PAVED WITH “GOOD” INTENTIONS:
A Missionary Son And The Road To Hawaiian Annexation
William Nevins Armstrong after a dinner given by King Kalakaua 1
Haley Cohen
Davenport College
Professor Jay Gitlin
April 4, 2011
1
William Nevins Armstrong, Around the World with a King (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1904).
Cohen
2
William Nevins Armstrong lost control of his pen as his train jolted out of Green River
station and into Wyoming’s snow-shrouded fields. “November 13th, 1880” he wrote at the top of a
page in muddled cursive after the ride became smoother. It would be four days until he reached San
Francisco and sixteen before he arrived in Hawaii, his final destination. In a way, he was headed
home—Armstrong had been born on Maui to American missionary parents in 1835, and lived in the
islands until he was fourteen. But having left his brother, Samuel, his wife, Mary Frances, and their
three sons at his farm in Hampton, Virginia, he felt terribly homesick. To distract from his
melancholy, he imagined a story to tell his family.
“Last night at one o’clock as the train stopped in the midst of a great ice field…the
passengers were awakened by a series of awful growls.” Armstrong wrote ominously, “Around the
sleeping car there were more than two hundred black and white bears!”2
He described how the rowdy bears played catch with the “colored porter,” and ran through
the “bears drill, tumbling over each other like real soldiers.” A clergyman bear “all white with a black
cross on his breast” delivered a sermon, but to no avail: his furry audience was far more interested in
ransacking than spiritual salvation.
The bears were clearly hungry, but having no food, Armstrong presented them with a cigar
and a bottle of whiskey, which they took to the King bear and split between them. After robbing the
newsboy of his candy and apples, they departed the train, arranged themselves in a column, and
thanked the passengers for giving them a picnic, especially “the Attorney General of the Hawaiian
Islands for his cigars and whiskey.”3
The Attorney General of Hawaii—Armstrong was still not sure how he felt about the title,
or the work it implied. Despite the best efforts of the white missionaries who had arrived in Hawaii
William Nevins Armstrong Journal (here forward known at WNA),William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts
and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder 30, 6.
3
Ibid.
2
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3
from America in 1820—symbolized in Armstrong’s story by the white clergyman bear—Armstrong
deemed the native Hawaiians uncivilized. Like the bears, ensuring the Kanaka Maolis4 adhered to the
law would be no small task.
Armstrong was even more worried by the political maelstrom he was about to enter. King
Kalakaua, who had been Armstrong’s childhood friend before being elected to the throne when
King Kamehameha V died without an heir, had created quite a mess in the Islands. In August of
1880 he had appointed Caesar Ceslo Moreno, an Italian, to his cabinet as Minister of Foreign
Affairs, a move that infuriated many of the foreign businessmen in Hawaii. Moreno, who American
Minister J.M. Comly called “subtle, crafty, extremely clever Italian, of imposing and insinuating
manners,” had arrived in the Islands in 1879 with money making schemes that he claimed would
allow Kalakaua to dominate the entire Pacific.5 Establishing Hawaii as an opium haven and laying a
cable across the Pacific Ocean were just two of his legally questionable plans. The King was dazzled
by the Italian adventurer’s sophistication and dashing looks, but the foreign businessmen of
Honolulu suspected Moreno of being a con artist and pressured Kalakaua to dismiss him.
Sugar manufacturing was the main driver of the Hawaiian economy, and consequently
plantation owners enjoyed fiscal dominance in the islands. Not a single native in all of the islands
owned or exclusively operated a sugar manufacturing business; white foreigners from America and
Europe had almost complete control over these enterprises.6 Before the arrival of the American
missionaries and other foreigners in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the native
Hawaiians had little experience with economic competition. Back then the Islands operated
according to a traditional Hawaiian system of land tenure where chiefs ruled over land and people,
Hawaiian for native subjects of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
As quoted in Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom: Comly to Evarts, No. 122, Aug. 21, 1880, United States Department
of State, Dispatches, Hawaii, Vol.XIX.
6
Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom: a Political History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965), 47.
4
5
Cohen
but land was not owned or inherited.7 By the 1820s, white foreigners had established colonial
capitalism in Hawaii, relegating most of the natives to plantation labor. Since the native Hawaiians
had little leverage in such an alien system, by Kalakaua’s reign, the propertied foreigners had
amassed most of the wealth in the islands. United, they posed a formidable force.
When King Kalakaua realized the stir he had caused among this powerful contingent, he
promptly dismissed Moreno. A few days later, upon the advice of Claus Spreckels, one of Hawaii’s
wealthiest sugar plantation owners, Kalakaua fired the rest of his administration as well.
His Majesty King Kalakaua8
Noenoe Silva, “How Kanaka Maoli Tried to Sustain National Identity Within the United States Political System,”
Kansas University American Studies Journal (2004): 13.
8
Liluokalani, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, (Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1964).
7
4
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5
Now deeply unpopular and perceived as vulnerable, the King needed to restock his cabinet
with officials who would both appease his foreign subjects and protect his interests. As a Hawaiianborn, American educated, childhood friend, William Nevins Armstrong seemed to fulfill all of these
demands. And so, in October 1880, King Kalakaua sent a telegram to Armstrong requesting his
immediate presence in Hawaii to serve as Hawaii’s Attorney General.
As he neared the Islands, Armstrong felt nervous but he was also excited, galvanized by the
encouraging words of his family and friends in San Francisco. “Ellen says that the Island people
count on my coming,” he wrote in his journal on November 17, 1880 of his sister. “The ex-ministry
don’t like my acceptance, because they intended to humiliate the King by forcing on him an entire
ministry which he did not like. My acceptance saves his pride a little.”9
These journal excerpts suggest that Armstrong fancied himself as defender of the Hawaiian
monarchy. But even if he had faith in his capacity to salvage the King’s credibility, that was not
necessarily his intention. In a journal entry from November 19, 1880 Armstrong explains that
Spreckels and another foreign businessman had made up their minds that “the Islands must be
annexed” and believed that as a trusted confidant of Kalakaua, he was best positioned to facilitate it.
Armstrong was initially hesitant, not out of loyalty to the King, but because he was naturally leery of
political maneuvering. Referencing his missionary roots, he also expressed concern about what
annexation would mean for the natives: “In any event the native population must be taken care of,
as it was our tradition, and that no scheme should be adopted which should or could injure the
Kanaka.” The more Armstrong reflected, however, the more appealing the idea became. “The
making of a new nation in the centre of the Pacific is rather a romantic idea,” he ultimately
conceded.10
WNA Journals, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 5, Folder
30, 13.
10
Ibid,15.
9
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6
As this entry reflects, William Nevins Armstrong operated in dualities and contradictions.
He saw himself as the King’s rescuer, but simultaneously entertained the idea of his overthrow; he
insisted on protecting the Hawaiian natives, but doubted their ability to rule themselves; he claimed
to care nothing for the glory of leading a revolution, but was flattered that others thought he could.
While his beliefs were often at odds, they were genuine beliefs and thus William Nevins Armstrong
could not be called a hypocrite or liar. He did not claim to hold one view but act in a way contrary to
that view; he openly held two views, without seeming to notice they were antithetical.
As later developments in Hawaiian history suggest, this dichotomous mindset was typical of
second and third generation missionary offspring. They inherited from their ancestors a sense of
responsibility to uplift the “darker races,” whom they saw as “backwards” culturally, morally, and
intellectually. However, theirs was a racism so blinding, the “missionary sons” often harmed,
sometimes in profound and even existential ways, those whose “skin” they were purportedly trying
to save.
William Nevins Armstrong, and his brother Samuel Chapman Armstrong who enters the
story later, are prime examples of such a phenomenon. Born in 1835 in Lahaina, Maui, William
Nevins was the first son of Protestant missionaries Reverend Richard Armstrong and Clarissa
Armstrong who had been sent from Pennsylvania to Hawaii by the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1832.
Like many other Christian missionaries, the Armstrongs viewed themselves as the pioneers
of civilization in the Islands as well as moralizers. This self-image was not entirely deluded; the
American missionaries could be seen as prolific in their contributions to Hawaii. They founded and
managed many educational institutions, including the Chief’s Children’s School, a boarding school
where Armstrong and Kalakaua had received their primary education after the school began
accepting the children of missionaries and Hawaiian chiefs in addition to royalty. They gave the
Cohen
7
spoken Hawaiian language its first consistent written form and set up the first island printing
press.11 Richard Armstrong alone was responsible for tending to the health of 25,000 natives,
organizing the Maui school system, and spearheading the construction of sawmills and sugar
plantations.12 Starting in 1848, he served the Hawaiian government as King Kamehameha’s Minister
of Public Instruction, opening over five hundred schools in the Islands.
But while they seemed to have a sincere desire to help the natives, many missionaries
simultaneously doubted their inherent moral and intellectual capacities. Of the men and women of
Hawaii, Richard Armstrong remarked: “The heathen saint is about up to your New England
sinner.”13 Historian Robert Frances Engs remarks of Richard Armstrong: “He never considered
[the native Hawaiians] his equals. To Armstrong, they were children entrusted to his care.”14
Clarissa Armstrong was even less generous in her estimation of the natives. Though she accepted
her responsibility to “uplift the savages,” she was not keen for her children to associate with them.
She taught Bible and sewing classes for the “lowest outcasts of Chinatown,” imploring the women
to “leave their lives of sin,” but at the same time opposed her husband’s endeavors to teach her sons
and other missionary sons the Hawaiian language for fear that they would become “too native.”15
As Gavan Daws explains in his history of Hawaii, Shoal of Time, Richard and Clarissa
Armstrong’s paternalistic perspective was not unusual, and was in fact shared by most of the
American missionary community in Hawaii. Daws writes: “For all that [the missionaries] liked to
describe themselves as humble servants of the Prince of Peace they humbled themselves only before
God, and they came into the islands prepared for war – far outnumbered, yet clothed in invulnerable
Ralph Kuykendall, Hawaii: A History, from Polynesian Kingdom to American State (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1961), 45.
Edith Talbott Armstrong, Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Biographical Study (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company,
1904), 8.
13
Ibid, 11.
14
Robert Francis Engs, Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999), 8.
15
Ibid, 14.
11
12
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8
self-righteousness.”16 Exposure to these patronizing attitudes no doubt influenced how the children
of missionaries viewed native Hawaiians, and more broadly, how they viewed the world.
Furthermore, owing to their large numbers and protective parents, missionary children associated
mainly with other missionary children. As William’s brother, Samuel, wrote to William in a letter:
“the half whites and natives…do not trouble us.”17 There was, of course, some intermingling, but
for the most part the two races remained voluntarily segregated—a factor that hindered missionary
children from forming their own views about the Hawaiian race.
Despite this convention, William associated regularly with some of the more blue-blooded
native children at the Chief’s School. He recalled how as a young boy, he and his classmates, David
Kalakaua among them, would loiter by Honolulu Harbor, diving into the ocean after coins that
whalers tossed overboard for them. Armstrong also remembered roughhousing with the future
King, “rubbing each others’ noses in the dirt.”18
**********
When he was fourteen, Armstrong departed Hawaii for Andover, Massachusetts to attend
Phillips Academy. As reflected in its motto “Non Sibi” (not for oneself), the school put a high
premium on service. This spirit of altruism was also reflected by the school’s 1778 constitution,
which stated the that goal of the academy was to prepare "Youth from every quarter" to understand
that "goodness without knowledge is weak...yet knowledge without goodness is
dangerous."19 Armstrong’s parents had already inculcated similar ideals in him, but attending
Andover no doubt confirmed and deepened his commitment to “service,” in all its permutations.
Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968), 63.
Quoted by Suzanne C. Carson, “Samuel Chapman Armstrong: Missionary to the South.” Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins
University, 1952.
18
William Nevins Armstrong, Around the World with a King (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1904), 12.
19
“Phillips Andover Statement of Purpose,” last modified 2011,
http://www.andover.edu/About/PAToday/Pages/StatementofPurpose.aspx.
16
17
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9
After graduating from Andover in 1854, Armstrong enrolled at Yale College where he was a
member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity, Sigma Delta freshman society, Kappa Sigma Theta
sophomore society, and the Brothers in Unity literary society. As a member of this last society,
Armstrong earned “1st Prize Freshman Debate and Statement of Facts Orator,” and served as
president in 1858.20 He had been selected out of his entire class for these honors, an
accomplishment that indubitably contributed to Armstrong’s superiority complex.
Between his Yale graduation and stint as Hawaiian Attorney General, Armstrong practiced law,
first at his uncle’s firm in New York City and subsequently in Virginia. To supplement earnings from
his law practice, Armstrong got involved in several small and varied business ventures. Among his
endeavors were manufacturing chemicals in Brooklyn and Staten Island, running a lead company,
and investing in a glove manufactory. Deciding that he was best suited to a “life of contemplation,”
in 1876 he moved his wife and three children to Hampton, Virginia, where he purchased 400 acres
of farmland which he called Waiala—the Hawaiian word for waterway—and began an oyster
culturing business.
Armstrong was not afforded much time for contemplation at Waiala, however, because in
October 1880, he received that fateful telegraph from the King, requesting his service as Attorney
General of Hawaii. Intending to stay in Hawaii for only a few months, Armstrong bid farewell to his
wife and children, and set off, ostensibly to help salvage his childhood friend’s reputation.
Ultimately Armstrong was away from his family for far longer than he anticipated. At the
beginning of January, only weeks after he had arrived in Hawaii, King Kalakaua invited Armstrong
to the Summer Palace to discuss a matter of the “utmost importance.” “Now that my troubles are
Yale University, Fourth Biographical Record of the Class of Fifty-Eight (New Britain: Adkins Printing Company, 1897), 5556.
20
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over,” the King said referring to the Moreno matter, “I mean to take a trip around the world and
you must go with me.”21
King Kalakaua had always relished travel. Almost immediately upon ascending the throne,
he made a tour of the Hawaiian Islands, expounding his political platform and hoping to increase his
popularity. In November 1874, Kalakaua journeyed to meet Ulysses S. Grant in Washington D.C.,
where they signed the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875, thus eliminating taxes on goods sent between the
U.S and Hawaii. 22 On this same trip, President Grant hosted King Kalakaua at the first ever official
visit state dinner.23 Now, Kalakaua wished to claim another first: he wished to become the first
reigning monarch in history to travel around the world.
The tour was partially motivated by the King’s wanderlust and desire to escape his problems,
but also as a means of promoting immigration. Since the arrival of the Europeans in the islands in
1778, diseases such as tuberculosis, typhoid, measles, smallpox, influenza and leprosy had decimated
the native population—slashing it from 300,000 to 108,000 by 1836.24 Combined with declining
birth rates among the native people and the increased demand for sugar due to the Reciprocity
Treaty, the sugar plantations were in dire need of stable, cheap labor. The King proposed to travel
from country to country meeting with rulers and selling Hawaii as a land of striking natural beauty—
an independent nation, self-governed and tolerant of all people. It was ingenious: He would solve
Hawaii’s labor problem while satisfying his insatiable curiosity about other places.
His cabinet scrambled to prepare. They drew up an itinerary that sent him first to California
to catch a steamer to Japan, through Asia, across Europe, and finally through America back to the
William Nevins Armstrong, Around the World with a King (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1904), xix.
The Reciprocity Treaty of 1875 was a free trade agreement that gave free access to the United States market for sugar
and other products grown in the Kingdom of Hawaii. In return, the U.S. acquired an area called Pu’u Loa for what
became known as the Pearl Harbor naval base. The treaty ultimately led to a large investment by Americans in Hawaiian
sugar plantations.
23
Ralph S Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1874-1893; the Kalakaua Dynasty (Honolulu: University of Hawaii, 1967).
24
Engs, 7.
21
22
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Islands. Limited to an entourage of three for financial reasons, King Kalakaua opted to bring his
personal valet, Robert; his Attorney General, Armstrong; and his Chamberlain, Colonel C. H. Judd.
Like Armstrong, Judd had also attended the Chief’s Children’s School and was the son of
missionaries.
Top row: left to right: Col. Charles Hastings Judd, Kalakaua's aide; Jugai Tokuno Riyosaki, Japanese 1st secretary of
finance; and William N. Armstrong, Hawaiian immigration commissioner and Kalakaua's aide.
Bottom row: left to right: Prince Yoshiaki, King Kalakaua, and Yoshie Sano Tsunetani, Japanese minister of finance. 25
King Kalakaua’s last move before departure was to promote Armstrong from Attorney
General to Minister of State and assign him the title of “Royal Commissioner of Immigration.”
Armstrong’s official charge for the trip was to recruit laborers to come to Hawaii, but he saw
himself as more of a babysitter. “Some say I ought to stay but it is the general opinion that I had
better go and keep Rex out of scrapes,” he wrote in his journal. “Of course Rex don’t understand
25
Credit: Honolulu Advertiser Archives
Cohen 12
the game. He wishes me to go because he wants me as a companion. The people wish me to go to
keep him straight. So I must go!”26
And so, purportedly out of loyalty to the Hawaiian King and his people, William Nevins
Armstrong agreed to accompany King Kalakaua around the world.
**********
Armstrong kept comprehensive records over the course of the ten month world tour,
writing more than four hundred pages in various composition books and leather bound journals. He
planned to use these notes to write an account of the journey, which he ultimately published in 1904,
waiting until after the King had died so that he could “paint the wrinkles on [his] portrait.”27
Armstrong certainly did not shy away from highlighting such wrinkles in his notes on the
journey. On February 4, 1881, a few days after arriving in California, their first stop, Armstrong and
the King attended a dinner with the Governor of California and Claus Spreckels, whom Armstrong
had met on his journey to Hawaii. In his journal, Armstrong described how the men fawned over
the King, calling him a “Colossus in the Pacific” and lauding his political savvy. Ever the pessimist,
Armstrong wrote: “Poor Prince! He thinks these people admire him. He does not see that he is a
pawn or a puppet dressed up like a King, and that the drift of the thing is quite beyond his
comprehension. These men mean annexation.”28
Though he never clearly delineates his own position on the matter, Armstrong does address
the possibility of annexation, writing in his journal: “Yesterday, I was playing chess with the Prince, I
checked him with a pawn. Thinks I, ‘You, King of Hawaii,’ may be some day checked by a pawn, as
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 5, Folder
30, 79.
27
Ibid, 4.
28
Ibid, 109.
26
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your King of chess men is now checked here.”29 Whether Armstrong meant that he himself might
someday be that pawn, is impossible to conclude.
His low opinion of the King’s intellect and propriety, however, is clearer than a perfect
Hawaiian morning. He writes in his journal after the dinner with the Governor, “The King and Judd
have no idea of what cultivated, refined people are. They will take up with anybody. An ignorant
country girl is to them as fine a being as the most polished woman from New England.”30 This
description of the King is at odds with many of the newspaper accounts of Kalakaua’s character. A
The New York Times article printed about his 1874 visit to Washington to negotiate reciprocity, stated
that Kalakaua’s “bearing [was] easy and his manner and conversation those of an intelligent
gentleman.”31
**********
A week after the dinner in San Francisco, Armstrong found himself on the deck of a steamer
chugging back across the Pacific to Japan. It was pitch black and he was alone and homesick. “No
American living will probably see so many crowned heads as I shall,’ he penned in his journal while
steaming towards Tokyo. “But the fact is, I have such a supreme, irresistible almost mad desire to do
something else than travel around the world, or mix up in the government of the Hawaiian
Kingdom. I cannot, and shall not enjoy this trip very much…If I were to give way to my impulses
this moment, I think I would exchange this whole trip for a day at Waiala.”32
Moments of exhilaration, however, suggest that Armstrong was not always as dispassionate
about traveling as he purported to be. Instead, it seemed he actively swore off open enthusiasm so
Ibid, 117.
Ibid.
31
Special Dispatch to the Times, “King Kalakaua’s Visit to Washington,” The New York Times, December 13, 1874.
32
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 5, Folder
30, 123
29
30
Cohen 14
he could continue to hold himself above his environment, mocking his companions and
acquaintances from atop a pedestal of impassivity.
Journal entries documenting the Hawaiian suite’s arrival in the Bay of Yedo reveal
Armstrong’s more emotive side. As their steamer approached the dock on March 4, the Hawaiian
contingent was welcomed by its own national anthem, Hawaii Ponoi. Expecting to travel incognito,
all of the Hawaiian suite members were shocked. “I could not control myself,” Armstrong wrote in
his journal. “Here was the ‘shining Orient’ of the older travelers, the nation of a day, its walls of
exclusion only down since yesterday. To be met with the national anthem was a complete
surprise.”33
Armstrong wavered between utter dissatisfaction and delight for the remainder of the journey
which, after San Francisco and Japan, brought him to China, Hong Kong, Siam, the Malay
Peninsula, Burmah[sic], India, Egypt, Italy, Belgium, the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the
French Third Republic, Spain under Restoration, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and finally, the
United States. But while he dithered between interest and disinterest in his travels, he became
steadily more concerned with Hawaiian politics.
Armstrong had always believed that whites should rule the Islands, but initially he didn’t care to
facilitate that end himself. On his long train journey en route to Hawaii in 1880, Armstrong had
written:
The Kanaka race is doomed, all agree on that. To make a decent nation at the
Islands requires Anglo-Saxon. But the Anglo-Saxon will push the Kanaka into
the sea. An American adviser to the King can say only this, if he speaks the truth,
‘It is useless to try to save the native. You and he must go together. Nevertheless
you must help the whites increase their own force, in short drive nails into your
own coffin.’34
33
34
Ibid, 130
Ibid, 18.
Cohen 15
Despite his intellectual interest in the “Hawaiian Question,” Armstrong claimed at that time that
he didn’t “care about being mixed up in movements,” that he found such work “dreadfully boring,”
and was not interested the power that often accompanied it.35 His goal was to help the King, not to
meddle in Hawaiian politics. While their steamer sailed towards Honolulu, a fellow passenger, Dr.
Tisdale, asked Armstrong, “What are you really going out for? You have got some scheme.”
Annoyed, if unsurprised, Armstrong vented to his journal, “Men will not give me any credit for
philanthropy. It wont hurt my feelings, I have such a poor estimate of human nature, that an act of
real goodness is always a surprise.”36
Yet as the tour proceeded and he began to loose patience with the “uncommonly stupid” King
Kalakaua, Armstrong grew to favor annexation, his views further cemented by disheartening news
he heard from Hawaii.37 Though letters he received on the journey, Armstrong learned that small
pox had hit Honolulu and that native Hawaiians had capitalized on the chaos to attack the
Government. Armstrong wrote in his journal: “All of this makes me hold the native race in greater
contempt, and confirms my views that the only settlement of the Hawaiian question is putting the
natives under foot, and making a sort of despotism of the whole thing…The Anglo Saxon has no
time to trifle with the Kanaka.”38Later his views had grown even more extreme and he wrote
crisply: “Action must be taken at once, and it must be radical…The Kanaka must be got rid of, and
power concentrated.”39
**********
After ten months abroad, the royal unit arrived back in Honolulu Harbor a day ahead of
schedule. On board the steamer out in the ocean the air was calm, but Armstrong could see the
Ibid.
Ibid, 22.
37
Ibid,192.
38
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
31, 224.
39
Ibid, Pg 289.
35
36
Cohen 16
scene on the shore was anything but. Frigates fired salutes and a large crowd of varying colors—
Hawaiians, Chinese, and whites—cheered and furiously waved flags on the dock.
Once the King and his entourage had processed back to the Palace, the revelry continued.
Firemen marched, schoolchildren sang hymns, and horsemen showcased their tricks. Armstrong was
particularly moved by the crowd’s response to the Hula Dancers. “It was a strange sight for me, to
see these pleasant, good natured people, looking so well too, giving themselves up for to the fun of
the moment,” he wrote. “One could see in appearance of all that they are utterly unable to cope with
the stronger forces, which are about them.”40
Armstrong’s description of the natives in this passage radically departs from how he usually
writes about them, frequently referring to their race as “worthless,” “doomed,” “lousy,” and
“syphilitic.”41 Perhaps struck by the sensuality of the girls’ dancing, or the tragic irony of their songs,
the normally aloof, disdainful Armstrong seemed moved to feel pity for the native Hawaiians.
Whatever compassion he felt, however, was not enough to negate his annexationist ambitions and
immediately after the festivities ended, Armstrong returned to business.
He was eager to mobilize others to join his cause, but initially met with frustration, reporting
that other foreigners were “not yet up to the mark; don’t see things as they are.”42 He attended a
meeting of foreigners who convened surreptitiously to discuss Hawaiian affairs, but was frustrated
by the petty matters they addressed. A conversation with John Paty, the Netherlands local consul in
Honolulu, shed some light on why Armstrong’s call to arms had met with such hesitation.43 He said
to Armstrong, “We [the foreigners] are all glad you are so independent. We cannot be.” He
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 5, Folder
32, 495-498.
41
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, Box 5, Folders
30-33.
42
Ibid, 495.
43
In 1884, Paty would join the Committee of Safety, a secret society composed of American, Hawaiian and European
citizens that planned and carried out the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii.
40
Cohen 17
explained that any disturbance to the status quo could put their wives and children at risk, whereas
Armstrong’s family was safe at home in America. In addition, though affairs were “not in a nice
condition,” many foreigners were continuing to make money and thus were loathe to disturb the
peace.44
But whether or not he had the active support of all of the foreigners, Armstrong was not ready
to give up on annexation. First, he accepted three more government positions to learn as much
about the operations of the Kingdom as possible. He continued his duties as Attorney General, but
also assumed the roles of acting Minister of the Interior, President of the Board of Health, and
President of the Board of Immigration. Being the most active official with four offices, he jokingly
referred to himself as “the Government” and amused himself with statements such as “the
Government had a stomach-ache during the night, but this morning it was better, and it would take
a ride on horseback this afternoon.”45
The second stage of his plan was to help spearhead the Planters’ Labor and Supply
Company, along with prominent businessmen Colonel Claus Spreckels and Samuel T. Alexander,
who was also the son of American missionaries. If he could gain the support of the planters, most of
whom were foreign and wealthy, Armstrong believed he could easily carry out his political agenda.
In 1881, the Reciprocity Treaty was under severe attack by Louisiana sugar growers, who
wanted to regain control of the U.S. sugar market.46 In order to renew the treaty in 1883, when it
would be up for renegotiation, the U.S. government demanded exclusive military access to Pearl
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
32. Pg. 504.
45
Ibid, 535.
46
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
30. Pg. 60.
44
Cohen 18
Bay.47 King Kalakaua vehemently opposed this new provision and for a while, it looked as though
the Reciprocity Treaty would be allowed to expire.
The Reciprocity Treaty was integral to the prosperity of Hawaiian agricultural entrepreneurs,
and especially sugar plantation owners. When it was initially ratified in 1875, the Reciprocity Treaty
had drastically bolstered sugar exports and by extension, planters’ profits. While in 1875 Hawaii
exported only 16 million pounds of sugar to the U.S., by 1880, largely because of the treaty, that
number had grown to 60 million pounds.48 Should the U.S. abrogate the Reciprocity Treaty, all
goods exported from Hawaii to the U.S., Hawaii’s main market, would be subject to high taxes and
planters’ revenues would drastically decrease. Conversely, should the U.S. annex the Islands, no such
taxes would exist and the Hawaiian business community would be ensured unfettered access to its
biggest market. This conditionality gave Armstrong a convincing case for annexation to use on the
Hawaiian business community.
The worsening economic situation in Hawaii, exacerbated by the King’s fiscal
irresponsibility, aided Armstrong’s argument. The King’s ten month tour had cost $22,500, and
perhaps inspired by the remarkable displays of wealth he had witnessed abroad, Kalakaua began
spending excessive amounts of money upon his return.49 Despite massive debts, he borrowed
recklessly, pledging that he could borrow $10 million, lend the money to the Hawaiian natives, and
have the foreigners cover the costs.50 He also planned to throw himself an elaborate coronation
ceremony.
Kalakaua had always begrudged the manner in which he attained the throne. He was a Royal
only by election, not by blood. He hoped that an impressive display of power and wealth would help
Now Pearl Harbor.
John W. Vandercook, King Cane; the Story of Sugar in Hawaii (New York: Harper & Bros., 1939), 38.
49
Kuykendall, 259; According to the Consumer Price Index, $22,500 in 1880 would be equivalent to about $500,000
today.
50
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
32. Pg. 670
47
48
Cohen 19
him rally native support and establish his family as the rightful ruling dynasty. He demanded that
crown jewels, pavilions, indulgent fare all be procured for the occasion, which he planned for
February 12, 1883. All together the affair would cost about seventy five thousand dollars—almost a
forth of what it had cost to construct his palatial, 42,000 square foot, Iolani Palace a few years
before.
Armstrong was disgusted. Deciding that Hawaii could not longer be reformed from within,
he resolved not to accept another government post. Instead he intended to travel to Japan and
Washington as a covert agent for the Planters’ company, soliciting immigration in the former and
lobbying for the planters’ interests in the latter. But, much to his frustration, the Planters’ Company
was slow to finalize this plan. Armstrong was forced to resign from Kalakaua’s cabinet in May 1882,
before he could formulate a contingency strategy. He decided to leave the islands instead of waiting
for the waffling planters.
Armstrong’s departure from the islands did not lack drama. King Kalakaua had heard that
Armstrong was associating with the trustees of the Planters’ Company and, believing Armstrong was
“conspiring with them to force a new and disagreeable Cabinet on him,”51 decided to replace his
entire administration. Then, while the King was considering a replacement cabinet, Walter Gibson,
the editor of the Pacific Commercial Advertiser and a fierce royalist with whom Armstrong had often
tussled, printed an editorial that mistranslated one of Armstrong’s journal entries into Hawaiian.52
Armstrong had written “the steamer has left, and I am in the solitude of the Pacific” which Gibson
translated to “the steamer has left, and I am left here without anything to do.”53Armstrong had also
referred to the native race as “doomed”—a statement Gibson did not need to twist in order to be
offensive.
Ibid, 693.
The Southern Workman, a newspaper produced by the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute that WNA’s brother
Samuel presided over, had published the entry without permission.
53
Ibid, 703.
51
52
Cohen 20
The native Hawaiians were outraged. The article had made clear that their Attorney General
did not care about them or take his responsibilities seriously, and they insisted he step down.
Armstrong resigned a few days later.
Presumably Armstrong felt pressure from the King and the natives to resign, but he blamed
his departure on the Hawaiian political condition. When asked why he was leaving he replied that he
“found that the Government [was] a worthless piece of machinery, and that it could not be made, as
it stands, to serve the purposes of good government.”54
Over a breakfast of eggs and cracked wheat, his resignation letter on the parlor table beside
him, Armstrong reflected in his journal on May 19, “What will the future be?...I have such a supreme
contempt for the Kanakas. And the shilly-shally utterly weak, indecisive course of the people
regarding the [Reciprocity] Treaty – the divided counsels of the Supply Co. disgust me, and I am
anxious to get out of this.”55
This disgust contrasts with the enthusiasm Armstrong had expressed about undertaking
work for the Planters’ Company just days before. As was evident in his change of heart about
meddling in Hawaiian affairs, Armstrong was often of two minds—not fickle so much as torn by
conflicting emotions and convictions. He said as much himself, writing in his journal about his
changed perspective on Hawaii, “A week ago, while there was a prospect of my returning to
America, but no certainty of it, I still looked upon myself as a prisoner here. Now, it is almost
certain that I leave soon for the States. My feelings suddenly change. In the morning I look out on
these everlastingly beautiful hills and say, ‘we shall soon part.’”56
And part, they did. On June 5, 1882, after enjoying a farewell bottle of wine at the home of
his friend fellow annexationist Dr. McGrew, Armstrong boarded a steamer bound for San
Ibid, 719.
Ibid, 706.
56
Ibid, 673.
54
55
Cohen 21
Francisco. Though it was late by the time the boat unmoored, Armstrong could not sleep. Reveling
in the cool valley breeze against his face, he watched as the moon rose over Diamond Head
mountain. “I feel disgusted, angry, humiliated, and revolutionary,” he wrote in his journal. “One
looks out on the wonderful beauty of the tropical mountains and cries out, ‘man is the only growth
which dwindles here!’ A community of vacillating men, money making, jealous of each other, all
asking for better things; but not willing to do anything to get them; everyone feeling uneasy and yet
apparently unable to agree on any remedy…I leave the islands with the more satisfaction because I
see no future; no sound, cultivated nation, however small, rising in the place of the Hawaiians.”57
As he finished his entry, the sun began to illuminate the ever-retreating Pali mountains. This
was the forth time during his life that Armstrong had moved away from Honolulu to the United
States, and this time, he wasn’t sure he’d return.
**********
Upon arriving back in the United States, William headed to Hampton, Virginia to be with
his wife and three sons.
In addition to managing the family’s farm in his absence, William’s wife, Mary Frances, was a
teacher at the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute—an educational establishment for
“backward” races founded and operated by William’s brother, Samuel. The school’s mission was to
combine academic schooling with manual training to enrich the “the head, the heart, and the hands”
of freed blacks and, from 1878 onward, Indians. The curriculum included some academic classes
such as Algebra and English, but focused on manual labor—a fact that earned Armstrong much
criticism. Every student was expected to work on the school’s 190-acre farm for at least one day
each week and learn one additional craft.58 Possible activities included operating the two small
Ibid, 725-726.
Mary Frances Armstrong and Helen W. Ludlow, Hampton and Its Students by Two of Its Teachers (New York: G.P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1875), 41-42.
57
58
Cohen 22
presses which produced The Southern Workman, a monthly paper meant for the industrial classes of
the South, or attending carpentry, blacksmithing, shoe-making, and painting workshops. The hope
was that at the end of three years, students would choose one of these crafts as an occupation and
return to their homes to elevate the rest of their race, not by running for political office or bettering
their economic circumstances, but by setting a precedent of industriousness.
Bricklayers at Hampton Institute59
Born in 1839 on Maui, Samuel’s life was arguably more entwined with the missionary
movement and its accompanying racial and moral questions than William’s had been. In 1860
Samuel and William’s father, Richard, was thrown from his horse and trampled. Shortly before this
untimely death, he had made arrangements for Samuel to leave Hawaii and complete his last two
59
Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection (Library of Congress) - http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3b06958
Cohen 23
years of College at Williams—a haven for missionaries’ sons. Williams College graduates had
spearheaded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810, and in 1861, Dr.
Mark Hopkins, served concurrently as president for both organizations, further strengthening the
philosophical link between the institutions. Samuel’s father Richard had become close friends with
Hopkins through his work for the ABCFM and when Samuel arrived at Williams shortly after
Richard’s death, Hopkins did not merely waive his tuition, but opened up his home and family to
the mourning boy. In addition to eating at the Hopkins’ table, singing with the Hopkins’ children,
and attending church with the entire Hopkins family, Samuel received academic instruction from Dr.
Hopkins in moral philosophy.60 Hopkins’ lectures revolved around the idea of a scale where each
rung of forces and beings had a higher worth than the one upon which it was conditioned. Each
stage could be moved into the next higher stage only by the addition of an external force—internal
forces were not enough.61
It is easy to see how these teachings would engender paternalism, but while Hopkins’
mentorship no doubt served to deepen Samuel’s moral beliefs, Samuel’s classmate John Dennison
attributed many of Armstrong’s attitudes to his childhood. “Like other missionary sons,” Dennison
wrote. “He poked fun at natives…yet he was kind of a missionary in disguise, always ready to go out
of his way for the purpose of slyly helping somebody up to a better moral or physical plane.”62
This dual disdain and compassion for those he deemed inferior would continue to guide
Samuel’s undertakings until his death in 1893. In 1863, Samuel’s philanthropic tendencies motivated
him to serve with one of the newly formed black military units being organized by the North. “I feel
Edith Talbott Armstrong, Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Biographical Study (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company,
1904).
61
Ward & Trent, et al, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), 21.
62
Denison, “Address in Memory”; SCA Scrapbook, Armstrong Family Papers, Williamsiana Collection, Williams
College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
60
Cohen 24
a little of the ‘departing missionary’s’ spirit…Here’s to the heathen, rather, here’s to the Negro!”63
he wrote upon enlisting. He did not respect the black forces, calling them “worse than the
Kanakas,” but he was staunchly opposed to slavery. A letter to his friend from Williams sums up his
philosophy on the matter: “I am a sort of abolitionist, but I have not learned to love the Negro. I
believe in universal freedom; I believe the whole world cannot buy a single soul. The almighty has
set, or rather limited the price of one man, and until worlds can be paid for a single soul, I do not
believe in selling or buying them, more on account of their souls than their bodies.”64
Samuel Chapman Armstrong65
Samuel Chapman Armstrong to Archibald Hopkins, 29 September 1863, Armstrong Family Papers, Williamsiana
Collection, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
64
Edith Talbott Armstrong, Samuel Chapman Armstrong: A Biographical Study (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company,
1904), 86.
65
Armstrong Family Papers, Williamsiana Collection, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts.
63
Cohen 25
Like his brother William, Samuel’s racism and paternalism were unadulterated by guilt. He
never seemed to consider that his own race might have created the conditions that impoverished
blacks and Indians. This single-mindedness informed every element of Samuel’s program for the
Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, thus rendering its legacy in black and Indian history
ambiguous at best.
Few argue that Samuel Chapman Armstrong had bad intentions; he seemed to genuinely
hope that Hampton would help blacks and Indians improve their circumstances and even outside
of the school, Armstrong seemed dedicated to racial “uplift.” Often, he would ride his stallion
through the black section of Hampton, stopping to ask residents whether they owned their home. If
they answered that they didn’t, he launched into a lecture on how to purchase real estate and offered
money saving tips. Then, if they had children, he would ask them if they were in school. If they
weren’t, he would scoop them up onto his horse and deliver them to The Butler Freedman’s School
on Hampton’s campus.66 At Hampton, he often expressed admiration for the cultures of blacks and
Indians and ventured to preserve black songs and Indian art.67 However, his insistence that his
black students sing their traditional music highlights the blindness of Armstrong’s paternalism, since
the students themselves saw such songs as reminders of slavery.68
Such attitudes permeated Hampton’s curriculum as well. Hampton offered English,
elementary mathematics, geography, history, literature, moral science, and political economy but
purposely excluded the classics, allegedly because Armstrong believed such instruction would fill his
students with delusions of careers as politicians and professionals.69 Though he proclaimed himself
a “friend of the Negro race,” Armstrong was actively opposed to black enfranchisement and black
Engs, 109.
Jacqueline Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 113.
68
Engs, 77.
69
James D. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1988), 49.
66
67
Cohen 26
men running for political office.70 He believed that blacks and Indians might be ready for political
participation several centuries into the future, but for the time being, Armstrong believed his
students would be best served by pursuing manual labor and allowing white men to manage the
political sphere. This belief manifested itself in Hampton’s political economy course, which focused
on “correcting” the belief that capitalism and labor were diametrically opposed.71 The class
encouraged students to take pride in working with their hands, and assured them that wealth
inequality was as natural as one man being “stronger, taller, or more healthy than another.”72
History class centered on studies of racial development and emphasized the idea that social
limitations imposed on nonwhites were not arbitrary, but natural—a consequence of the organic
process of “racial evolution.”73 Hampton’s most famous graduate, Booker T. Washington, seemed
to have internalized this lesson, telling the General Conference of the African Methodist Episcopal
church, “The white man is three thousand years ahead of us, and this fact we might as well face now
as later.”74
But not all of Hampton’s students were so easily convinced by Hampton’s doctrine. In one
case an American history teacher asked his class to enumerate ways in which whites were superior to
blacks and Indians. Miraculously, none of the students stood. Hampton’s students may have been
willing to learn from whites, and work for whites, but not all of the students would allow themselves
to think in the prejudiced ways many whites did.75
The various aspects of black and Indian deficiencies were clear enough to Armstrong and
Hampton’s faculty, and in their minds, those perceived deficiencies had nothing to do with white
oppression. Consequently, Hampton’s faculty and the academic and manual program they designed
Ibid, 37.
Ibid, 52.
72
Ibid, 51.
73
Ibid.
74
Ibid.
75
Fear-Segal, 119-120.
70
71
Cohen 27
were not dedicated to helping these people integrate with whites, but were instead oriented to help
them live more comfortably and independently under whites, further perpetuating the vicious cycle
the school professedly sought to end.
Samuel Armstrong believed there were many similarities between his students and the
Polynesians with whom he had grown up. Of both he maintained: “it is true that not mere
ignorance, but deficiency of character is the chief difficulty.”76 He fervently defended Hawaiian
annexation telling the New York Evening Post that the “conquest by American missionaries of the
Hawaiian Islands…gives the United States both a claim and an obligation in the matter—a claim be
considered first in the final disposition of that country, and obligation to save decency and
civilization in that utterly broken down monarchy.”77
And so, even when William Nevins Armstrong returned home to Hampton in 1882, he had
a likeminded partner with whom he could discuss his beliefs, and in so doing, deepen them.
**********
During his time in Hawaii, William Nevins Armstrong had written of Waiala with longing.
He claimed to miss farming terribly and filled many pages of his journal with observations of foreign
agricultural techniques that he looked forward to trying at home. More importantly his family—his
brother, wife, and all three sons—were there. He corresponded with them, frequently sending them
sections of his notes for safekeeping, but still felt guilty for his long absence. He wrote after
resigning from Kalakaua’s cabinet, “I confess that owing to my being away from home, and the
Samuel C. Armstrong, "Lessons from the Hawaiian Islands," Journal of Christian Philosophy, ed., John A. Paine, New
York, III, Jan. 1884, 213.
77
Eric T. Love, Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2004), 110.
76
Cohen 28
great doubt as to whether I am doing rightly towards the children, quite upsets me and clouds my
judgment.”78
Curiously, however, William seemed to flee Hampton soon after he arrived back there. He
remained long enough to help his wife bear their first daughter, Dorothy, and serve Elizabeth City
County as the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors for at least the year of 1883.79 But by 1886,
Armstrong had moved to New York City to practice law as the Commissioner of the Supreme
Court. A gap in his journals from 1882 to 1886 renders the motives for his relocation unclear, but
given past and future journal entries, it is safe to assume that finances played a prominent role. A
letter pasted in his 1886 journal from his youngest son requesting that William “send home some
more maple syrup,” suggests that his family remained in Hampton and that William didn’t return
enough to bring his children syrup instead of sending it.
During his years in New York, Armstrong followed Hawaiian affairs closely and his journal
entries were spattered with news clippings and ruminations on Hawaiian politics. In July 1887,
Armstrong received news that a group of foreign lawyers, including his old deputy Attorney
General, William Owens Smith, and several other missionary sons had forced the King to sign a new
constitution stripping the Hawaiian monarchy of much of its authority. The document, which has
come to be called the “Bayonet Constitution” because its proponents threatened to use force if it
wasn’t approved, transferred most authority to the cabinet ministers, forbade the monarch from
dismissing a minister without the legislature’s approval, and established wealth and property
qualifications for election to the legislature. These provisions ensured that whites would have almost
total political control, as most of the natives did not own land.
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
32. Pg 706.
79
Yale University, Fourth Biographical Record of the Class of Fifty-Eight (New Britain: Adkins Printing Company, 1897), 5556.
78
Cohen 29
The natives’ response to the Bayonet Constitution is rarely recorded in Hawaiian history
books, leaving readers to believe that they passively accepted their political incapacitation.80 In
reality, they fervently protested the document with both non-violent and violent means. Following
the constitution’s approval, the native Hawaiians, or Kanaka Maoli, immediately held mass protests,
scribed petitions, and organized delegations to negotiate with the King. These activities ultimately
resulted in the formation of the first Kanaka Maoli political organization called the Hui Kalai’aina.81
This group established a constitution, and developed a platform for the upcoming cabinet elections
that hinged on the preservation of the monarchy, amendment of the constitution, and the reduction
of voting property qualifications.
Doubting that this unassertive strategy would prevail, especially given the new property
requirements for franchise that would exclude many Kanakas, half-native Robert Kalanihiapo
Wilcox determined to undo the Bayonet Constitution in the same manner it had been implemented:
by force.
He organized a rifle association of around eighty men, which he deployed to attack the
Palace. They successfully surrounded the grounds, but were quickly overpowered by government
troops and intimidated from further action by the one hundred armed U.S. soldiers that streamed
from the U.S.S. Adams to patrol the streets.82
But the native struggle would continue. The Hui Kalaiaina would continue to agitate for a
new constitution and the indefatigable Wilcox would try on several more occasions to forcibly wrest
back control of the islands for the Kanaka Maoli.
**********
Noenoe K. Silva, Aloha Betrayed (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 123.
Ibid, 127.
82
Ibid, 128.
80
81
Cohen 30
Though he had clearly remained interested in Hawaiian matters, Armstrong did not actively
re-involve himself in Hawaiian politics until 1890 when he wrote an exhortative letter to Kalakaua.
In clear terms, he laid out what he saw as Kalakaua’s fatal mistake: signing the Reciprocity Treaty,
which, without a hint of irony, he claimed “filled the country with whites and Asiatics, who only
cared to make money and had no regard for the native race.” He suggested matter-of-factly that the
king had only two options: allow whites to rule under him, or be deposed. He went on to extol the
United States for their charitable “protection” of the natives: “The white race never had any regard
for the natives of Hawaii, and does not now. Its policy is always cold cruel and selfish. And the only
reason why Hawaii has been an exception is, that this ‘missionary’ element, acting through the
American Government, has been its protector. This is a fact of great historical importance, and true
Hawaiian statesmanship must always recognize it.” 83
He explained that the United States, whose goal was once to protect the independence of
Hawaii, now intended to determine who would rule there. He urged King Kalakaua to sign a treaty
with the U.S. government—a move by which his throne would be preserved and at the same time
the whites could be allowed to rule “as they [were] entitled to by reason of their money and brains.”
84
Armstrong admits that these were his views even when he served in Kalakaua’s cabinet, but
emphasized his Hawaiian patriotism and support of the King. “It has been a great disappointment to
me,” he wrote, “that I could not aid in building up the Hawaiian nationality. I believe that I would,
even now, make the greatest sacrifice, in order to aid establishing it….If I did not desire that your
majesty should have a long, successful and peaceful reign, I should not write this letter and so again
Armstrong to Kalakaua, Oct. 3, 1890, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
Library, Box 1, Folder 3.
84
Ibid.
83
Cohen 31
I repeat, this is my excuse for writing, in the hope that you may make an alliance with the United
States, which will secure you to the Throne of Hawaii.”85
Though fraught with assumptions of white superiority and American altruism, Armstrong’s
letter seemed to be well intentioned. He had little to gain from writing such a message but seemed to
do so because he was genuinely invested in the stability of his birthplace. Armstrong hoped to push
Kalakaua to adopt a “realistic” strategy, given what he saw as the impossibility of a Hawaii governed
by Hawaiians.
To Armstrong’s disappointment, his words had no effect. In writing peppered with
grammatical and spelling mistakes, the King responded defensively. He flatly dismissed the idea of
entering into a treaty with the American government, stating that “such a course will have to be
present to the legislature of the Kingdom, or to a plebistitem[sic]” and that Hawaiians and working
class immigrants in the islands would likely oppose any such action. Though the letter was pithy and
brusque in parts, the King signed it “I remain yours very truly.”86
Kalakaua’s response to William Nevins Armstrong’s letter did not leave much room for a
continued dialogue, but even if it had, the conversation would not have continued for long. Just a
few months after their strained correspondence, on January 20, 1891, Kalakaua succumbed to
Bright’s disease.87 Lying prone on a bed in San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, where he had traveled for
medical attention, he recorded a message for his subjects on an Edison recording machine and
whispered his last words: “Tell my people I tried.”88
Ibid.
Kalakaua to Armstrong, Oct. 18, 1890, William Nevins Armstrong Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University
Library, Box 1, Folder 3.
87
A historical classification of kidney diseases.
88
“Ka Ipo Lei Manu”, accessed March 28, 2011, http://www.huapala.org/Ka/Ka_Ipo_Lei_Manu.html; Daws, 263.
85
86
Cohen 32
**********
As his only living family member, Kalakaua’s sister, Liliuokalani assumed the throne after his
death. Though she was attractive, eloquent, and prudish, many whites were distrustful of her, and
considered her “a sovereign to be watched with a keen eye.”89 Though she had solemnly sworn to
accept the Constitution of 1887 when she assumed the throne, many doubted her sincerity and
suspected that she would try to reclaim the powers of the crown. She had fiercely opposed the
Reform movement in 1887, and her residence had supposedly served as the headquarters for Wilcox
and his conspirators in an 1889 native uprising.90
Queen Liliuokalani91
San Francisco Chronicle, Dec. 5, 1890.
Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom, 112.
91
Credit: State Archives of Hawaii
89
90
Cohen 33
Liliuokalani inherited a Kingdom plagued by financial crisis—a fact that did not increase her
popularity with her wealthy white subjects. The McKinley Tariff Bill, passed by Congress in 1890,
had removed the duties on all raw sugar imported from foreign countries and, in effect, extinguished
the advantage that the Reciprocity Treaty had given Hawaiian sugar planters. The price of raw sugar
plummeted from $100 to $60 per ton, production dropped, wages were slashed, property values
depreciated more than $14,000,000 and unemployment skyrocketed.92 This depression combined
with political malaise, provided those with annexationist ambitions a fertile atmosphere for
promoting revolution.
One day in early 1892, Lorrin Thurston, the grandson of prominent Hawaiian missionaries
and author of the Bayonet Constitution, who had served as Hawaiian interior minister in 1887,
walked out of his Merchant Street law office and ran into American lawyer Henry E. Cooper.
“Thurston,” Cooper began, according to Thurston’s memoir, “if Liliuokalani attempts to
subvert the constitution of 1887, what do you intend to do about it?”
Thurston replied that he would oppose her.
“Who else in the community thinks as you do?”
When Thurston answered that, generally, he thought most leaders shared his views, Cooper
pushed, “But do you know exactly the men who think with you, upon whom you could put your
hand at a moment’s notice, if action was called for?”93
He replied that he did not, and to remedy this problem, the men spearheaded the
“Annexation Club,” a secret society composed of foreigners nervous about Liliuokalani’s reign.
Their occupations ranged from law to plantation owning to stock brokering, but their whiteness and
prosperity united them. The goal of the club, according to Thurston, was not to promote annexation
92
93
Stevens to John W. Foster, Nov. 20, 1892, No. 74, United States Department of State, Dispatches, Hawaii, 25.
Lorrin Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution, (Honolulu: Advertiser Publishing Co., Ltd., 1936), 229.
Cohen 34
but “to be ready to act quickly and intelligently, should Liliuokalani precipitate the necessity by some
move against the constitution, tending to revert to absolutism or anything of the nature.”94
Before taking any definitive action, the members of the Annexation Club wanted to assess
the attitude of the United States government towards their objective and sent Lorrin Thurston to the
United States to discuss the club’s aims with prominent sugar planters, U.S. government officials,
and none other than William Nevins Armstrong. Though Thurston was not able to meet with
President Harrison directly, Harrison authorized U.S. Naval Secretary Benjamin Tracy to say that
should the turmoil in Hawaii continue and Thurston were to propose annexation “[he would] find
an exceedingly sympathetic administration here.”95
Seven months after Thurston’s delicate diplomatic journey to Washington in November
1892, the Annexation Club received a letter from Archibald Hopkins. Hopkins, a clerk of the United
States Court of Claims, had agreed to serve as the Annexation Club’s United States agent upon
William Nevins Armstrong’s request. The son of Dr. Mark Hopkins, Archibald Hopkins had lived
with William’s brother Samuel at Williams College, and by extension thought of William almost as
family. Why William didn’t serve as an agent for the club himself is unclear, but he indubitably
supported its ends and provided its power players with important counsel. There is also evidence
that Armstrong reviewed all of the correspondence sent from Thurston to Hopkins, as these letters
ultimately ended up in Armstrong’s personal papers in the Yale University Manuscripts and Archives
Collection.
One particular letter from Hopkins to Thurston contained a proposal from the Harrison
administration: the United States Government was willing to pay Queen Liluokalani $250,000 for
“the assignment to the United States of the Sovereignty of Hawaii.” Though he used more
94
95
Ibid.
Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution, 232.
Cohen 35
diplomatic language in his response, Thurston called this offer “preposterous” in his memoir.96 The
Queen’s government salary was $80,000 so unless forced to “take [$250,000] or nothing,” she would
surely refuse the offer. Thurston wrote Hopkins immediately, explaining this issue, and pointing out
political problems with the proposal.
Hopkins responded that since the Cleveland administration would replace Harrison’s in
March, it was “useless to attempt to bring matters to a head during the short time which remains to
this administration.”97 However, Hopkins assured Thurston that should “unexpected changes make
it seem best for you to act immediately, everything possible to second your plans will be done at this
end of the line in the short term time that remains.”98
Three days after Thurston received Hopkins’ words of support, on January 14, 1893, he and
his annexationist colleagues were presented with their excuse to act. That morning Queen
Liliuokalani announced to her ministers that she would promulgate a new constitution to replace the
one Kalakaua had signed in 1887. She had been inundated by petitions encouraging her to do so,
signed by 6,500 out of 9,000 of registered voters.99 This document would have increased native
suffrage by reducing wealth requirements and eliminating the voting privileges of Europeans and
Americans residing in Hawaii.
In response, a group of thirteen men opposed to the new constitution–mostly Americans or
Hawaiian-born of American parents, many of whom were also members of the Annexation Club—
spearheaded an organization called the Citizen’s Committee of Public Safety. As this title suggests,
the group saw themselves as guardians, not aggressors, and at least three of the thirteen members—
Lorrin Thurston, William Smith, and William Castle—had familial ties to the American missionary
movement in Hawaii.
Thurston, Memoirs of the Hawaiian Revolution, 234.
Hopkins to Thurston, Dec. 29, 1892, AH, FO Ex., Misc,. Local Officials, printed in Thurston, Memoirs, pp. 242-43.
98
Ibid.
99
Liluokalani, Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, (Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1964).
96
97
Cohen 36
Committee of Safety100
The morning after its formation, three members of the committee, including Thurston, met
with United States Minister John Stevens to assess his feelings on the Annexation Club establishing
a white-run provisional government in Hawaii. Stevens proclaimed the position taken by the club
“just and legal ” and that taken by the Queen “revolutionary,” assured Thurston that his troops
would be ready to land at any moment “to prevent the destruction of American life and property,”
and confirmed that he would recognize the Provisional Government.101
Conflicting stories exist as to what ultimately triggered the deployment of American troops, but
all records confirm that on January 16, 1893, one hundred and fifty four United States military
personnel marched through Honolulu’s Fisherman’s wharf and into the city. The soldiers never fired
a shot, but surely their very presence discouraged a royalist response.
100
101
Credit: State Archives of Hawaii
Thurston, 252-253.
Cohen 37
The standoff between the revolutionaries and the Queen finally concluded on January 17.
That morning, a policeman was wounded while trying to block a wagon carrying weapons to the
Honolulu Rifles, the armed branch of the Committee of Safety. To avoid attack by Hawaiian
government forces, the Rifles acted immediately, positioning themselves in Ali’iolani Hale, Hawaii’s
main government building across the street from the royal residence. Unwilling to risk embroiling
her troops in a fight against the U.S. military men, and wishing to avoid loss of life, the Queen
ordered her forces to surrender.
**********
As William Nevins Armstrong had predicted, the Anglo-Saxon had “pushed the Kanaka into
the sea.”102 What he had not foreseen, however, was that they would try to swim back. They did not
immediately use violence, though in 1895 Robert Wilcox and his supporters would try that tack
again too. Instead they formed a second political lobbying group called the Hui Aloha Aina, which
was split into men’s and women’s branches. Their mission was a simple one: to reinstate the Queen,
and oppose U.S. annexation. Perhaps naively, the Kanaka Maoli trusted the American government’s
commitment to democracy, and believed that if they could demonstrate that the majority of
Hawaiians opposed annexation and convey the injustice with which their homeland had been seized,
the U.S. government was sure to rectify Minister Stevens’ actions.
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
30, 16.
102
Cohen 38
Hui Aloha Aina: Men’s Branch103
They found a sympathetic ear with Grover Cleveland, who had replaced Benjamin Harrison
as U.S. President. Within five days of assuming office in March 1893, Cleveland withdrew the treaty
of annexation that Harrison had submitted to the Senate, and dispatched Congressman and
Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs James Blount to Hawaii to investigate what had
occurred there.
After months of research, much of which hinged on reports and testimony from the Hui
Kalaina and Hui Aloha Aina, Blount determined that the coup would have failed “but for the landing
of the United States forces on false pretexts respecting the dangers to life and property” and that the
general populace was opposed to annexation.104 Cleveland was appalled. He called Liliuokalani’s
Credit: Hamilton Library, University of Hawaii
Commissioner J.H. Blount, May 6, 1893, House Executive Documents, 53 Congress, 2 session, no. 47, 43. This
document will be cited here after as Blount’s Report.
103
104
Cohen 39
overthrow “an act of war”—an assault on a “feeble but friendly” people, and an embarrassment to
the United States’ national character.105
Cleveland, however, did not capitalize on his executive powers to restore the Queen, instead
leaving the decision up to Congress, and allowing the foreigners in Hawaii, including William Nevins
Armstrong, to continue scheming.
A second gap in Armstrong’s journals between 1890 and 1895 conceals his reactions to the
important events that took place within these years, but secondary sources suggest he became
increasingly involved in Hawaiian affairs. He wrote copious notes on Hawaiian matters for himself,
on a more active level, advised Lorrin Thurston on his 1893 visits to Washington when he was
attempting to negotiate an annexation contract with the U.S. Government. Even when Thurston
wasn’t stateside, he and Armstrong corresponded frequently in a tone that suggests the men had
grown quite close. In one letter, Armstrong even invited Thurston to Hampton to fish with his son
Dick who was home from Yale on break.106
Mostly, however, the correspondence between Armstrong and Thurston revolved around
how to accomplish annexation. In October, 1893 Armstrong wrote: “The first thing to do is to get
the kanaka out of the way…You must rule Hawaii by an oligarchy, but it won’t do to split the
oligarchy. To do so would make the devil laugh.”107
Shortly after penning this letter, in November 1893, Armstrong moved back to Hawaii “for
his health.”108 He had often complained of malarial troubles while traveling with the King, but they
seemed to recede by the journey’s end. Since Armstrong’s journals from 1893 are curiously missing,
James Grant Wilson and John Fiske, Appleton’s Encyclopedia of American biography, Volume 7, (New York: D. Appleton
and Company, 1901), 66.
106
W.N. Armstrong to L.A. Thurston, Aug. 8, 1893, State Archives of Hawaii, Series 411.
107
Ibid.
108
Yale University, Fourth Biographical Record of the Class of Fifty-Eight, (New Britain: Adkins Printing Company, 1897), 5556.
105
Cohen 40
there is no way to verify the true grounds for his relocation. But whether it was or wasn’t healthrelated, the move conveniently coincided with a pivotal time for the Provisional Government.
Nervous that Cleveland would continue to meddle in their affairs, the officers of the
Hawaiian Provisional Government called a Constitutional Convention for May 30, 1894. They
understood that annexation would not occur under Cleveland, and wanted to establish a more
permanent government to ensure stability until his term ended. The following day, after much
debate, Congress formally prohibited the President or other government officials from further
investigating of the Provisional Government of Hawaii, thus allowing the Hawaiian officials to draft
a constitution.
In a letter to Thurston in August of 1893, Armstrong had mentioned he had drawn up “the
vital points for a new constitution for Hawaii should there be no annexation.”109 Indubitably, some,
if not all of these points shaped the document that was enacted by the provisional government on
July 4, 1894 – a date deliberately chosen to “put another spoke in the wheel of annexation.”110 On
this date, Hawaii was proclaimed a republic with Sanford Dole, a Hawaiian-born grandson of
missionaries and Kalakaua’s former Hawaiian Supreme Court Justice, as its president.
Despite his avowed commitment to “Anglo-Saxon” institutions, and especially democracy,
Armstrong supported the 1894 constitution regardless of its illegal nature. It had not been approved
by plebiscite or by the ruling legislature, but Armstrong insisted that its approval was necessary. “If
we were alone here,” he said referring to members of the white population in a letter printed in the
Hawaiian Gazette, the pro-annexation paper which he’d been appointed editor of earlier in 1894,
“very little government would be quite sufficient, because the true Anglo-Saxon does not require
much government, each man rules himself.” Since this was not the case, the situation called for “the
109
110
W.N. Armstrong to L.A. Thurston, Nov. 1, 1893, State Archives of Hawaii, Series 411.
Constitutional Convention minutes, June 26, 1894, State Archives of Hawaii.
Cohen 41
whites…[to] create a form of government through which they can rule the natives, Chinese,
Japanese, and Portuguese in order to prevent being ‘snowed under.’”111
Four years later, almost to the day, Armstrong and his colleagues finally attained their
ultimate goal: annexation. They hadn’t done so with a legal treaty; they had attempted such a feat in
1897, but the U.S. Senate had vetoed it when a Kanaka Maoli delegation presented them with two
petitions signed by 38,000 out of 40,000 native residents opposing the treaty.112Then the SpanishAmerican war began in the Philippines and suddenly Hawaii became much more attractive to the
United States. In order to secure Hawaii as a naval base between the U.S. and the Philippines, the
U.S. government sought annexation by a joint resolution—a much faster and easier means of
passing legislation. A joint resolution requires only a simple majority in each House of Congress to
pass, as opposed to a treaty of annexation, which must be agreed to by both nations under
international law and approved by two-thirds of the Senate. The joint resolution annexing Hawaii
was approved by the House and Senate on July 4, 1898 and signed by President McKinley three days
later, officially recognizing Hawaii as a United States territory.
The three hui, or Hawaiian political groups, sprang into action. They drew up a document
that reviewed the unwarranted overthrow of Liluokalani and Grover Cleveland’s objections to this
overthrow and sent it to Harold Sewall, John Stevens’ replacement as U.S. Minister. But despite their
efforts, the formal ceremony marking annexation took place one month later on August 11, 1898.
The hui organized a boycott of the ceremony, but even so, nervous U.S. officials surrounded the
palace with troops. As the natives sat in their houses, strategizing about how to continue fighting for
their homeland, the U.S. Territory of Hawaii’s new governor, Sanford Dole, lowered the Hawaiian
flag for the last time, and in its place, raised America’s stars and stripes.
The Nation 59 (26 July 1894); Pratt, Expansionists of 1898, 190-191.
Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism, (Durham: Duke University Press,
2004), 151.
111
112
Cohen 42
Crowd Gathered to See the Raising of the American Flag at Iolani Palace113
**********
In 1882 William Nevins Armstrong proposed to speak to the Cousins Society, previously the
Hawaiian Mission Children’s Society, on the question of why the children of Hawaiian missionaries
had not themselves become missionaries. Of the two hundred and four descendants of missionaries
on the Islands, only one family had formally continued the missionary tradition.114 Most others had
gone on to enter politics and business. Two of Hawaii’s largest sugar companies, Castle & Cooke
and Alexander & Baldwin, had roots in the missionary movement, and even before Liliuokalani’s
overthrow, missionary descendants dominated the Hawaiian government. But while these other
Credit: State Archives of Hawaii
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
32, 593.
113
114
Cohen 43
“missionary sons,” as they were often called, may not have continued in the vocational tradition of
their ancestors, they did perpetuate many of their attitudes—a fact which, in large part, determined
Hawaii’s path to becoming a U.S. territory.
Missionary work operates on the assumption that one’s beliefs are singularly correct and
ordained by a higher power. Though the self-righteousness of the descendants of the Hawaiian
missionaries was based less on religion than what they saw as the natural order of races, they also
believed in the absolute superiority of their convictions and abilities. Just as their ancestors had, they
were convinced that they knew what was best for Hawaii and Hawaiians, and many believed that
was Hawaiian annexation. The Hawaiian League, the group responsible for drafting the Bayonet
Constitution, boasted a large number of missionary sons and grandsons including but not limited to
Lorrin Thurston, Sanford Dole, and William Castle. The Annexation Club, which was founded in
1893 in order to subvert the monarchy, had even more members who were descendants of
missionaries. Of the five members in the cabinet of the U.S.-ordained Provisional Government,
Sanford Dole, Samuel Mills Damon, and William O. Smith were all born of missionary parents.
Unlike their missionary ancestors, however, most of the missionary sons did not feel a
responsibility towards the ensuring the welfare of the Kanakas. They had inherited their ancestors’
racism and paternalism, but not their altruistic drive.
After his tenure as Kalakaua’s Attorney General, William Nevins Armstrong grew
increasingly detached from the native population and their perspective. When he had first arrived
back in Hawaii in 1880, Armstrong stressed the importance of protecting the Kanakas no matter
what political transformations took place in the Islands. However, by 1882, before he returned to
Hampton, his loathing of the natives had grown so intense he wanted them expunged, or at least
permanently subjugated. An entry in his journal during his tenure as Health Minister reveals the
extent of his contempt:
Cohen 44
3 AM. I went to bed at 11Pm but was called at 12. The steamer was in with a
case of measles on board. As president of the Board of Health, I had to
decide the question whether the vessel should be in quarantine or come up to
the dock and land her passengers. So I got up, dressed and went to the
wharf. As usual the Physicians did not know what to do, as measles is a fatal
disease among the natives. I made up my mind that the Kanakas must take
care of themselves, and besides I wanted my letters.115
Armstrong’s changed perspective also reflects a larger phenomenon occurring in U.S.
Foreign Policy at the time. During the later 19th century, U.S. government officials began using racial
and moral justifications to defend their territorial expansion, but not in a predictable way. Instead of
voicing their concern for the downtrodden, they claimed it was necessary to protect the whites living
alongside them. U.S. policymakers such as Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, and
Henry Cabot Lodge rationalized that annexation was in “the interest of the white race” and believed
they had “no right to leave [the white residents of Hawaii] to be engulfed by Asiatic
immigration.”116
Since justifying territorial expansion by stating it was in the interest of whites was not as
convincing as a moral argument, U.S. policymakers adjusted their approach when rationalizing later
annexations. In his famous “Strenuous Life” speech in 1899, Theodore Roosevelt said of the
Philippines:
Their population includes half-caste and native Christians, warlike Moslems,
and wild pagans. Many of their people are utterly unfit for self-government,
and show no signs of becoming fit. Others may in time become fit but at
present can only take part in self-government under wise supervision, at once
firm and beneficent…I have scant patience with those who fear to undertake
the task of governing the Philippines…Their doctrines, if carried out would
make it incumbent upon us to leave the Apaches of Arizona to work out
their own salvation, and to decline to interfere in a single Indian
reservation.117
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
31, 593.
116
Roosevelt to James Bryce, Sept. 10, 1897, in Morison, Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 1, 672; Lodge to Herbert Myric, Jan.
10, 1898, quoted by Harold K. Beale, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore, 1954), 58.
117
Theodore Roosevelt, “The Doctrine of the Strenuous Life” (New York: The Review of Reviews Company, 1910), 322.
115
Cohen 45
These remarks closely resemble points Armstrong had made about Hawaii a few years
before. Both men saw the appropriation of nations run by so-called weaker races as a moral duty
and an inevitability. They believed certain races were simply incapable of ruling themselves and thus
it was the able Anglo-Saxons’ duty to depose and replace them. And though Roosevelt couched
Philippine annexation in terms of helping the “wild pagans” by providing them with “beneficent”
supervision, it is likely that his true motivations were similar to Armstrong’s: facilitating history’s
natural telos of white domination.
The foundation of these policies lies in the revival of racism that coincided with the United
States’ desire for overseas territory. The ideologies of Herbert Spencer and Charles Darwin gained
popularity in the 1870s and 1880s in America, and prompted American authors such as Josiah
Strong and John W. Burgess to publish racist propaganda that expansionists used to support their
cause. Strong, a Congregationalist pastor with a special interest in home missions, claimed that
Anglo-Saxonism was the only force that could save the world from moral decay and that the Anglo
Saxon was “divinely commissioned to be…his brother’s keeper.”118 On a more jurisdictional level,
Burgess, a political science professor at Columbia University, attested that the Teutonic races had
“shown genius above all others” in solving modern political problems.119 These doctrines allowed
U.S. government officials to preach that white-rule was not only justifiable, but also inevitable.
**********
A white government was in place. Annexation had been attained. All seemed aligned for the
functioning of a “decent nation.” But William Nevins Armstrong was not fully satisfied. He moved
back to Washington D.C. in 1903, and finally felt it was time to publish the account of his journey
118
119
Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, chap. Xiv, pp. 208-227.
Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History, (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1963), 240.
Cohen 46
around the world with King Kalakaua. He secured a contract with the Stokes company publishing
house, and in 1904 Around the World with a King was released to the public.
Armstrong’s portrayal of the King was arguably harsher in his book than it had been in his
private notes. He constantly demeaned Kalakaua’s intelligence claiming “the King’s mind was
naturally filled with crude ideas, the superstitions, the absolutism of a Polynesian chief. Though his
experience with the whites had modified their exaggerated forms and where experience was lacking,
a vague fear of white men’s superior intelligence took its place.”120 He also credited the “unselfish
labour of the American missionaries” for creating a semblance of civilization in the islands and
moreover, paving the way for annexation.
“They builded better than they knew,” he wrote in his book’s conclusion. “Unconsciously
[laying] the foundations for a high civilization in which the natives took little part. They established
firmly and permanently in these islands the Anglo-Saxon institutions for the regulation and
protection of human rights.”121
Though he viewed the missionaries as champions of social justice, Armstrong ignored their
obvious violations of Hawaiian natives’ rights. This is not too surprising since Armstrong had
proven time and again that his opinion of himself often contrasted with how he acted.
His notes, correspondence and book reveal Armstrong to be a highly intelligent man with a
keen sense of humor, but also a flawed man. He fancied himself fiercely un-pretentious, but
constantly mocked everyone around him. He was rarely entertained by his companions, but found
himself endlessly amusing. He scorned the King’s excessive tastes, but delighted in the royal uniform
120
121
William Nevins Armstrong, Around the World with a King, (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1904), 12.
Ibid, 289.
Cohen 47
“with wire of gold bullion” assigned to him for travel.122 Often, he claimed to be apathetic, only to
find something infinitely exciting a few moments later.
Farming and his land in Hampton were supposedly his passions. Unlike the superficial
sovereigns he met on the tour and the power hungry men he interacted with in Hawaii, Armstrong
could count on the soil to be constant, natural, and raw. He saw politics as a social construct
whereas farming was real, solid, necessary. He claimed having a good peanut crop was more
satisfying than receiving decorations or devising political strategies. Yet, in reality, he farmed very
little after returning home from his stint in Kalakaua’s cabinet; he spent far less time harvesting his
plots of land than annexation plots.
Very little has ever been written about William Nevins Armstrong, and many signs suggest
that is exactly how he intended it to be. Two important intervals (1882-1886 and 1890-1895) are
mysteriously missing from his journal records and were supposedly withheld by the donor, his
granddaughter Bess Armstrong. Though he wrote about annexation as an editor for the Commercial
Advertiser and Hawaiian Gazette, he seemed to avoid directly associating himself with the
annexationists. He openly supported the theory of annexation, but never directly involved himself in
its praxis. He referred his friend Archibald Hopkins to act as a liaison between the U.S. government
and the annexationists instead of doing the job himself and took little part in actively assisting
annexation. He provided counsel, but never negotiated with U.S. officials or even set foot back in
Hawaii until after the monarchy had been overthrown.
Yet despite his apparent desire to distance himself from the official annexation of the
Islands, Armstrong’s final contribution to the Hawaiian legacy, Around the World with a King, made his
lack of respect for the former monarchy abundantly clear. He portrayed the King as an egotistical
ignoramus with no concern for his people and took every opportunity to deride the shortcomings of
WNA Journal, William Nevins Armstrong Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Box 5, Folder
30, 106.
122
Cohen 48
his “Polynesian brain.” There was no strategic reason for Armstrong to write such a damning
account—white men had overthrown the Hawaiian Monarchy more than a decade before he
published the book in 1904. Self-interest—both for fiscal gain and notoriety—seems to have been
Armstrong’s most likely motivator.
“My relations to the King,” Armstrong wrote cruelly in the book’s final pages, “as a
Hawaiian-born subject but an American by inheritance, put me under an obligation to him like that
of the apprentice in the ‘Pirates of Penzance’; who was bound until noon every day to an absolute
loyalty to his piratical masters, but after that hour and until night, was entirely free to circumvent and
destroy them.”123
As a schoolboy, William Nevins Armstrong had rubbed David Kalakaua’s nose in the dirt.
Now, as an adult who had published an unnecessarily cruel portrait of the King, and helped
mastermind the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, he had done the same to King Kalakaua’s
legacy.
Word Count: 12,430
123
William Nevins Armstrong, Around the World with a King, (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1904), 275.
Cohen 49
BIBLIGRAPHIC ESSAY
I stumbled on William Nevins Armstrong by luck. Last spring I had a final assignment to write a
biography or a section of a biography based mostly on primary sources. I didn’t know exactly who I
wanted to write on so I decided to search careers and hobbies I found interesting in Yale’s Finding Aid. I
searched “travel” and the first entry caught my eye. “Businessman, diplomat…memorabilia almost all
relating to his trip around the world with King Kalakaua of Hawaii in 1881.” A trip around the world?
With the King of Hawaii? It sounded too fascinating to pass up. And better, after a few Google searches,
I determined that this businessman diplomat had never been written about before.
As I devoured Armstrong’s witty journals, I realized that his story went deeper than I had
initially imagined. There seemed to be hints that he was conspiring against the King, but I couldn’t figure
out exactly how. Since I was limited by time last year (I had about two months to research and write a 45
page paper), I decided to focus on a narrative retelling of his ten-month journey. I enjoyed writing the
paper, but felt unsatisfied since I sensed the story was far more complex than the one I had told.
My goal for this year was to uncover that deeper story. I re-read Armstrong’s journals from
1880-1882 and also read as much as I could of his later journals and correspondence. I say, “as much as I
could” because Armstrong’s journals and written correspondence presented two major frustrations: first,
two important intervals in his journals were missing, and second, Armstrong’s handwriting.
During his two-year stint in Kalakaua’s cabinet, Armstrong wrote in his journal compulsively,
writing almost 800 pages by the time he returned home. He often wrote about wanting his children and
grandchildren to be able to read about his activities, and wanting records to look back on himself. It is
curious then, for a man so concerned with posterity, that his boxes lack any personal records for the
Cohen 50
intervals of 1882-1886 and the years of 1890-1895. There is a slight possibility that Armstrong didn’t
journal during these years, but it seems unlikely given that Armstrong wrote copiously from 1886-1890.
Yale librarians confirmed that the donor, Armstrong’s granddaughter, Bess, withheld these years.
This first gap was not too damning to my research. It is possible that his journals from 18821886 contained information linking him to the promulgation of the 1887 Bayonet Constitution, but they
were not particularly momentous years in Hawaiian history. Additionally, during these years Armstrong
lived in New York, far away from the action, and was probably less focused on Hawaiian affairs than
during the years that he lived in the islands. The gap from 1890-1895 was more unfortunate. During
these years Kalakaua died, the white foreigners overthrew the monarchy and created a provisional
government, Armstrong grew close with Lorrin Thurston and advised him on political matters, and
Armstrong moved back to Hawaii.
On the second setback: Armstrong’s handwriting is nearly inscrutable. I hadn’t anticipated this
issue since someone had typed the journals that I used on Armstrong’s time in the Kalakaua cabinet,
presumably to help Armstrong write his account of the journey, Around the World with the King, which he
published in 1904. All of his other journals were handwritten. I enlisted the help of Manuscripts and
Archives’ chief archivist and resident handwriting expert Diane Kaplan, and even she had issues
decoding some of what Armstrong wrote. It became easier over time, but there were certain entries that
I simply could not decipher.
Luckily most of Armstrong’s correspondence, save for a few letters and telegrams, was typed.
The most interesting articles were a set of letters between King Kalakaua and Armstrong in 1890, and a
letter from Lorrin Thurston to one “Archibald Hopkins.” The first—Armstrong’s analysis of King
Kalakaua’s mistakes, and suggestions for how to sustain his rule—was interesting for its content and
context. It is the first primary source document after 1882 that explicitly links Armstrong to Hawaiian
politics and, more interestingly, suggests that he really did desire to help the King. However, in
Armstrong’s mind, the best way to help was to tell the King to step aside and let the Americans takeover,
Cohen 51
as he believed they were destined to do anyway. The second letter from Thurston to Hopkins is
interesting for its mysterious quality. Archibald Hopkins was Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s best friend
at Williams College. His father, Dr. Mark Hopkins, was the president of Williams and had taken Samuel
in after Richard Armstrong died in a tragic horseback riding accident. Archibald had grown up to
become a clerk in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C, and apparently stayed in touch with the
Armstrong family even after Samuel’s untimely death in 1893. Secondary sources suggest that Armstrong
recommended Hopkins to Thurston as a liaison between the U.S. government and the Provisional
Government in their negotiations for annexation. Still—this information does not explain why
Thurston’s letter to Hopkins would end up in William Nevins Armstrong’s personal records and hints
that Armstrong might have been more involved in the process of annexation than his own letters
indicate.
In addition to his journals and letters, Armstrong’s boxes at Manuscript and Archives contained
folders full of memorabilia—menus from the dinners hosted in the King’s honor, photographs, and
newspapers clippings that Armstrong had saved.
The documents in Manuscripts and Archives definitively proved that that Armstrong had an
intense interest in overthrowing the monarchy, but did not directly implicate him in such plots.
Frustratingly, the most important years for investigating this hypothesis (1890-1895) were missing from
his papers. Several secondary sources, however, such as Yale’s biographical record of the class of 1858,
his obituary in the Southern Workman, and several general books on Hawaiian history suggest that he had
a more active role than his journals reveal.
In hopes of finding a smoking gun, I ordered a host of documents from the Hawaiian state
archives. Among these documents were letters from Armstrong to Lorrin Thurston and letters from
Lorrin Thurston to Armstrong’s close friend, Archibald Hopkins. As I had hoped, these papers, and
especially the correspondence, proved Armstrong’s involvement in creating a Hawaiian Republic. There
Cohen 52
was no evidence that he physically assisted in any way, but he certainly aided Thurston, the main driver
of annexation, intellectually.
Finally, on a primary source level, I read the entirety of Armstrong’s published travelogue Around
the World with a King. Though the book is undeniably amusing and eloquent, its content is tragic.
Armstrong seems to go out of his way to disgrace the memory of late King Kalakaua, and openly flaunts
his disloyalty to him. He claims he waited until after the King’s death to publish the book so he could
“paint the wrinkles” on his portrait, but by 1904—after the U.S. had already annexed Hawaii and the
Hawaiian monarchy had been crushed—there was no reason besides self-interest for Armstrong to
publish the book at all.
To gain a better understanding of how Armstrong’s familial ties might have influenced or
connected to his role in Hawaiian annexation, I researched the U.S. missionary movement in Hawaii and
the history of the Hampton School, which I discovered was founded and operated by his younger
brother Samuel Chapman Armstrong. The most helpful books on the missionary movement were Gavan
Daws’ Shoal of Time and the biography of William’s father Richard which his wife, Mary Frances,
compiled. Daws’ book is a general history of Hawaii, but he gave more attention to the missionary
period than many other Hawaiian historians and writes with enviable incisiveness. The biography of
Richard Armstrong includes excerpts from his letters and diaries, as well as the boyhood reminiscences
of Samuel, and was especially instructive in understanding how Richard’s beliefs and activities shaped
those of his sons. While reading the sections of Daws’ book on annexation, I suddenly realized that
Armstrong was not the only annexationist with missionary parents and that in fact many of annexation’s
power players had familial ties to the missionary movement. This realization helped me to situate William
Nevins Armstrong’s story in a larger historical context.
To learn about the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute I relied heavily on Robert Engs’
wonderful book Educating the Disfranchised and Disinherited: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and Hampton Institute
1839-1893, the biography of Samuel Chapman Armstrong authored by his daughter, Edith, and finally
Cohen 53
the book written by William’s wife Mary Frances Armstrong, who taught at the Hampton Institute for
many years. In combination, these books gave me a sense of the philosophical foundation of the
Hampton Institute, and what an average day as a student there would look like. Additionally, the books
provided insights into Samuel Chapman Armstrong’s vision for the Hampton Institute as well as his
racial philosophy and how that philosophy related to the ideas held by his brother and father.
To place my findings in a grander historical context I researched Hawaiian history, U.S.
Imperialism, and the movement to assimilate Blacks and Indians after the American Civil War. I read
many books and articles and found those of Merze Tate, Ralph Kuykendall, Stephen Kinzer, Jacqueline
Fear-Segal, Frederick E. Merk, and Gavan Daws most interesting. Fear-Segal’s book White Man’s Club on
Indian assimilation and Merk’s book Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History were especially
informative in these ends.
As I mention in my paper, there has been very little written on William Nevins Armstrong. He
appears in the index of only three of the many books I used and there is very little information about
him on the Internet. He did not play a particularly active role in annexation, and instead seems to have
been happy to watch from the sidelines as long as his goals were accomplished. Similarly, there has never
been an article or book written specifically on the ties between the missionary movement and
annexation, so I hope this paper has made some contribution to the literature, and that I will have an
opportunity to expand upon it in the future.
Cohen 54
WORKS CITED
ARCHIVAL MATERIAL CONSULTED
Archibald Hopkins to Lorrin Thurston, Dec. 29, 1892, Letter, Hawaii State Archives.
Armstrong Family Papers, Williamsiana Collection, Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusets.
Constitutional Convention minutes, Jun. 26, 1894. Hawaii State Archives.
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