A nearly forgotten president is honored

Published 9:00 pm Friday, April 21, 2006

TRENTON, N.J. – When it comes to Grover Cleveland, many Americans, even residents of his home state of New Jersey, have trouble recalling anything about him except that he is the only president ever to serve nonconsecutive terms.

But 5,000 miles away, native Hawaiians credit Cleveland with sticking up for their rights and sovereignty in the 1890s, when sugar plantation owners overthrew their queen and asked for annexation by the United States.

So it was on Thursday that three native Hawaiians landed at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, carrying 20 leis, and found themselves getting lost on New Jersey roads as they searched for Cleveland’s birthplace in Caldwell and the town’s First Presbyterian Church, where his father was a pastor.

The Hawaiians are in New Jersey this weekend to pay their respects to Cleveland in Caldwell and at his grave site in Princeton.

“We just wanted to come and visit and get a firsthand knowledge of the person and history of Cleveland,” the Rev. Kaleo Patterson said.

The journey is part of the events leading to an April 30 national day of prayer for Hawaiian natives. Patterson, a United Church of Christ minister, is president of the Honolulu-based Pacific Justice and Reconciliation Center, which is helping to lead the effort.

The day of prayer, Patterson said, is meant to raise support for efforts to reduce poverty and crime among Hawaiian natives, and to push for the granting of some form of self-government.

It was Cleveland who set aside April 30, 1894, as a day of prayer and repentance over the U.S. role in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.

Cleveland was president from 1885 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897. His presidency was dominated by such subjects as tariffs and the gold standard.

“Hard-working, honest and independent, Cleveland nevertheless had no real vision for the future,” says a biography on a Web site run by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.

His caution extended to the flexing of American muscle abroad.

American businessmen overthrew Queen Liliuokalani in a January 1893 coup, declared a republic and requested U.S. annexation. Cleveland investigated and refused, saying the queen should be restored to power.

In1898, when Cleveland was out of office, Hawaii became a U.S. territory. It achieved statehood in 1959.

Patterson said the group has already learned a little about Cleveland’s early years, and was impressed by his strong religious upbringing. Many Hawaiian natives know what Cleveland tried to do for them but have scant knowledge about who he was as a person, he said.