Description

The Republic of Hawaii was a short-lived one-party state in Hawaiʻi between July 4, 1894, when the Provisional Government of Hawaii had ended, and August 12, 1898, when it became annexed by the United States as an unincorporated and unorganized territory. In 1893, the Committee of Public Safety overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, the monarch of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, after she rejected the 1887 Bayonet Constitution. The Committee of Public Safety intended for Hawaii to be annexed by the United States; however, President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat opposed to imperialism, refused. A new constitution was subsequently written while Hawaii was being prepared for annexation.