Hawaii is 2,100 miles from our Pacific coast. Yet if a line
be drawn from the point of our territory nearest Asia to the
Southern boundary of California, that line being the chord
of which our Pacific coast is the bow, Hawaii will fall this
side of it. Held by a great Nation with whom we were at war,
it would be a most formidable and valuable base of supplies.
We had sustained a peculiar relation to it. American missionaries
had redeemed the people from barbarism and Paganism. Many
of them, and their descendants, had remained in the Islands.
The native Hawaiians were a perishing race. They had gone
down from 300,000 to 30,000 within one hundred years.
The Japanese wanted it. The Portugese wanted it. Other nations
wanted it. But the Hawaiians seemed neither to know nor care
whether they wanted it or no. They were a perishing people.
Their only hope and desire and expectation was that in the
Providence of God they might lead a quiet, undisturbed life,
fishing, bathing, supplied with tropical fruits, and be let
alone.
We had always insisted that our relation to them was peculiar;
that they could not be permitted to fall under the dominion
of another power, even by their own consent.
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