The Civil War and Hawai'i

The New York Times has an article by Jeffery Allen Smith, an assistant professor of history at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, about Hawai'i during the American Civil War, more than a century before it became a state:

Almost five thousand miles and half an ocean away from the killing fields of Gettysburg, Chickamauga, or Spotsylvania, Hawai'i and Hawai'ians might be assumed to have not played a role in the Civil War. Yet, regardless of proud protestations of neutrality by the Hawai'ian monarchy– the islands were not even an American territory at the time– many of the islands’ residents participated in the conflict, on both sides. And for good reason: though they lived on one of the most geographically isolated island chains in the world, Hawai'ians kept abreast of international events, knowing that the outcome of the war could greatly affect Hawai'i as well.
The presidential election of Abraham Lincoln received a positive response in Hawai'i  with the Hawai'ian language newspaper Ka Hoku Loa writing that America was “blessed” to have him at such a problematic time. Nevertheless, the Lincoln administration was worried about Hawai'ian neutrality and what it saw to be growing British influence in the islands. Understandably preoccupied with more pressing domestic matters, Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward did what they could. Seward replaced the boorish and tactless American commissioner to Hawai'i, Thomas Dyer, with the more capable James McBride, and promoted McBride to minister, making him the highest-ranking foreign official in the kingdom.
Later, after the passing of King Kamehameha IV Alexander Liholiho in 1863, Lincoln sent a personal four-page letter to the new monarch, Kamehameha V Lot Kapuāiwa, professing Lincoln’s sorrow, while congratulating the king and extending offers of support from “Your Majesty’s Good Friend”.
However, the Hawai'ian monarchy had its own reasons to improve relations with the United States, as it wanted a new trade treaty. To that end, Kamehameha V sent an emissary, Chief Justice E. H. Allen, to Washington in 1864. In June, Allen met with Lincoln, Seward, and other politicians to discuss the prospects for a new treaty. He returned to Hawai'i frustrated yet optimistic, without a treaty in hand but reporting that Lincoln and Seward were receptive to the idea. The only problem, Seward told Allen, was that the “civil war renders such negotiation inconvenient and inexpedient”. Still, the Secretary of State promised, “at no very distant period… the subject will be resumed with pleasure”. Private correspondence revealed that Seward planned to request a “port, sufficient for a wharf and buildings for a naval depot” in what appeared to be a harbinger of Pearl Harbor.
Similar geopolitical wrangling played out in the newspapers. Mid-nineteenth-century newspapers were unabashedly slanted, and the Hawai'ian press was no different. Many papers were published in Hawai'ian, English, or a combination of the two. The Hawai'ian-language press was to varying degrees anti-monarchy and quasi-independent, but over all it was pro-Union. The Polynesian was one of the biggest and the self-proclaimed “official organ of the Hawai'ian government.” It was a curious combination of abolitionism and states’ rights advocacy that liked to reprint articles from England in favor of neutrality. Engaging in a bit of yellow journalism, The Polynesian used the Civil War as a proxy fight against The Pacific Commercial Advertiser, its main rival and voice of American business interests in Hawai'i. For example, in January of 1863, The Polynesian claimed that The Pacific Commercial Advertiser had “never approved” of Lincoln’s removal of General George B. McClellan, unlike The Polynesian, and now Lincoln and The Polynesian had been vindicated by Union advances on the battlefield.
Hawai'ians themselves decidedly favored the North. Union victories were celebrated, and a Honolulu bookstore sold red, white, and blue envelopes that read “Union must be preserved” alongside copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Neighbors of a Southern-born woman living in Honolulu ripped up a Confederate flag she had hung from her veranda. In fact, support for Lincoln in Hawai'i was greater than in the United States– he did better in 1860 and 1864 mock elections with American expats in Hawai'i than among the Northern voting public. American residents on Hawai'i island threw a grand Fourth of July celebration in 1861, complete with bands, the firing of guns, and toasts to Lincoln and the Union.
Perhaps too caught up in the revelry, a Hilo merchant named Thomas Spencer organized about forty Hawai'ians into a volunteer auxiliary corps that pledged its support should Lincoln call upon them. The group was later dubbed Spencer’s Invincibles and drilled in military tactics. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported that “all the company now wants is a chance of a shot at Jeff Davis’ bloodhounds,” and that the men hoped that Hawai'i’s proclamation of neutrality “will not spoil the fun”. The Hawai'ian government did in fact disband the group, but the monarchy could not stop others from joining the fray.
More than a hundred people from Hawai'i fought on both sides of the Civil War. Arguably the most famous was the Union general Samuel C. Armstrong. Born on Maui to missionary parents who ran a school for Hawai'ian children, after the war Armstrong used that educational experience as the inspiration for his founding and running of the Hampton Institute, which trained African-Americans as teachers and engineers. It was at the Hampton Institute that Booker T. Washington received his education, and he used his alma mater as a model for his Tuskegee Institute.
However, unlike the white Armstrong, native Hawaiians who fought for the Union risked segregation because of their skin color. One volunteer, Prince Romerson, served in the Fifth Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry, an all-black regiment, and mustered out as a sergeant. Exceptions did occur, though: Henry Hoolulu Pitman, son of the Hawai'ian Chiefess Kinoole O Liliha, was a private in the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a white regiment, who was captured and died in Richmond’s Libby Prison.
A few Hawai'ians also found themselves fighting for the South. Probably more for employment than the Southern cause, about ten Hawaiian seamen joined the crew of the CSS Shenandoah, a Confederate raider that wrought havoc throughout the Pacific. Interestingly, the saga of the Shenandoah played an important part in the larger story of the later overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. Indiscriminate in sinking both American and Hawai'ian whaling vessels, the Shenandoah did not directly cause the demise of the whaling industry in the Pacific, but it did hasten it. With whaling ships becoming scarcer and voyages to find whales longer and more cost-prohibitive, commercial agricultural plantations came into their own in Hawai'i. After dabbling in cotton, rice, and other products, planters found sugar to be the cash crop of choice. Commercially active in Hawai'i since the 1830s, the Hawai'ian sugar industry saw one of its greatest expansions during the Civil War era. As a result of the Union boycott of Southern sugar, Hawai'ian sugar exports to the United States rose 175 percent a year from 1860 to 1866, while prices jumped over 500 percent.
However, the rise in sugar profits sowed the seeds for the overthrow of the Hawai'ian monarchy. Eerily prophetic, The Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported that the Lahaina Sugar Company paid more in taxes on sugar than the Hawai'ian king’s salary, which caused the paper to speculate, “We don’t advise the Lahaina Sugar Company to purchase his sovereignty– that would be treason or treachery, we don’t know exactly which.” Either way, the sugar industry in Hawai'i gradually gained political and economic power in the kingdom, eventually instituting a form of contract labor that verged on slavery.
The consolidation of wealth and power generated on these plantations proved fertile ground for white businessmen and their ilk, some of whom were Civil War veterans, who favored American annexation of the islands, and ultimately overthrew the kingdom of Hawai'i in a coup d’état on 17 January 1893. The war that strengthened the United States as a country laid the foundation for the destruction of the kingdom of Hawai'i, and inextricably bound the two for centuries yet to come.

Rico says his stepmother was born and raised in Hawai'i, and Rico has spent several pleasant visits there, and hopes to go back...