written by Joel Kelly
Hawaiʻi Civil War Roundtable image courtesy of Joel Kelly
In the early days of 1861, Hawaii was still largely considered a small kingdom of little import to any of the major colonial powers on earth. The whaling industry had for some time called Hawaii its home in the Pacific, and a great deal of money was changing hands in Hawaiian port towns as this industry brought not only disease to Hawaii, but economic opportunity as well. Port towns like Lahaina, Maui, Honolulu and Hilo were all sites of commerce for the whalers, and while a sailor on shore leave could find every possible entertainment for himself, storm clouds were building at home ports such as Nantucket, Boston and New Bedford.
While men from visiting ships labored to get oil ashore into warehouses, or drink their pay away in local taverns, their kith and kin back home were mired in turmoil. The sectional crisis was rolling large down the tracks of history; events such as the Dred Scott Decision, the Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act had pitted an agrarian South against an industrialized North, setting the stage for critical unrest. This cauldron of unrest would boil over in 1861, with the secession of seven states from the United States.
Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina all passed resolutions of secession, citing tyranny and fundamental differences of outlook as reasons for their departure. The first five states noted, while not in chronological order, are given in this order because they are the five gulf states, and thus the only ones capable of growing certain crops for which American consumers (as well as the American military,) had developed a voracious appetite. It is because of this chain of events that Hawaii would become world renown for one particular crop, one that would dominate the landscape in a nearly literal way for over a century.
While this heady ferment was brewing back in the U.S., a few notable events were transpiring here in Hawaii as well. Also in 1861, One Thomas Spencer moved to Hilo from Honolulu to Take over management of a parcel of agricultural land at Amau’ulu. Spencer, a sea Captain and adventurer, left the sea in 1851 to open a ships chandlery in Honolulu, and by 1861, had acquired the parcel at Amau’ulu, from Benjamin Pittman, another ships chandler and outfitter, as well as husband of Kinoʻole of Hilo, a Chiefess of the Hilo and Ōlaʻa areas.
With the outbreak of the American Civil war, many patriotic American missionary families, as well as businessmen, were eager to do their part for the war effort. Spencer was certainly among them, spending his own money to raise, equip, and train a company of infantry to sail to the East to serve in the Federal army against the Confederacy. On July 4th, 1861, the first enlistees swore their oaths of enlistment in Hilo, apparently disregarding the fact that Hawaiʻi had declared itself neutral in the American troubles.
In spite of their acceptance by the War Department, and their assignment to the department of California, the unit never left Hawaiʻi. Minister Wylie notified Spencer that because of neutrality, no troops from Hawaiʻi were allowed to serve in either army. One account reports that Spencer burst into tears at the news he would not be able to take his company out to fight, and various accounts indicate that the unit, though they never saw combat, were kept in Hilo as a local home guard/militia unit, or that they disbanded late in 1861, the former seeming the more likely of the two narratives.
Likewise, little information exists as to precisely how many men enlisted in the unit, with reports as high as 80+, and as low as 40. Yet even though the Invincibles never saw combat, many Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders did. Kinoʻole’s son, Henry Hoʻolulu Pitman died in 1863, just after his exchange as a prisoner from the notorious Libby Prison. Pitman is just one of over 100 Native Hawaiians to serve honorably in both the Union and Confederate armies.
These events, four years of bloody war back East, the desire of local Hawaiians to do their part, and the efforts of so many here in Hawaiʻi nei resulted in a nearly complete transformation of Hawaiʻi, all because of the needs of the United States military. Because enlisted men in the army had to be fed, and because the gulf states were no longer able to sell their sugar to the north, Hawaiʻi developed as a major producer of sugar for importation into the U.S. This change would eventually result in the annexation of Hawaiʻi as sugar planters sought to export their product to the U.S. without high tariffs. The only way these tariffs would be lifted was by Hawaiian annexation.
The Hawaii Civil War Round Table, a.k.a. Spencer’s Invincibles, is an organization of historians dedicated to the memory of those individuals and commemoration of their service. Anyone interested in learning more, or even joining the group can contact the Hilo co-ordinator, Joel Kelley at joelndi.kelley@inbox.com.