It did not take long after the New England mercantilism elite, who milked southern cotton profits using tariff revenue and then waged war on their attempted exit from the 1781/1787 compact of states, to then turn their sights to the American Indians, in effect exterminating their independent spirit as well. By the late 1880s there were no “enemies” domestically for the US government to validate their essential nature of providing safety for its citizens. This is when the US turned imperial in nature and looked offshore for its next conquest.
By 1893, New England mercantilists turned their attention to the independent nation of Hawaii. The following clips are from an article called ‘Walter Q. Gresham – Americas Anti-Imperialist Secretary of State’ by Hunter DeRensis
In January 1893, a group of American businessmen organized a coup d’état in Hawaii, overthrowing the indigenous monarchy. The plotters’ efforts were buttressed by a company of U.S. Marines under orders from John W. Foster’s State Department. It was in effect the first regime change operation performed under the auspices of the U.S. government—and it would be Foster’s grandsons, John and Allen Dulles, who would organize more coups in Iran and Guatemala in the 1950s.
This happened in the last month of President Benjamin Harrison’s presidency.
Hawaii’s new provisional government—headed by a “Committee of Safety” composed mostly of U.S. citizens—immediately sent a proposal of annexation to Washington. With less than a month left in his term, President Benjamin Harrison signed the proposal and delivered it to the Senate ..
The incoming Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland had as its Secretary of State a former Republican who was a free-trader at his core who also followed the founder’s principle of not interfering or joining in alliances with foreign powers.
Spending most of his career as a judge in his native Indiana, Gresham also served briefly in the cabinet of President Chester Arthur, first as postmaster general and then secretary of the treasury. Despite being a lifelong Republican, by the 1890s he felt increasingly out of step with the party’s devotion to prohibitively high protective tariffs. A lifelong free-trader, Gresham broke ranks and endorsed Democrat Grover Cleveland in his successful return to the White House.
The Cleveland administration promptly rescinded the treaty and Gresham issued this bit of principle that I think would make Ron Paul proud.
“Can the United States consistently insist that other nations shall respect the independence of Hawaii while not respecting it themselves?” asked Gresham. “Our government was the first to recognize the independence of the islands, it should be the last to acquire sovereignty over them, by force and fraud.”
Basically, the Cleveland administration could only hold off the inevitable for a few years:
To “satisfy the demands of justice,” Gresham attempted to negotiate the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy, but arbitration broke down when Queen Liliuokalani—then under house arrest—refused to grant amnesty to the American plotters. The provisional government remained in place until Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 under President William McKinley.
However, Gresham was prophetical in his wise statements surrounding this new attribute of the United States:
“Every nation, and especially every strong nation, must sometimes be conscious of an impulse to rush into difficulties that do not concern it, except in a highly imaginary way. To restrain the indulgence of such a propensity is not only the part of wisdom, but a duty we owe to the world as an example of the strength, the moderation, and the beneficence of popular government.”
Gresham believed that “the only safeguard against all the evils of interference in affairs that do not specially concern us is to abstain from such interference altogether.” If Americans did not “stay home and attend to their own business,” then “they would go to hell as fast as possible.”
Our legacy since WWII is below:
Here we are 125 years after these events, in a political hell of our own choosing. Statesmen such as Gresham have been kept out of political positions on an increasing basis over the past century, and “the people” have lost.
Peace out.
-SF1