General Alger was a thoroughly honest man, of whose integrity I never had any doubt. He was made the scapegoat, and President McKinley practically was forced by public sentiment to demand his resignation. Personally, I have always believed the President should have stood by General Alger. I was much gratified when his own people in Michigan showed their confidence in him, very soon after he was forced out of the McKinley Cabinet, by electing him to a seat in the United States Senate made vacant by the death of the late Senator McMillan.
During his Administration, President McKinley did me quite an honor by appointing me chairman of a commission to visit the Hawaiian Island, investigate conditions there, and report a form of government for those islands. He appointed with me my colleague, Senator Morgan of Alabama, and my friend the Hon. R. R. Hitt, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In all my public life this was the second executive appointment that I ever received, the first being from President Lincoln during the Civil War, to investigate commissary and quartermasters' accounts, to which I have already referred.
It had been the well-known policy of the United States for many years that in no event could the entity of Hawaiian statehood cease by the passage of the islands under the domination or influence of another power than the United States. Their annexation came about as the natural result of the strengthening of the ties that bound us to those islands for many years. The people had overthrown the monarchy and set up a republic. It seemed certain that the republic could not long exist, and they appealed to the United States for annexation. The treaty of annexation was negotiated and then ratified by Hawaii, but it was withdrawn by President Cleveland before the Senate acted upon it; finally, the islands were annexed by the passage of an act of Congress during the McKinley Administration.
It was under these circumstances that Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt, and I visited the islands. The appointment came about in this way. I had been urging the President to appoint Mr. Rheuna Lawrence, of Springfield, Illinois, as one of the commissioners. The Hon. James A. Connolly, then representing the Springfield district in Congress, had also been very active in trying to secure Lawrence's appointment. He came to me in the Senate one day and told me that there was no chance of Lawrence being appointed and that the President had determined to appoint me. I told Connolly I did not see how I could accept an appointment, under the circumstances, and that Lawrence might misunderstand it. Connolly said he thought I must take the place. The President himself afterwards talked with me about it. I hesitated. He urged me, insisting that I could not very well afford to decline. Finally I said that if he insisted, I would accept. He nominated us to the Senate for confirmation. This precipitated considerable debate in the Senate, for, by the member of the Committee on the Judiciary, the appointment of Senators and members on such a commission was regarded as unconstitutional; but the committee determined to take no action on the nominations at all, so we were neither confirmed nor rejected. President McKinley urged us to go ahead, however, visit the islands, and make our report, which we did. This was the beginning of expansion, or Imperialism, in the campaign of 1900.
One writer, in speaking of the acquisition of these islands, said:
"One of the brightest episodes in American history was the acquisition of the Hawaiian Islands, and Senator Cullom's name is prominently associated with that act. He read aright our history as a nation of expansionists. He was not afraid to permit the great republic to become greater. He deemed it wise that to the lines of our influence on land should be added a national influence on the seas. This view was accepted by the people and by the national Legislature. By President McKinley, Senator Cullom was appointed chairman of the Hawaiian Commission, composed of Senator Morgan of Alabama, and Congressman Hitt of Illinois, and Senator Cullom, to visit the islands and frame a new law providing for their civil government and defining their future relations with the United States. Since the days of Clyde in India, few men have been clothed with a more important duty than this commission, whose mission it was to prepare a Government for the Hawaiian Islands. The bill recommended by the commission was enacted by Congress, and stands as the organic law of the islands to-day."
We had an exceedingly interesting time in the Hawaiian Islands. They were not known so well then as they are to-day. We visited several of the islands composing the group, and publicly explained our mission. The people seemed to have the impression that American occupancy of the islands was only temporary, and that as soon as the Spanish-American War was over they would return to old conditions. We told them that annexation was permanent, and they would remain a part of the United States for all time to come. I did not favor giving them statehood. There was not a sufficient number of whites and educated natives to justify giving them the franchise as an independent State in the American Union. Senator Morgan and I differed on this a great deal, and on several occasions in the hearings of the commission, he stated that they were to become a State. I always interposed to the effect that, so far as my influence was concerned, they would remain a Territory.
There was one island of the group called Molokai devoted entirely to the care of lepers, leprosy being quite common in the Hawaiian Islands. We deemed it our duty to visit this island as well as the others. It was one of the most interesting and pathetic places of which the human mind can conceive—a place of grim tragedies. There were about twelve hundred lepers on the island, divided into two colonies, one at each end of the island. The island itself forms a natural fortress from which escape is almost impossible, the sea on one side and mountains on the other. We spent the day there and ate luncheon on the island. We saw the disease in all its stages. We entered a schoolhouse in which there were a crowd of young girls ranging from ten to sixteen years of age. They were all lepers. They sang for us. It was very pathetic. We visited the cemetery and saw the monument erected to the memory of a Catholic priest, Father Damien, who went there from Chicago, to devote his life to the spiritual care of the unfortunates, but who, like all others residing on the island, finally succumbed to the disease. We met an old lady at the cemetery and I asked her if there was any danger of contracting the disease. She said there was not unless we had some abrasions on the skin, and advised us as a matter of caution to wear gloves. I promptly put mine on and kept them on until I left the island.
I was told that they expected me to speak to them, and I did make them a speech. A large number of them assembled. I have addressed many audiences in my life, but this was the queerest I was ever obliged to face. There were men and women in all stages of the disease. Leprosy attacks the fingers and they fall off, and some natural instinct prompts the victim to hide his hands; but as my speech was translated to them, in the excitement they would forget and throw out their hands and applaud. It was a hideous sight and I most fervently wish never to see the like of it again.
For our expenses one hundred thousand dollars had been appropriated. I am not one of those who believe in lavish expenditures of public money by commissions. While I was willing as chairman of the commission to permit travelling expenses and the reasonable necessaries and probably the luxuries of life while abroad, yet I differed with my colleague, Senator Morgan, and insisted that no money should be spent for entertaining. Out of the hundred thousand dollars we spent something like fifteen thousand; and Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt, and I agreed that it would not be lawful or right for us to accept any compensation for our services as members of the commission. Something like eight-five thousand dollars reverted to the Treasury.