In this state of things, if the Queen could have dealt with the insurgents alone, her course would have been plain and the result unmistakable.  But the United States had allied itself with her enemies, had recognized them as the true Government of Hawaii, and had put her and her adherents in the position of opposition against lawful authority.  She knew that she could not withstand the power of the United States, but she believed that she might safely trust to its justice.  Accordingly, some hours after the recognition of the Provisional Government by the United States minister, the palace, the barracks, and the police station, with all the military resources of the country, were delivered up by the Queen upon the representation made to her that her cause would thereafter be reviewed at Washington, and while protesting that she surrendered to the superior force of the United States, whose minister had caused United States troops to be landed at Honolulu and declared that he would support the Provisional Government, and that she yielded her authority to prevent collision of armed forces and loss of life, and only until such time as the United States, upon the facts being presented to it, should undo the action of its representative and reinstate her in the authority she claimed as the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Islands.

This protest was delivered to the chief of the Provisional Government, who indorsed thereon his acknowledgment of its receipt.  The terms of the protest were read without dissent by those assuming to constitute the Provisional Government, who were certainly charged with the knowledge that the Queen, instead of finally abandoning her power, had appealed to the justice of the United States for reinstatement in her authority; and yet the Provisional Government, with this unanswered protest in its hand, hastened to negotiate with the United States for the permanent banishment of the Queen from power and for a sale of her Kingdom.

Our country was in danger of occupying the position of having actually set up a temporary government on foreign soil for the purpose of acquiring through that agency territory which we had wrongfully put in its possession.  The control of both sides of a bargain acquired in such a manner is called by a familiar and unpleasant name when found in private transactions.  We are not without a precedent showing how scrupulously we avoided such accusations in former days.  After the people of Texas had declared their independence of Mexico they resolved that on the acknowledgment of their independence by the United States they would seek admission into the Union.  Several months after the battle of San Jacinto, by which Texan independence was practically assured and established, President Jackson declined to recognize it, alleging as one of his reasons that in the circumstances it became us “to beware of a too early movement, as it might subject us, however unjustly, to the imputation of seeking to establish the claim of our neighbors to a territory with a view to its subsequent acquisition by ourselves.”  This is in marked contrast with the hasty recognition of a government openly and concededly set up for the purpose of tendering to us territorial annexation.