Mr Blaine to Mr Stevens.
Washington, February 28, 1891.
Sir: I have received your No. 16, of the 5th instant, relating to the death of King Kalakaua and the accession of Queen Liliuokalani, and your No. 18, of the 9th instant, transmitting a resolution of Hawaiian citizens expressive of their gratitude to the Government of the United States, the governor of California, and the mayor of San Francisco, and through them to the people they represent, for courtesies extended to the late King during his recent visit to California, and of their thanks to Rear-Admiral Brown and the officers and men under his command on the United States flagship Charleston for the attentive entertainment of His late Majesty on his way to this country, and the solicitude and care with which his remains were returned to Honolulu on board that ship.
This Government is gratified to be apprised of the accession of Pier Majesty Queen Liliuokalani, surrounded and sustained as she is by the sympathy and good will of her people, and I hasten to express on its behalf; not congratulations and good wishes alone, but the confident expectation that the high duties devolved upon her by the act of Providence will be wisely and beneficently discharged.
By his visits to this country, where he was always assured of a sincere and cordial welcome, the person of the late King had become familiar to many of the people; and his approachableness, the simplicity and amiability of his manner, and the kindliness of his disposition had rendered him the object of their friendly regard, and aroused the desire on their part to testify their sentiments by such hospitalities as they might offer with propriety. It is therefore not necessary to emphasize the fact that his death among them became the cause of something more than a merely formal expression of sorrow, or that he will be long and pleasantly borne in remembrance.
The many years of friendship between His late Majesty and the Government of the United States, and the neighborhood and common interests of the Hawaiian and American peoples, made it peculiarly fitting that the last honors should be paid to him and his body be returned to his people by officers and men of the American Navy and on board an American ship of war.
Your address to the committee of Hawaiian citizens, at whose hands you received the copy of resolutions transmitted by you, is approved.
I am, etc.,