When James Cook was on his third voyage in 1778, he was looking for the Northwest Passage. Instead, he found the Hawaiian Islands. Cook wrote books about his trips and this mad a lot of Europeans go to Hawaii. They brought a lot of diseases and killed a lot of the Hawaiian population.
In the early 1800’s, Christian missionaries arrived and they turned the Hawaiians into Christians. Hawaii was good for its sugar. Pretty much everyone who lived in Hawaii grew sugar. In 1875 the U.S. allowed imported sugar from Hawaii to be free. The McKinley tariff of 1890 made it so you had to pay for imported Hawaiian sugar. In 1887, the U.S got a naval base in Hawaii and they called it Pearl Harbor.
In 1891, Queen Liliuolzalani became the queen of Hawaii. In 1893, Queen Lil was taken over by the Provisional Government and some of the people were part of the Committee of Safety. She tried to get her throne back. President Cleveland said that Lil should get her throne back, but the Provisional Government didn’t let her. The Provisional Government later came to an end. It was then the Republic of Hawaii.
When William McKinley became president the annexation of Hawaii was brought up again. Cleveland, the president before McKinley, did not want to annex Hawaii because he was friends with Queen Lil. McKinley wanted to annex them. He met with people from Hawaii and they made a Treaty of Annexation. McKinley took the treaty to the U.S. senate to get the ok. They got the ok and Hawaii stayed a territory for like more than 60 years. Hawaii campaigned for statehood a lot. Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii Admission Act in 1959. It is an act that will allow the state of Hawaii to be part of the Union. In June of 1959, Hawaii had a vote to accept the Statehood bill. It was passed and Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States.Sources :)1) http://www.hawaiian-roots.com/missionaries.htm2) http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080101112428AAPYKUN3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii
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