John L. Stevens facts for kids

Quick facts for kids John L. Stevens
Minister to the Hawaiian Kingdom
In office September 23, 1889 – May 18, 1893
Preceded by	George W. Merrill
Succeeded by	James H. Blount
Personal details
Born	John Leavitt Stevens August 1, 1820 Mount Vernon, Kennebec County, Maine, United States
Died	February 8, 1895(1895-02-08) (aged 74) Augusta, Maine, United States
Spouse	Mary Lowell Smith ​ (m. 1845)​
Children	4
Parents	John Stevens Charlotte Lyford Stevens

John Leavitt Stevens (August 1, 1820 – February 8, 1895) was the United States Minister to the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 when he was accused of conspiring to overthrow Queen Liliuokalani in association with the Committee of Safety, led by Lorrin A. Thurston and Sanford B. Dole – the first Americans attempting to overthrow a foreign government under the auspices of a United States government officer. Apart from his work as a politician and diplomat, he was also a journalist, author, minister and newspaper publisher. He founded the Republican Party in Maine and served as Maine State Senator.

Early life

John Leavitt Stevens was born in 1820 in the town of Mount Vernon, Kennebec County, Maine, to Capt. John Stevens and Charlotte (Lyford) Stevens. He was a lifelong resident of Augusta in the same county, except for his time away at school and his later diplomatic service. Stevens attended Maine Wesleyan Seminary to prepare for a minister's career in the Universalist church, which he served as pastor for a decade, becoming a leader in the anti-slavery movement. (Stevens later became a firm opponent of capital punishment, and as a Maine State Senator urged the legislature to abolish the death penalty).

After a decade as an activist Universalist minister, Stevens was persuaded by his lifelong friend Maine Governor Anson P. Morrill to give up the pulpit and become a newspaper publisher and politician. Stevens took his friend Morrill's advice, left the ministry and became a newspaper editor and publisher before becoming a Maine delegate to the 1860 Republican National Convention.

Six years prior, in 1854, Stevens and his partner James G. Blaine had purchased the newspaper The Kennebec Journal in Augusta, where the pair collaborated for 14 years on editing their publication and pushing the development of Maine's Republican Party. Stevens also played a large role in the 1876 Presidential campaign when he served as Chairman of the Republican State Committee of Maine. He stumped in the states of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania for the Republican Presidential ticket that year, which won him an appointment as a minister representing the United States government.

Diplomatic career

Stevens joined the United States Department of State and was appointed successively minister to Paraguay, Uruguay, Sweden and Norway, and finally to Hawaii, an appointment pushed by his old partner Blaine, who had risen to United States Secretary of State. When Stevens was named to the Hawaiian post, his title was changed to Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary, indicating his rise within the State Department.

Soon after his installation in Hawaii, Stevens began writing about the islands, in a steady stream of pamphlets and speeches, including his December 19, 1891, speech delivered at Founder's Day celebrations of the Kamehameha School, entitled Advice to Young Hawaiians, and his later The Hawaiian Situation tract, written with Eugene Chamberlain and William Springer.

Envoy Stevens had gone on-the-record about his Manifest Destiny views concerning close allies of the United States. Presumably his views reflected those of his former partner, friend, sponsor and now boss at the State Department. In 1881, James G. Blaine had written of the necessity of "drawing the ties of intimate relationship between us and the Hawaiian Islands so as to make them practically a part of the American system without derogation of their absolute independence."

Constitutional reforms in Hawaii in 1887 had widened the gulf between foreign businessmen and native Hawaiian nationalists. In January 1891 the Hawaiian King, who had been sympathetic to the interests of the foreign businessmen, died while on a visit to the United States. He was succeeded by his sister, the Princess, who was crowned Queen Lili'uokalani. The new Queen was known to dislike the restrictive constitution of 1887, and envoy Stevens suspected the Queen's nationalist sympathies. He asked that a United States warship, the USS Boston be stationed indefinitely in Honolulu harbor.

In March 1892 envoy Stevens wrote to United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine, his old newspaper partner, asking how far he might deviate from standard State Department rules if a native revolutionary movement emerged. "The golden hour is near at hand," Stevens later wrote his old partner and friend Blaine. "So long as the islands retain their own independent government there remains the possibility that England or the Canadian Dominion might secure one of the Hawaiian harbors for a coaling station." Added Stevens: "Annexation excludes all dangers of this kind."

The question had taken on significance after the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1886. Seeking to capitalize on the new transcontinental link in Canada, British capitalists were said to welcome the addition of the Hawaiian Islands as an English protectorate. For aggressive Manifest Destiny advocates like Stevens, the telegraphing of English intentions – even by diplomatic innuendo – signaled the need for a preemptive American response.

Forced retirement and later life

Following his forced retirement in 1893 because of the overthrow of Hawaii, Stevens spent his time lecturing and writing and working in Republican Party circles. He died two years later. During his retirement, Stevens worked to rehabilitate his image following his humiliating firing by the new President. In 1894, the former preacher and newspaper editor published Picturesque Hawaii: A Charming Description of Her Unique History, Strange People, Exquisite Climate, Wondrous Volcanoes, Luxurious Productions, Beautiful Cities, Corrupt Monarchy, Recent Revolution and Provisional Government, a strange volume of part memoir, part travelogue and part political tract meant to provide a rationale for his actions in the Islands.

Queen Regnant Lili'uokalani of Hawaii.

During his life, Stevens authored several other books, including a two-volume biography of Swedish King Gustavus Adolphus and his involvement in the Thirty Years War, praised by The New York Times as showing "extensive research and much patient reading." The prolific Stevens also authored assorted letters, speeches and tracts, many of them advocating his Manifest Destiny views on American foreign policy. Stevens was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Tufts College in 1882. American author and orientalist William Elliot Griffis dedicated his book America in the East to Stevens, who, Griffis wrote, "believing that the lives and property of American citizens abroad ought to be as well protected as if they were at home, acting according to his faith."

John L. Stevens was married to the former Mary Lowell Smith of Hallowell, Maine, on May 10, 1845. The couple had one son and three daughters, one of whom drowned on January 20, 1893 – three days after the Hawaiian overthrow Stevens helped engineer – and an event said to have sent the diplomat into crippling depression.

Hon. John L. Stevens died at his home in Augusta, Maine, at 4 a.m. on February 8, 1895, of heart disease.

In 1898 the United States government officially annexed Hawaii. A seven-piece silver service made of melted silver dollars and given to Stevens after his Hawaiian tenure by pro-Annexation forces in Hawaii is still owned by Stevens's descendants. The tea service, and the career of its controversial owner, were the subject of a Public Broadcasting Service documentary in 1998 entitled The Nation Within. A one-act play entitled "Cry for the Gods" was written by Judge Paul Handy which presents a dramatized, fictional meeting between Stevens and the Queen on the night of January 16, 1893. It has been performed in Maryland and as part of the Capital Fringe Festival in Washington, DC.

See also

• James G. Blaine
• Kalakaua
• Liliuokalani
• Lorrin A. Thurston
• Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom
• Paraguayan War
• Sanford B. Dole