http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Hawaii

Republic of Hawaii

The Republic of Hawaiʻi was the formal name of the government that controlled Hawaiʻi from 1894 to 1898 when it was governed as a republic. The republic period occurred between the administration of the Provisional Government of Hawaii which ended on July 4, 1894, and the adoption of the Newlands Resolution in the United States Congress in which the Republic was annexed to the United States as a territory. (The Newlands Resolution was passed in the US Congress on July 7, 1898, and was acknowledged in Hawaii on August 12, 1898. However, the Territory of Hawaii would not be formally established until June 14, 1900.)

The Hawaiian Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 as a result of the intervention of foreign business interests and the U.S. military. The Republic of Hawaii was led by men of European ancestry, like Sanford B. Dole and Lorrin A. Thurston, who were native-born subjects of the Hawaiian kingdom and speakers of the Hawaiian language, but had strong financial, political, and family ties to the United States. Dole was a former member of the Kingdom legislature from Koloa, Kauai, and Justice of the Kingdom's Supreme Court, and he appointed Thurston—who had served as Minister of Interior under King Kalākaua—to lead a lobbying effort in Washington, DC to secure Hawaii's annexation by the United States.