...States for annexation. The American representative to Hawaii, John L. Stevens, cabled Washington that "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is...the golden hour for the United States to pluck it." The hour passed. Democratic President Grover Cleveland believed in "national honesty," and he doubted...

...to signify that fact. On the same day, Stevens wrote a dispatch to Secretary of State Foster saying, "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it."95 As soon as the provisional government was established, as indicated earlier, it immediately...