Hawaii was acquired through a joint resolution of Congress signed on July 7, 1898, following a coup that overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy five years earlier. The takeover was driven largely by American sugar planters and businessmen who had spent over a decade consolidating political and economic power in the islands. In 1993, the U.S. Congress formally acknowledged that the overthrow was illegal and apologized to the Native Hawaiian people.
Sugar, Tariffs, and the Push for Annexation
By the late 1800s, American and European sugar planters had become the dominant economic force in Hawaii. Their fortunes depended on favorable access to the U.S. market, and when Congress passed the McKinley Tariff in 1890, it stripped Hawaiian sugar producers of the competitive advantages they had enjoyed over other foreign suppliers. Facing steep financial losses, sugar businessmen in Hawaii began planning for U.S. annexation as a permanent solution to their trade problem. If Hawaii became American territory, their sugar would no longer be subject to foreign tariffs at all.
The Bayonet Constitution of 1887
The groundwork for the overthrow was laid six years before it happened. In 1887, the Hawaiian League, a secret group of white businessmen, landowners, and descendants of American missionaries, forced King Kalakaua to sign a new constitution at gunpoint. Backed by a private militia called the Honolulu Rifles, they presented the king with a document that stripped him of most executive power and handed control to a cabinet dominated by the League’s members.
The constitution, quickly dubbed the “Bayonet Constitution,” reshaped who could participate in Hawaiian democracy. It imposed income and literacy requirements that disenfranchised large numbers of Native Hawaiians. It barred Asian residents from voting entirely. And it granted voting rights to white non-citizens who met property and income thresholds, effectively handing political control of the islands to a small class of foreign-born elites.
The 1893 Overthrow of the Monarchy
When King Kalakaua died in 1891, his sister Liliuokalani became queen. She attempted to restore the monarchy’s authority by proposing a new constitution that would reverse the Bayonet Constitution’s restrictions. This alarmed the same business interests that had engineered the 1887 power grab.
In January 1893, Lorrin Thurston, a lawyer and grandson of American missionaries, organized a group called the Committee of Safety (also known as the Committee of Annexation). On January 17, the committee carried out a coup that displaced Queen Liliuokalani and installed a provisional government led by Thurston and his allies. The U.S. Minister to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, played a direct role: he arranged for marines from the USS Boston to come ashore, and he extended diplomatic recognition to the new provisional government without the consent of the Native Hawaiian people or the lawful government.
The queen chose not to order her forces to resist the American military presence directly. She surrendered her authority under protest, appealing to the United States government to restore her to the throne once the facts became clear.
Two Presidents, Two Responses
The provisional government moved quickly to secure annexation. President Benjamin Harrison signed a treaty of annexation with the new government and sent it to the Senate. But before the Senate could vote, Grover Cleveland took office as president and withdrew the treaty. Cleveland ordered an investigation, and in a message to Congress in December 1893, he reported that the overthrow involved “illegal acts of the conspirators,” describing it as “an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without authority of Congress.” He called for the restoration of the Hawaiian monarchy.
Cleveland’s call went nowhere. The provisional government refused to step down, and Congress took no action to restore the queen. The annexation question stalled for several years, with the provisional government reorganizing itself as the Republic of Hawaii in 1894.
Why a Joint Resolution Instead of a Treaty
Under the U.S. Constitution, annexing foreign territory through a treaty requires a two-thirds vote in the Senate. Annexation supporters could never reach that threshold. By February 1898, only 46 senators were willing to vote in favor, well short of the number needed. The provisional government had been unable to rally enough support, in part because the circumstances of the overthrow remained controversial.
Supporters found a workaround. A joint resolution of Congress, known as the Newlands Resolution, required only a simple majority in both chambers. The Spanish-American War, which broke out in 1898, gave annexation new momentum: Hawaii’s location in the mid-Pacific made it strategically valuable as a coaling and naval station. On July 7, 1898, President William McKinley signed the joint resolution, and Hawaii was formally annexed. Hawaii would remain a U.S. territory for the next 61 years before becoming the 50th state in 1959.
Native Hawaiian Opposition
Native Hawaiians organized substantial resistance to annexation. In 1897, two Hawaiian political organizations launched petition drives across the islands. The Hui Kālaiʻāina collected roughly 17,000 signatures calling for restoration of the monarchy, while the Hui Aloha ʻĀina gathered around 21,000 signatures protesting annexation specifically. Together, the petitions carried 38,000 signatures, a remarkable number given that the total Native Hawaiian population at the time was not much larger than that. The petitions were delivered to Washington and are credited with helping defeat the original annexation treaty in the Senate, though they could not stop the joint resolution that followed.
The 1993 Apology Resolution
One hundred years after the overthrow, Congress passed Public Law 103-150, commonly known as the Apology Resolution. Signed by President Clinton on November 23, 1993, the resolution acknowledged that the U.S. Minister to Hawaii “conspired with a small group of non-Hawaiian residents of the Kingdom of Hawaii, including citizens of the United States, to overthrow the indigenous and lawful Government of Hawaii.” It stated that diplomatic recognition was extended to the provisional government “in violation of treaties between the two nations and of international law.”
The resolution formally apologized to Native Hawaiians “for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 with the participation of agents and citizens of the United States, and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.” It acknowledged that the overthrow resulted in “the suppression of the inherent sovereignty of the Native Hawaiian people.” The resolution did not, however, change Hawaii’s legal status as a state or create any mechanism for restoring sovereignty, leaving it as a symbolic acknowledgment with no binding legal consequences.