[4] His relatives and other missionary friends, such as Gerrit P. Judd who was now in the government, tried to persuade him to return to Hawaii, since few journalists had left to join the California Gold Rush.

Whitney married Catherine Olivia March (1821–1896) in June 1849, and travelled via Panama to San Francisco.

[5]: 8 Whitney worked for the Kingdom of Hawaii government printing office, which published a newspaper called The Polynesian (but he did not have editorial control).

[8] On July 2, 1856, Whitney produced the first issue of his own newspaper: a four-sheet weekly called the Pacific Commercial Advertiser.

Its name is based on the New York Commercial Advertiser which Whitney had known while living on the mainland, at least being acquainted with its editor William L. Stone.

The first issue contained the news of Kamehameha IV's royal wedding to Emma Rooke besides the titular advertisements.

A sketch Whitney made of Honolulu Harbor after climbing the mast of a ship became the paper's symbol even after the masthead was redesigned.

In his words of the first editorial:Thank heaven the day at length has dawned when the Hawaiian Nation can boast a free press, untrammelled by government patronage or party pledges, unbiased by ministerial frowns or favors — a press whose aim shall be the advancement of the nation in its commercial, political and social condition.

[10]Although born in the Kingdom of Hawaii (and thus a citizen of that country), he openly called for closer ties with the United States.

[14] Based on a one-page section his Advertiser in Hawaiian called Ka Hoku Loa ("the morning star"), it was first edited William P. Ragsdale, a half-Hawaiian and famous legislative interpreter.

After Ragsdale contracted leprosy Whitney replaced him with fellow missionary son Luther Halsey Gulick.

He hired native Hawaiians including Joseph Kawainui, and fellow Americans John Mott-Smith, Samuel Gardner Wilder, and Thomas George Thrum.

Scottish-born cabinet minister Robert Crichton Wyllie threatened Whitney with a libel suit, but eventually backed down.

[4] In 1866 the young reporter Samuel Clemens asked for a job, but there were no openings since Whitney already had the small staff he needed.

They exchanged letters and Twain mocked Staley and the Hawaiian royalty as he toured the US and wrote his book Roughing It with a chapter on Hawaii.

Whitney knows he has done me many a kindness, and that I do not forget it, and am still grateful - and he knows that if I could scour him up so that he could tell a broad burlesque from a plain statement of fact, I would get up in the night and walk any distance to do it.

[21]Whitney strongly supported the Union in the American Civil War, although the kingdom was officially neutral.

He printed letters from Charles Guillou critical of James W. Borden, the US Commissioner, who was from the South and had relatives in the Confederacy.

Whitney claimed he did not cave into planters' demands, but sold to finance a vacation with his family back to the United States, which he took in May 1871.

Whitney cut any ties with the Advertiser and wrote editorials attacking Gibson (who was appointed to several prominent positions in the cabinet) and Kalākaua in the Gazette.

After John Kapena resigned to become minister of foreign affairs, Whitney was again appointed postmaster general on February 16, 1883 (although by this time there was more than one post office).