page_title: Thomas F. Bayard
section_title: Samoa and Hawaii
hierarchical_section_title: Thomas F. Bayard / Secretary of State / Samoa and Hawaii
caption_attribution_description: English: Text: "The Samoan Situation "As surrendered by Secretary Bayard to His Successor, March 4, 1889." U.S. Secretary of State Thomas Francis Bayard points a rifle towards his successor, James Gillespie Blaine, who is climbing over the fence of "neutrality." During this time, Germany was expanding into Samoa, and the United States was trying to counter this expansion. From the University of Hawaii at Manoa Library: https://www.flickr.com/photos/uhmlibrary/8274363782/
context_page_description: Thomas Francis Bayard was an American lawyer, politician and diplomat from Wilmington, Delaware. A Democrat, he served three terms as United States Senator from Delaware and made three unsuccessful bids for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. In 1885, President Grover Cleveland appointed him Secretary of State. After four years in private life, he returned to the diplomatic arena as Ambassador to the United Kingdom.
  Born in Delaware to a prominent family, Bayard learned politics from his father James A. Bayard Jr., who also served in the Senate. In 1869, the Delaware legislature elected Bayard to the Senate upon his father's retirement. A Peace Democrat during the Civil War, Bayard spent his early years in the Senate in opposition to Republican policies, especially the Reconstruction of the defeated Confederacy. His conservatism extended to financial matters as he became known as a staunch supporter of the gold standard and an opponent of greenbacks and silver coinage which he believed would cause inflation.
context_section_description: Among the first foreign policy challenges Bayard and Cleveland faced was that concerning American influence in the Samoan Islands.  The United States, Great Britain, and Germany all had treaties with the Samoan government that guaranteed their right to trade and establish naval bases there.  In the 1880s, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck began to increase German influence in Samoa, and attempted to replace the Samoan king, Malietoa Laupepa, with Tamasese Titimaea, a claimant to the throne who favored German suzerainty.  Bayard and Cleveland opposed any change that would undermine Samoan independence, as did the British government.  Bayard filed a note of protest with the German government, and the three powers agreed to meet for a conference in Washington in June 1887, but they failed to achieve any agreement.
  Shortly thereafter, Tamasese's unpopularity led another claimant, Mata'afa Iosefo, to start a rebellion that led to the Samoan Civil War.  When Tamasese's German guards were killed, Bismarck considered it an attack on Germany, and sent warships to Samoa.  Cleveland dispatched three American warships, Nipsic, Trenton, and Vandalia, in response, and a British warship joined them.  As the threat of war grew, Bismarck backed down and agreed to another conference in 1889; two weeks later, a hurricane struck the harbor and all of the German and American warships were damaged or sunk.  As tempers cooled, the parties met in conference in Berlin.  By that time, Cleveland had been defeated for re-election and James G. Blaine took Bayard's place as Secretary of State.  The three powers agreed to a tripartite protectorate of Samoa with Malietoa Laupepa restored as king; that situation prevailed until 1899, when renewed civil war led to a second convention partitioning the islands between Germany and the United States.
  In the Kingdom of Hawaii, Bayard and Cleveland pursued a similar goal of maintaining the Hawaiian kingdom's independence while expanding access for American trade.  As a Senator, Bayard had voted for free trade with Hawaii, but the treaty was allowed to lapse in 1884.  As Secretary of State the following year, Bayard hoped to again have free trade with Hawaii, and also endorsed the idea of establishing an American naval base there, although he preferred Midway Atoll to the eventual location, Pearl Harbor.  A treaty to that effect passed the Senate in 1887 by a 43–11 vote.  As in Samoa, the administration sought to curb foreign influence, encouraging the Hawaiian government to reject a loan from Britain that would have required pledging future government revenues toward its repayment.
caption: Bayard enforced neutrality in Samoa in the face of German encroachment.
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