Sanford Ballard Dole (23 April 1844-9 June 1926) was President of Hawaii from 4 July 1894 to 12 August 1898 and Territorial Governor of Hawaii from 14 June 1900 to 23 November 1903 (preceding George R. Carter).
Biography[]
Sanford Ballard Dole was born in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1844 to Protestant missionary parents from Maine. He was raised in Koloa on Kauai'i and practiced law in Boston, Massachusetts for a year before returning to Hawaii and becoming a notary public in Honolulu in 1880. He was elected to the Hawaiian Kingdom's legislature in 1884 and 1886, securing the 1887 constitution, which limited voting rights to literate males of Hawaiian and Euro-American descent. Dole was appointed a justice of the Hawaiian Supreme Court in 1887 and to Queen Lili'uokalani's privy council in 1891. In 1893, after the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Dole helped draft the Committee of Safety's declaration and became president of the Provisional Government of Hawaii. He supported annexation despite opposition from President Grover Cleveland, who supported the restoration of the monarchy, but the overthrown Queen's demand that the revolutionaries be executed caused Cleveland to back down from helping her. In 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was established, and Dole was elected Hawaii's first and only President.
Dole secured diplomatic recognition from every nation that had recognized the Kingdom of Hawaii, and he suppressed Robert William Wilcox's 1895 counter-revolution and forced the Queen to abdicate and swear allegiance to the republic. In 1898, Dole visited Washington DC to urge his republic's annexation, and the US Congress passed a joint resolution for annexation on 4 July 1898. The Newlands Resolution saw Hawaii be formally annexed to the USA on 12 August, and Dole served as territorial governor until 1903. In 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Dole a federal district court judge, and he served until his retirement in 1915. He died in 1926.