"What is this?" Cleveland, the twenty-fourth President of the United States, said as he looked at the document his secretary had placed on his desk.
"Mr. President, a coup has occurred in the Kingdom of Hawaii. Our community of merchants overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaii and established the Republic of Hawaii, but they have now run into trouble and are asking us for help."
Cleveland picked up the document and began reading it with considerable displeasure. Quite a few people in the country had designs on Hawaii, and the calls were especially loud within the Democratic Party.
But President Russell of the Democratic Party was clearly not among them. In foreign affairs, Cleveland advocated that the nation continue its policy of isolationism, opposed territorial expansion, and opposed annexing Hawaii.
That was right—Cleveland stood firmly against the United States annexing Hawaii. Of course, though he felt nothing in particular toward Hawaii, Cleveland was plainly no saint. In the Americas and the Pacific Ocean—mainly the Far East Empire and Japan—he paid very close attention and actively promoted the expansion of American influence in those regions.
The most typical example was forcing Britain to accept arbitration over the Venezuelan border dispute. In his previous life, Cleveland had also sided with Japan during the war between the Far East Empire and Japan, openly supporting Japan and dispatching Marines to the Far East Empire's capital and the Tianjin area under the pretext of "protecting" the "safety and commercial interests" of American missionaries and overseas Chinese.
Naturally, although Cleveland opposed domestic calls to annex Hawaii, if everything had gone smoothly, he could have turned a blind eye and tacitly permitted their actions. But the Hawaiian merchants had clearly stirred up trouble, only remembering now to ask him to wipe their asses. That left him thoroughly displeased.