Dole proclaims the Republic of Hawaii; Cleveland's rebuff leaves annexation on hold

A year after sugar planters and businessmen toppled Queen Liliʻuokalani, the men who ran Hawaii still had no country to call their own. President Grover Cleveland had refused their annexation bid and demanded the queen's restoration, so the Provisional Government wrote its own constitution instead. On July 4, 1894, Sanford B. Dole, a former royal justice who helped draft the coup's declaration and later led the new government, proclaimed the Republic of Hawaii and became its first and only president. The republic would last just four years before American annexation finished what the coup had started…