West Across the Pacific: American Involvement in East Asia from 1 ...

Chapter 1

Japan and the American Frontier in Asia

Old John Sherman was becoming senile. Stubborn, cautious, and cranky, he had already decided, when McKinley appointed him secretary of state in March 1897 to vacate his senate seat for Mark Hanna, that he would have no adventurous diplomacy, no extending of limits or acquiring of territory to add “new dangers” to the United States.¹ Nevertheless, with the new breed of expansionists, Teddy Roosevelt, Mahan, and their business friends, waiting in the wings with large ideas in their heads, Old John immediately found himself with a Hawaiian annexation on his hands and an irritated Japan to mollify. An official protest to the incipient Hawaii annexation treaty from the Japanese government reached his desk on June 19.²