The cabinet stood firm, Mr. Peterson, the Attorney General, repeating: 

“We have not read the constitution.”

“How dare you say that,” she exclaimed, “when you have had it in your possession for a month.”

The dispute grew more violent as it went on.  The cabinet declined to resign when asked by her to do so, whereupon she threatened that if they would not accede to her wishes she would go to the palace door and tell the mob outside that she wished to give them a new constitution but that her ministers had prevented her from doing so.

At this threat three of the ministers left the room and escaped from the building.  They remembered the fate of certain representatives who fell into the hands of a Hawaiian mob in 1874.  Mr. Parker alone had the courage to remain.  He feared that if the queen were left alone she would sign the instrument herself, and proclaim it to the people, telling them that her cabinet refused to comply with her wishes and seeking to rouse against them the wrath of the unthinking mob, whose only idea of the situation was that the white men were opposing their queen.

The cabinet stood between two fires, that of the supporters of the queen on the one hand and that of the white people of Honolulu on the other.  The report of the fleeing members raised the excitement of the latter to the boiling pitch.  A Committee of Safety was at once organized, and held its first meeting with closed doors.

“Gentlemen,” said a member of this committee, “we are brought face to face with this question; what shall we do?”

The discussion ended in a motion by the Hon. A.L.  Thurston, to the effect that “preliminary steps be taken at once to form a provisional government, with a view to annexation to the United States of America.”

Meanwhile a sub-committee had waited on the United States Minister, Mr. John L. Stevens, asking him to give them the support of the United States troops on board the “Boston.”

“Gentlemen,” he replied, “I have no authority to involve the United States Government in your revolution.  I will request to have troops landed to protect American life and property, but for no other purpose.”

Left to their own resources, the revolutionary party determined to go on with the enterprise, even if their own lives should be lost in the effort to prevent the tyranny of the queen.  The Committee of Safety collected and stored arms in convenient places, finally taking all these arms to the barracks of the committee.

This brought about the first collision.  It was shortly after noon on January 17, 1893, that three of the revolutionists, John Good, Edwin Benner and Edward Parris, with a man named Fritz, were taking some arms in a wagon to the barracks.  A policeman, who had been watching the store from which the arms were taken, seized the bridle of the horse and cried: 

“Surrender.”

“What shall I do?” asked Benner.