accorded to the Provisional Government by the United States minister
until after the Queen's abdication and when they were in effective
possession of the Government buildings, the archives, the treasury, the
barracks, the police station, and all the potential machinery of the
Government.


But a protest also accompanied said treaty, signed by the Queen and her
ministers at the time she made way for the Provisional Government, which
explicitly stated that she yielded to the superior force of the United
States, whose minister had caused United States troops to be landed at
Honolulu and declared that he would support such Provisional Government.

The truth or falsity of this protest was surely of the first importance.
If true, nothing but the concealment of its truth could induce our
Government to negotiate with the semblance of a government thus created,
nor could a treaty resulting from the acts stated in the protest have
been knowingly deemed worthy of consideration by the Senate. Yet the
truth or falsity of the protest had not been investigated.

I conceived it to be my duty, therefore, to withdraw the treaty from the
Senate for examination, and meanwhile to cause an accurate, full, and
impartial investigation to be made of the facts attending the subversion
of the constitutional Government of Hawaii and the installment in
its place of the Provisional Government. I selected for the work of
investigation the Hon. James H. Blount, of Georgia, whose service of
eighteen years as a member of the House of Representatives and whose
experience as chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs in that body,
and his consequent familiarity with international topics, joined with
his high character and honorable reputation, seemed to render him