Committee of Safety: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

Various other Committees of Safety have been created in modern world history. For articles on other such organizations, go to the disambiguation page.

The Committee of Safety, formally Citizen's Committee of Public Safety, was a 13 member council which planned the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i and Queen Lili'uokalani on January 17, 1893. The Committee of Safety was organized by the Hawaiian League, also known as the Annexation Club, a group of over 400 American businessmen, merchants and planters residing in Hawai'i which worked to seek economic and political control over the island nation. The ultimate goal was to deliver the Kingdom of Hawai'i to the United States as a territory. The group's unofficial leader was Lorrin A. Thurston, the son of a missionary and publisher of the present-day Honolulu Advertiser newspaper.

With the advice of the Committee of Safety, the United States Marine Corps aboard the USS Boston landed in Honolulu in 1893 to arrest Lili'uokalani. She was placed on trial by the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the judicial arm of the United States military. The Committee of Safety declared itself the Provisional Government of Hawai'i and then organized itself as the Republic of Hawai'i a year later.

Members of the Committee of Safety

• Henry Ernest Cooper, chairman
• Crister Bolte, member
• Andrew Brown, member
• Charles L. Carter, member
• William Richards Castle, member
• John Emmeluth, member
• Theodore F. Lansing, member
• John A. McCandless, member
• F. W. McChesney, member
• William Owen Smith, member
• Edward Suhr, member
• Henry Waterhouse, member
• William C. Wilder, member