THE INJUSTICE OF ANNEXATION

As Viewed by an American Woman Miss Anna E Berry of Newport—The Kentucky Congressman’s Daughter Writes Entertainingly of the Native Hawaiians—A Petition to the President.

[Among the ladies who accompanied the congressional party to Hawaii in September was Miss Anna Berry, daughter of Congressman Berry of Kentucky, who has written charmingly of the islands. She brought back many souvenirs of her visit, which are to be seen in her Newport home. The best of all is the Royal Hawaiian standard, the flag which was floating over Queen Liliuokalani when she was deposed. It is to be noted that Miss Berry returned to America with a woman’s sense of the injustice of annexation, from the viewpoint of the native Hawaiian, while the men of the party came back a unit for annexation. The Hawaiian minister to whom Miss Berry refers as a descendant of a Kentucky Governor is Rev. Desha, of Hilo. His grandfather was Governor Desha, of Kentucky, and his father was Isaac B. Desha, who committed a sensational murder at Doggett’s Tavern, a well-known inn of early Kentucky days on the Licking River. The murderer was sentenced to death, and saved by his own father’s pardoning power. The case was one of the most remarkable in American criminal history. He fled to Hawaii where one of his half-native sons is a leading Kanaka minister, and the other is a postal employee.—The Editor of the Kentucky Post.

The recent visit of Senator Morgan and four members of the United States House of Representatives to the Hawaiian Islands aroused among the various peoples of the “Paradise of the Pacific” sentiments and feelings as opposite as the poles. There are indeed various peoples in Hawaii—a very scrapbag of a population—the good with the bad. Here Portuguese and Chinese, Japanese and Germans, Americans and natives jostle one another. Continue reading →