Liliʻuokalani, in the presence of Hawaii's cabinet…
January 1891 CE
Hawaii's King Kalākaua had arrived in California aboard the USS Charleston on November 25, 1890.
There was uncertainty as to the purpose of the king's trip.
Minister of Foreign Affairs John Adams Cummins had reported that the trip was solely for the king's health and would not extend beyond California, while local newspapers and the British commissioner James Hay Wodehouse speculated that the king might go further east to Washington, D.C. to negotiate a treaty to extend the existing exclusive US access rights to Pearl Harbor, or the annexation of the kingdom.
The McKinley Tariff Act had crippled the Hawaiian sugar industry by removing the duties on sugar imports from other countries into the US, eliminating the previous Hawaiian duty-free advantage under the Reciprocity Treaty of 1875.
After failing to persuade the king to stay, Liliʻuokalani had written that he and Hawaiian ambassador to the United States Henry A. P. Carter planned to discuss the tariff situation in Washington.
In his absence, Liliʻuokalani was left in charge as regent for the second time.
In her memoir, she will write that "Nothing worthy of record transpired during the closing days of 1890, and the opening weeks of 1891."
Upon arriving in California, Kalākaua, whose health had been declining, had stayed in a suite at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco.
Traveling throughout Southern California and Northern Mexico, the monarch had suffered a stroke in Santa Barbara and was rushed back to San Francisco.
Kalākaua had fallen into a coma in his suite on January 18, and died two days later on January 20.
The official cause of death was "Bright's Disease with Uremic Blood Poisoning."
The news of Kalākaua's death had not reached Hawaii until January 29 when the Charleston returns to Honolulu with the remains of the king.
Groups
Commodities
Regions
Polynesia
View →Subregions
