ABSTRACT
The question of annexing the Hawaiian Islands sparked the first national debate in American history on imperial expansion and in many ways presaged the outcome of the subsequent controversy over the retention of the Philippines. 1 The debate continued intermittently in the Congress and in the nation’s press for a period of five years. Finally, on July 6, 1898, in the midst of the Spanish-American War, the Senate passed a joint resolution annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States. This political action inaugurated an expansionist foreign policy that reaped an empire in less than a year.
