US History The Annexation of Hawaii The United States was built together by individual areas coming together as a whole. When we adjoin these areas we become stronger. .
After 1874 the great question that increasingly came to the fore was that of the relationship of the islands to the United States. Kamehameha III, as early as 1854, had suggested annexation. Between 1874 and 1893 the Americans in Hawaii became increasingly disturbed by what they regarded as the fiscal and other irresponsibilities of the constitutional monarchy. Under Queen Liliuokalani (reigned 1891-1893) they believed that they detected moves toward the reestablishment of a more absolute monarchy. They were also more and more concerned about trade agreements with the United States, being especially anxious to ensure the permanence of tariff-free entry rights for Hawaiian sugar, first obtained by treaty in 1875 and renewed in 1887.
These pressures erupted in 1893 with the subversion of the government and the deposition of the Queen by a group of Americans, prominent among which was Sanford B. Dole, the Honolulu-born son of a Yankee missionary. A republic was soon established, with Dole as president, and a republican legislature requested that the United States annex the islands. Washington refused for a time, but finally agreed in the heat of the colonialist fevers that were running rampant on the mainland. The formal annexation occurred on Aug. 12, 1898, and Hawaii's status as a territory was outlined in 1900.
In March 1897 William McKinley succeeded Cleveland as president of the United States. Both McKinley and the U.S. public favored the annexation of Hawaii. The next year both houses of Congress approved a joint resolution to annex Hawaii. President McKinley signed the resolution on July 7, 1898, and the formal transfer of Hawaiian sovereignty to the United States took place in Honolulu on August 12, 1898. On June 14, 1900, Hawaii became a U.