Who do you suppose wrote this article? Do your research Easter is right around the corner...one might find the 'quack' that laid this foul air (egg).
"The article "Annexation Re-membered" leads off with a false sentence: "In 1897, a delegation of Hawaiians travelled to Washington, DC with 38,000 signatures opposing Hawaii’s annexation to the United States." That falsehood has been repeated so often in "Hawaiian Studies" courses and newspapers that most people now mistakenly believe it. Shame on Professor Jon Osorio and others who know the truth but continue to propagate the lie.
There was a protest against annexation in the form of a petition signed by 21,269 Hawaii residents in 1897. Most of the signatures are by ethnic Hawaiians, but some are by people of other ethnicities. Interpolation of census data shows there were about 39,542 ethnic Hawaiians in 1897; so if all the signatures were from ethnic Hawaiians then 54% of them signed. Thus, on average, an ethnic Hawaiian today who looks for the signatures of his ancestors will find that only about half of them alive in 1893 actually signed the petition. However, all people were eligible to sign the petition, regardless of ethnicity and regardless whether they had voting rights (for example, women and children did not have voting rights but thousands of them signed the petition). Therefore the entire population of Hawaii at the time is the appropriate number for assessing the percentage who signed. Interpolation yields 120,265 as the population in 1897, which means the 21,269 signatures represent only 18% of the population.
There was allegedly another petition in 1897 signed by about 17,000 people. But it has never been found. The real petition with 21,269 signatures is in the national archives because it was actually submitted to the U.S. Senate in 1897. The smaller petition is not in the archives because it was never submitted. Perhaps it never existed -- it's hard to believe that any petition with 17,000 signatures was simply thrown away. Furthermore, the smaller petition was allegedly on a very different topic -- demanding that the monarchy be re-established. History twisters like to add together the signatures on both petitions to arrive at 38,000. But it seems logical that most of the 17,000 signatures demanding restoration of the monarchy were also among the 21,269 opposing annexation. Thus the number of people signing the combined petitions is probably not much larger than 22,000. It's also interesting that approximately 4,000 people who opposed annexation also opposed restoring ex-queen Liliuokalani.
In any case it is simply wrong to add up the signatures on two different petitions which had different subject headers -- one to oppose annexation; the other to restore the monarchy.
The Great Statehood Petition of 1954, with 120,000 signatures demanding "Statehood immediately", had a higher percentage of signers. The statehood vote of 1959 -- an actual vote, not a mere petition -- had 94.3% YES votes, and even its strongest detractors admit that represents about 1/3 of the entire voting-age population.
There was never any petition during the 1800s with more than 21,269 signatures, and the biggest petition in Hawaiian history was the petition demanding Statehood immediately, with 120,000 signatures, in 1954." KKlunck
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