Noble Blood - Until We Meet Again

Episode Date: September 3, 2019

The same day Queen Liliuokalani proposed a new constitution for Hawaii that would restore power to the monarchy and grant native Hawaiians the right to vote in elections, a group of white businessmen met at a law office in Honolulu, and hatched a plan that would change the course of nations. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're listening to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. In 1887, Queen Victoria invited 50 foreign princes and monarchs from around the world to celebrate her golden jubilee. The Jubilee marked 50 years for Victoria as the Queen of England. Her silver Jubilee, 25 years earlier, was barely commemorated at all. Just months before that, her beloved husband, Prince Albert, had died young of typhoid fever. Victoria had been bereft.

She remained cloaked in black and shielded from the public life in mourning for decades. But now, for her golden Jubilee, she was re-emerging for her. the first time, a newly minted empress of India, a global queen and one who deserved a celebration that exalted her in all of her international imperial glory. Among her foreign royal guests were crowned princess Liliu O'Kalani of Hawaii, the sister of the king, and next in line for the throne. Liliu O'Kalani traveled with the king's wife, and, to their surprise, when their ship arrived in Liverpool, they were met with all of the royal pomp and fanfare that England had to offer. Banners flapped happily, streamers danced in the wind, rows of soldiers saluted in perfect

unison. A military band played God Save the Queen. They were greeted by the Lord Mayor of Liverpool himself. In Hawaii, royalty enjoyed far less pomp and pageantry, especially since the white owners of the sugar plantations had installed themselves into government. Those men, mostly from the United States, England, and Germany, treated the native Hawaiian monarchy as something between a nuisance and a threat. But here, arriving to honor Queen Victoria, Liliocallani and her sister-in-law were among the guests of honor, treated with splendor and majesty that most European monarchs took for granted. They were brought to London on a steamer train with an escort of 100 soldiers and granted use

of Queen Victoria's own carriages, horses, and drivers for the duration of their stay. When Liliu O'Kalani commented on the grandness of their welcome, their minister bowed deeply. They'd come such a long way, he said. Her Majesty thought the special honors were the very least she could do. Liliu O'Kalani was seated in the royal box at Westminster Abbey for the Jubilee Service, and during the prayers for Queen Victoria, Liliu O'Kalani saw a ray of light come through the high windows and fall directly upon Victoria's head.

It was like God himself granting Victoria her blessing, she thought. Lillio O'Kalani and her sister-in-law arrived back at their resident that afternoon, their ears still ringing from the boom of military drums and the shouts of crowd, their heads still buzzing with the excitement of their private audience of Queen Victoria. But they were scarcely in the doorway before they knew something was wrong. Their household staff were staring at them, stony-faced. Liliu Okalani let her eyes trace around the room, and she noticed that their bags were already packed.

They needed to go back to Hawaii immediately, someone said. Something had happened. A group of white businessmen had assembled a paramilitary group and forced the king, Liliocallani's brother, to sign away most of his power and turn the monarch into a powerless figurehead. What's more, the right to vote for the legislature in Hawaii would now include exorbitant property requirements

and explicitly refused that right to the many immigrants who had come to the island from Asia and who had been voting up until that point. The new wealth restrictions meant the vast majority of native Hawaiians could no longer vote either. The new law of the land

was the so-called bayonet constitution, so-called because the king had been forced to sign at the end of bayonets. The nation to which Liliu Colani frantically returned was now falling into the grass of businessmen. It was a nation on the precipice, and that was the nation, beset and imperiled, that she inherited when she became queen after her brother's death two years later.

Queen Liliu Okalani tried to hold the bursting levees at bay for as long as she could, but the waves of imperialism came flooding in, swallowing Hawaii and, eventually, its last queen. I'm Dana Schwartz. And this is noble blood. Even before she was technically queen, Liliu Okalani made it clear that her loyalty would always be to the Hawaiian people and not to the business interests of white non-natives. Back in 1881, she had been acting as regent for her brother

while he was away on a diplomatic trip when Hawaii faced an outbreak of smallpox, imported mainly from Chinese laborers who were brought in by businessmen to work in the sugar cane fields. A quick word about smallpox. It takes about two weeks for the symptoms of smallpox to show. In that time, a person might look perfectly healthy. All the while, they're spreading the deadly disease in person, through the air, and through the objects they touch.

After that incubation period, the symptoms slowly emerge. It begins with a fever and a lingering, uncomfortable headache. Your limbs will become heavy. Your back will ache. You might be vomiting, and then the red spots come. Lesions that appear first on your face and hands and then all over your body. Little spots that become blisters that fill with pus and then scabs to reveal deep-pitted scars. Its fatality rate was about one in three.

That two-week incubation period makes smallpox especially insiduous and contagious. And because Native Hawaiians had no inborn immunity, the threat was a deadly serious one. As Queen Regent, Liliu O'Kalani made the decision to shut down all ports and enforce a mandatory quarantine until the outbreak was contained. Vessels were prohibited from taking passengers between islands. The sugar growers were infuriated that she was putting a freeze on their business. But Liliu O'Kalani stood her ground.

Though 300 people died from the outbreak, there were zero additional cases outside the city of Honolulu. Liliu Okalani was faced with perhaps even a greater crisis in 1890 after she became queen. The Tariff Act. For decades, the United States had provided generous terms for sugar growers in Hawaii in order to encourage American plantation owners to settle there. While the tariff act of 1890 massively increased the tax on imported manufactured goods,

it eliminated all tariffs on sugar, which meant that the American market was now flooded with cheap sugar from all over the world. The Hawaiian economy was crippled. Over decades, Hawaii's economy had constructed itself up around the favorable terms the U.S. had given, and now the U.S. had pulled that framework out in one single stroke, and the whole thing was threatening to collapse. unless, of course, Hawaii agreed to be annexed by the United States. That was the ultimate goal of a group of white American business owners led by a man named Lauren A. Thurston. They called themselves the annexation club.

Annexation would make things a lot more convenient for them, but it would especially help when it came to making a tidy profit from their sugar plantations. So annexation might have been what the American businessman wants, But the same couldn't be said for the native population of Hawaii, or for Queen Liliu Okalani. In fact, since her ascension, she had spent nearly all of her energy trying to build a new constitution for Hawaii, one that gave the monarchy back its power, and one that once again granted native Hawaiians and immigrants of color the right to vote.

In 1892, Queen Liliu Okalani traveled throughout the country on horseback, riding from village to village and talking to her people. She may have lost most of her political power, but she was still the country's queen, and she used her power and influence to listen to the voices of the people who no longer had a voice in government. Thousands of people signed her petition

for a new constitution, and finally, on January 14, 1893, Liliu O'Kalani presented the draft of the proposed constitution to the government's minister. This version of the Constitution would increase the number of elected representatives and eliminate the property requirements for voters. Non-citizen American and European residents would lose the right to vote.

A massive crowd of Native Hawaiians gathered outside in front of Iolani Palace where the meeting was taking place. They were waiting for the Queen to emerge and proclaim that Hawaii had a new constitution. But the wait was taking place. longer than they expected. Inside, the queen's ministers all refused to sign the new constitution, believing it would spark unrest. After hours of debate, the queen finally gave in.

And so, when the queen finally emerged to the crowd waiting outside, their tears caught in their throats as soon as they saw her face, Liliu O'Kalani told her people that they should return peacefully to their homes. Later, some of the Queen's ministers met with the businessmen to tell them what had happened in the palace that day. The informants shared what had been in the Queen's Constitution, how she was building power to take back Hawaii. They spoke of the crowd of supporters that had come to cheer for her.

It was time for Lauren Thurston and his coterie to strike before they lost their chance. I get a photo of Lorne A. Thurston. He doesn't look like he was born in 1858. take away the old-fashioned style of his suit, the massive Victorian era knot in the tie, the narrow lapels. And he looks like he could be a stern manager at whatever company you work for today. With his full but neat beard and slight receding hairline, he might even be considered handsome. If it weren't for his black eyes and the unsettling intensity of his gaze.

Thurston was born in Honolulu, the grandson of two American missionaries, two of the very very first Christian missionaries to Hawaii. He had been the one who had written the bayonet constitution that Liliu O'Kalani's brother had been forced to sign. On January 14th, Liliu O'Kalani proposed her new constitution to her ministers. That very evening, after hours in a law office in Honolulu, Lauren Thurston gathered 12 elite white businessmen. These 13 men, all members of the annexation club formed a new group, the Committee of Safety.

Their plan was to gather weapons and raise a militia, and, with the support of the American military, overthrow the Hawaiian monarchy altogether. On January 16th, the Queen's Minister of the Kingdom, Charles Burnett Wilson, received a tip that a coup was imminent.

He requested a rest warrant, for the 13 members of the Committee of Safety, all incredibly wealthy, well-connected men. Fearing all-out warfare, the cabinet denied the arrest warrants. The next day, when a native Hawaiian policeman tried to inspect crates of weapons that were being gathered by the committee's paramilitary group,

he was shot. The policeman survived, and his was the only bloodshed in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The Queen had watched from the palace as the USS Boston approached the shore, with 162 Marines on board. The USS Boston had orders to protect American business interests. Chaos is bad for business. They would only get involved if there was fighting, which sounds well and good, except it meant, in practice,

that the Queen and her supporters were paralyzed, powerless when it came to defending themselves, against the coming insurrection. Almost 500 men were rallied to protect the queen. The Committee of Safety had 1,500, all white and heavily armed. Under the strict gaze of the ship of American Marines in the harbor, Liliu O'Kalani surrendered. Lauren Thurston made Sanford be Dole, president of the provisional government of Hawaii.

though Dole had declined to officially be a member of the Committee of Safety that technically overthrew the Queen. The United States minister, who had approved the Marine presence during the coup, wrote to the Secretary of State. The Hawaiian pair is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it. But unfortunately for the conspirators, something inconvenient was happening in the United States, a presidential election. Though Benjamin Harrison had been eager to annex Hawaii, his successor, Grover Cleveland, was staunchly anti-imperialist. Cleveland was in his second of his two non-consecutive terms, and upon taking office, he immediately withdrew the treaty for annexation

that Benjamin Harrison had sent to the Senate. Cleveland also appointed former Congressman James Blount to investigate what exactly had happened during the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The results of that report were crystal clear. Blount determined that the U.S. minister to Hawaii had landed the USS Boston under false pretenses in order to support the coup, and the coup was carried out against the wishes of the majority of the Hawaiian population. The involvement of the U.S. military was unauthorized,

and Queen Lily O'Kalani should be restored to the throne. In an address to Congress, President Cleveland stated that the Hawaiian government had been overthrown by, quote, an act of war, committed with the participation of a diplomatic representative of the United States and without the authority of Congress.

President Cleveland's representative met with Liliu O'Kalani and shared the good news. The United States would be willing to help her return to the throne under one condition, that she gave a full pardon to the group of conspirators

who had tried to depose her. Liliu O'Kalani refused, She believed that she would need to consult with her counsel and punish the traitors, most likely with banishment and the confiscation of their property. The American representative was aghast. By the time he made it back to Washington, the story had become twisted and distorted. Propaganda in the papers shifted public opinion until Liliu O'Kalani was seen as a dark-skinned barbarian queen, who wouldn't be satisfied until she saw the American business.

businessmen beheaded in the streets. Liliu Kalani wrote about that experience in her memoir, about a hearing secondhand that she was calling for beheadings. She wrote, There's an old proverb which says that a lie can travel around the world while the truth is putting on its boots. That offensive charge was repeated to my hurt as often as possible, although I immediately sent my protest that I had not used the words attributed to me.

Even so, in order to restore the words, the monarchy, that December, Liliu Okalani agreed to Cleveland's original terms, a full pardon. But by then, the provisional government had consolidated its hold on the islands, and Cleveland's power when it came to the issue of Hawaii had weakened. Congress, controlled by Cleveland's Republican foes, commissioned their own investigation, the Morgan Report, chaired by former Confederate General and Jim Crow proponent John Tyler Morgan. That report concluded that America had done nothing wrong in the coup. And so, to the American government, at least, the issue was closed.

When counter-revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the new white government, Liliu Okalani was arrested, her home ransacked by soldiers from Garrett to Cellar. Every drawer wrenched open, their contents spilled onto the floor, then swept into bags for evidence. Though she had not been directly involved in the counter-revolution, she was brought in front of a military court and convicted of misprision of treason, meaning she had been aware of potential treason but hadn't reported it. Hundreds of her supporters were arrested and six were scheduled to be hanged.

In order to spare their lives, Liliu O'Kalani formally abdicated the throne. Or so it appeared. When she was presented with the formal contract, she signed her name as Liliu O'Kalani Dominus, her husband's last name, which she had never taken legally. It was the only small act of rebellion left to the queen who was always willing to sacrifice for her people.

That might be the end of Queen Liliu O'Kalani's reign, but there's still more at her story. Stick around after a few brief words from our sponsors to hear about it. I'm Ego Wode. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers, Anchorman Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with them one day and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know

the groundlings. I'm working my way up through and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much. luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of

luck. Yeah. Listen to thanks dad on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you You get your podcast. You can have opinions. You can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, a cognitive scientist and hosts of the podcast, a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. We share stories and scientific insights to help us all better navigate these periods

of turbulence and transformation. There is one finding that is consistent, and that is that our resilience rests on our relationships. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us likes. Listen to a slight change of plans on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If the name Dole sounded familiar, chances are you're familiar with Sanford's. cousin, James Dole.

James Dole had been about nine years old, growing up in Massachusetts with his colonial pedigree family when the monarchy in Hawaii was overthrown. When James turned 22, he decided to move to Hawaii, where his cousin was the governor, and began the pineapple growing business that blossomed into the multinational Dole Food Company. But Liliu Okalani has a legacy that survives to the modern day as well. You see, in addition to being a queen, Lily O'Colani was a gifted musician and composer.

She sang and played guitar, piano, organ, ukulele, and the zither. While imprisoned, Liliu O'Kalani was denied books and newspapers, but she continued composing music and transcribing music that she had already composed. One of the songs she wrote was called Aloha Oe. You almost certainly know it. It's been covered by Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash. But if you're my age, you probably know it for a slightly different reason. The instrumental version of the song has been used in countless episodes

of one of America's most popular cultural exports. A certain cartoon character who lives under the sea in a pineapple, dole, or otherwise. Spund Bob Squarepants. The song Aloha Oi was inspired when Liliu Akalani saw a handsome Hawaiian colonel embracing a young woman. After the coup, when Hawaii went from a monarchy to a republic and then from a territory to a state, for many the song became a more meaningful ballad, mourning for the loss of Hawaii as it had been.

In English, the title Aloha Oi translates to, Farewell to Thee. One fond embrace before I depart until we meet again. Noble Blood is a co-production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Mankton. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Mankey, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at Nobleblood tales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Everyone, I'm Egovodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell.

Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you you get your podcasts. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.