{"id":852,"date":"2013-08-16T21:21:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-16T21:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/?p=852"},"modified":"2023-02-27T10:30:23","modified_gmt":"2023-02-27T20:30:23","slug":"archives-takes-wraps-off-1898-senate-transcript-secret-debate-on-u-s-seizure-of-hawaii-revealed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/archives-takes-wraps-off-1898-senate-transcript-secret-debate-on-u-s-seizure-of-hawaii-revealed\/","title":{"rendered":"Archives Takes Wraps off 1898 Senate Transcript: Secret Debate on U.S. Seizure of Hawaii Revealed [Feb. 1, 1969]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1969_Article\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Honolulu Star-Bulletin,\u00a0Saturday, February 1, 1969<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2013 Now it can be told\u2014what happened during the longest of three Senate sessions during the Spanish-American War, a debate over whether to take over Hawaii.<\/p>\n

The debate of nearly three hours on that day\u2014May 31, 1898\u2014and in two secret sessions the previous month had remained locked up until last week. Then at the request of a historian who noted gaps in the Congressional Record, the Senate passed a resolution authorizing the National Archives to take the wraps off the debate transcript<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s only explanation for the long suppression of the debate records is that they had been long forgotten.<\/p>\n

THE SECRECY WAS clamped on during a debate over whether to seize the Hawaiian Islands\u2014called the Sandwich Islands then\u2014or merely developing leased areas of Pearl Harbor to reinforce the U.S. fleet at Manila Bay.<\/p>\n

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, grandfather and namesake of the current chief U.S. peace negotiator in Paris, had the floor. He was pleading for all war measures and particularly for the dispatch of reinforcements to Adm. George Dewey who already had destroyed the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay.<\/p>\n

But before Lodge could press his case for the need of Hawaii as a rear base, Sen. David Turpie of Indiana demanded and got the Senate chamber cleared. Even the official reporter of debate was expelled for five minutes.<\/p>\n

Study of the transcripts is unlikely to add more than a minor footnote to history, for as Lodge contended during the debate:<\/p>\n

\u201cI do not know anything that would give them (the enemy) any information,\u201d because \u201cthere is nothing, nothing not already in the newspapers.\u201d<\/p>\n

LODGE COMPLAINED BITTERLY at the time about the secrecy, but his peers went along with Turpie and Sen. Georg Gray of Delaware, who questioned the \u201cpropriety\u201d of public utterances \u201caddressed to the ears of the enemy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Going further, Sen. Eugene Hale of Maine declared that the Senate is \u201cthe last place in which to discuss what shall be done about war,\u201d for its word \u201cgoes on the wing of the lightning to every part of the globe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lodge said Dewey\u2019s need for reinforcement was urgent because \u201cgreat and powerful interests in Europe (Paris bankers holding Spanish loan bonds) are directly interested in having Manila wrested from him and his fleet destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. William Stewart of Nevada saw \u201cno possible secrets involved in the discussion of the annexation of the Sandwich Islands.\u201d He contended the Navy required a coaling station for its ships and a \u201cresiding place\u201d for the men enroute to the Philippines.<\/p>\n

PEARL HARBOR, ALREADY UNDER LEASE, Stewart argued, wouldn\u2019t be much use until costly dredging operations opened the entrance channel. \u201cEither we must have the Sandwich Islands,\u201d he declared, \u201cor the administration must recall Dewey.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senate was unimpressed by the argument of Sen. Richard F. Pettigrew of South Dakota that the great circle route to Manila, skirting the Aleutian Islands, was 500 miles shorter than the route through Honolulu.<\/p>\n

He argued that many warships and fortifications could be built with $10 million proposed to be \u201cthrown away in the interest of a few sugar planters and adventures in Hawaii,\u201d and asked: \u201cWhy embarrass that feeble republic, or monarchy, or oligarchy or whatever it is, with our presence?\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. John T. Morgan of Alabama was concerned about the bubonic plague, cholera, yellow fever, small pox and \u201call the horrible diseases to which humanity is incident\u201d prevailing in the Philippines. Therefore, \u201cwe cannot refuse to men going there a stopping place on the salubrious islands of Hawaii.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Benjamin Tillman of South Carolina had the last word about the islands, saying \u201cis not Hawaii lying there praying to the United States: \u2018Please come and swallow me and pay the $4 million you promised.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

THE UNITED STATES ANNEXED the Hawaiian Islands five weeks after the debate. But before the Senate reopened its doors that day, Morgan steered the discussion back to Cuba, the original cause of the war with Spain.<\/p>\n

The first secret session, April 25, 1898, involved technical and emotional debate over wording of the declaration of war and why it or some accompanying resolution did not formally recognize the independence of Cuba or at least declare the Cubans to have the rights of belligerents in the conflict.<\/p>\n

THE SENATE ENDED UP BY ACCEPTING the House passed version reading that \u201cwar and the same is hereby declared to exist and that war has existed since the 21st<\/sup> of April\u201d\u2014four days earlier.<\/p>\n

Dropped from the final declaration was a Senate proposed tagline requiring the administration to \u201cprosecute said war to a successful conclusion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Stephen White of California joined the unanimous vote for war \u201ceven with that mild prevarication\u201d about when the war started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Honolulu Star-Bulletin,\u00a0Saturday, February 1, 1969 WASHINGTON (AP) \u2013 Now it can be told\u2014what happened during the longest of three Senate sessions during the Spanish-American War, a debate over whether to take over Hawaii. The debate of nearly three hours on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-relations","category-national"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31YBQ-dK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6468,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/6468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hawaiiankingdom.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}