The same years that women in Colorado, California, and Kansas agitated for their voting rights as full American citizens, Hawaiian women led their nation's movement for independence from American domination. The popular Queen Liliuokalani resisted threats of armed annexation led by American pineapple planter Sanford B. Dole when she inherited the crown from her brother in 1891. John L. Stevens, U. S. Minister to Hawaii in 1893, threatened U. S. takeover: "The Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it." The queen's desperate efforts to save her people's land, government, and culture continued even after Americans overthrew her monarchy in 1893. Indignant but polite protests against the newly founded "The Republic of Hawaii" reached President Benjamin Harrison with little effect. The Hawaiian people believed they had suffered an undemocratic, illegal, and cruel conquest by the United States.

Hawaiian journalists Emma and Joseph Nawahi popularized the independence movement with their weekly Honolulu newspaper Ke Aloha Aina (The Patriot). Emma Aima Aii Nawahi, once a "lady in waiting" to Queen Liliuokalani, published sharp anti-American broadsides in the Hawaiian language. She took over the journal after her husband's untimely death in 1896. That same year Queen Liliuokalani was placed under arrest in her own palace for her attempts to regain her throne. She remained confined for two years before the American intruders released her.

Queen "L'il" now appealed to the American people. She traveled to Washington herself, winning the sympathy of the new President, Grover Cleveland. "O, honest Americans, as Christians hear me for my downtrodden people! Their form of government was as dear to them as yours is precious to you. Quite as warmly as you love your country, so they love theirs," she proclaimed. Americans sympathized, including many suffragists who admired the Queen's brave stand on behalf of her people.

Hawaii's fate was sealed when war fever against Spain broke out in the Pacific in 1898. President William McKinley, and Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt convinced lawmakers in Washington to annex Hawaii by joint Congressional resolution. The U. S. government thus annexed the new territory of Hawaii. No vote of approval by its people was ever taken, and no Treaty with the Hawaiian Queen was ever signed by the U. S.

Voting in the new territorial Constitution was restricted to white, male property owners. Ironically, in a land once ruled by a powerful Queen, women with official U. S. citizenship did not win the right to vote until passage of 19th Amendment in 1920. Native Hawaiians, as well as Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrant workers remained disfranchised for some time to come.

Emma Aima Nawahi remained an ardent defender of ancient Hawaiian institutions and culture in the pages of Ke Aloha Aina until 1910. Queen Liliuokalani lived out her life as a noted author and poet. She published her popular autobiography, Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen. Hawaii's last monarch also penned over 200 traditional Hawaiian songs, including the romantic ballad, "Aloha Oe:" The words express not only friendship, but Liliuokalani's deeper faith in the eventual resurrection of the Hawaiian nation:

Farewell to you, farewell to you
O fragrance in the blue depths
One fond embrace and I leave
To meet again.