Committee of Safety (Hawaii)
- For other Committees of Safety, see the disambiguation page.
In response to Queen Liliʻuokalani's attempts to gain more power for the Hawaiian monarchy by abrogating the much maligned "Bayonet Constitution" that was forced upon the kingdom in 1887, the Committee of Safety, formally the Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, a 13-member council, planned the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. Though this was not the first attempted coup d'etat in Hawaiʻi, it was the one that succeeded. They carried out their plans on January 17, 1893. The Committee of Safety was organized by the Hawaiian League, also known as the Annexation Club, a group of over 400 primarily American businessmen, merchants, and planters residing in Hawai'i. The group's unofficial leader was Lorrin A. Thurston, the son of a missionary and publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser, a newspaper that is still published today. The goal of this group was achieve annexation of the Hawaiʻi to the United States. Thwarted by the administration of President Grover Cleveland when he took office in 1893, it was not until four years as the independent Republic of Hawaiʻi, that the United States Congress approved a joint resolution of annexation creating the U.S. Territory of Hawaiʻi in 1898.
On January 17, 1893 about 1500 members of the Honolulu Rifles, a militia composed of local citizens, occupied government buildings, disarmed the Royal Guard, and declared the Provisional Government of Hawaiʻi. During this time, at the request of American citizens living in Honolulu, about 150 sailors and Marines aboard the USS Boston came ashore to protect American lives and property. The U.S. forces fired no shots, occupied no governmental buildings, and did not participate in the takeover. The Provisional Government established by the Committee of Safety gained diplomatic recognition from the U.S. Government immediately, and from all the other foreign embassies in Hawai'i within the following two days. The Provisional Government organized itself as the Republic of Hawai'i a year later.
Members of the Committee of Safety
- Henry Ernest Cooper, arrived in Hawaiʻi 1890 from Indiana, named chairman at mass meeting January 14, 1893
- Crister Bolte, German national, Hawaiian subject, member
- Andrew Brown, Scottish national, member
- Charles L. Carter, American, naturalized Hawaiian subject, member, died during 1895 counter-revolution
- William Richards Castle, born in Honolulu 1849, attorney general for Kalakaua 1876, hawaiian legislator 1878-88, member
- John Emmeluth, American citizen, member
- Theodore F. Lansing, American citizen, member
- John A. McCandless, American, naturalized Hawaiian subject, member
- F. W. McChesney, American citizen, member
- William Owen Smith, born on Kauaʻi 1838, sheriff on Kauaʻi and then Maui, deputy attorney general and legislator 1878-1892, member
- Edward Suhr, member
- Henry Waterhouse, Hawaiian subject of Tasmanian birth, came to Hawaiʻi 1851, member
- William C. Wilder, American, Hawaiian subject, member
See also
External links
- Was the 1893 overthrow of the monarchy illegal?
- “Hawaiian Sovereignty: Do the Facts Matter?” Thurston Twigg-Smith, Honolulu, HI: Goodale Publishing, 1998. [1]
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