timates for the War
Department. They seemed to think that we would never again engage
in a foreign war.

General Alger was a thoroughly honest man, of whose integrity I
never had any doubt. He was made the scapegoat, and President
McKinley practically was forced by public sentiment to demand his
resignation. Personally, I have always believed the President
should have stood by General Alger. I was much gratified when his
own people in Michigan showed their confidence in him, very soon
after he was forced out of the McKinley Cabinet, by electing him
to a seat in the United States Senate made vacant by the death of
the late Senator McMillan.

During his Administration, President McKinley did me quite an honor
by appointing me chairman of a commission to visit the Hawaiian
Island, investigate conditions there, and report a form of government
for those islands. He appointed with me my colleague, Senator
Morgan of Alabama, and my friend the Hon. R. R. Hitt, chairman of
the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In all my public life this
was the second executive appointment that I ever received, the
first being from President Lincoln during the Civil War, to
investigate commissary and quartermasters' accounts, to which I
have already referred.

It had been the well-known policy of the United States for many
years that in no event could the entity of Hawaiian statehood cease
by the passage of the islands under the domination or influence of
another power than the United States. Their annexation came about
as the natural result of the strengthening of the ties that bound
us to those islands for many years. The people had overthrown the
monarchy and set up a republic. It seemed certain that the republic
could not long exist, and they appealed to the United States for
annexation. The treaty of annexation was negotiated and then
ratified by Hawaii, but it was withdrawn by President Cleveland
before the Senate acted upon it; finally, the islands were annexed
by the passage of an act of Congress during the McKinley
Administration.

It was under these circumstances that Senator Morgan, Mr. Hitt,
and I visited the islands. The appointment came about in this way.
I had been urging the President to appoint Mr. Rheuna Lawrence, of
Springfield, Illinois, as one of the commissioners. The Hon. James
A. Connolly, then representing the Springfield district in Congress,
had also been very active in trying to secure Lawrence's