account for its great racial
diversity.
96
Beechert, p. 57.
57
Conclusions
The wake of the American Civil War reached and changed the
Kingdom of Hawaii.
It reached the Kingdom in the diplomatic
decisions that were made by the Kingdom of Hawaii in regards to
its neutrality and in the diplomatic delays that it caused in
its quest for a treaty of reciprocity with the United States.
The decreased influence and prestige of the United States
resulting from the Civil War helped allow King Kamehameha V to
proclaim the less democratic Constitution of 1864.
It also
reached Hawaii in the form of its citizens showing partisan
support during the war in celebrations and mock elections.
It
reached again when its citizens and its citizens‟ property
became casualties of war falling victim to Confederate raiders.
The Civil War also brought new social values to the Kingdom.
Abolitionism from the Civil War in the United States spread to
the Kingdom of Hawaii helping to bolster the rights of Hawaii‟s
contract laborers.
Furthermore, the Civil War forever changed the course of
Hawaiian History by devastating the whaling industry and
creating the sugar industry.
The increased economic ties
between the United States and Hawaii that were produced during
the Civil War as Hawaii‟s economy became dependent on exporting
58
sugar to the United States made a treaty of reciprocity a
necessity and gave proponents of annexation greater
justification.
Finally, to work in Hawaii‟s new agricultural
economy, new faces were introduced that account for the diverse
population of Hawaii today.
The American Civil War‟s impact on the Hawaiian Kingdom
exemplifies how a war can impact all parts of society.
Even
though Hawaii was not a direct belligerent in the war, and was
thousands of miles away, it was affected politically,
militarily, economically, and socially.
were, islands in the wake.
The Hawaiian Islands
59
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