The Spanish minister to the United States, Enrique Dupuy de Lome, wrote a letter to an acquaintance in Cuba that contained insulting references to President William
McKinley. Written in December 1897 after McKinley’s annual address to Congress, the letter accused the president of being “weak and a bidder for the admiration of the crowd, . . . a would-be politician who tries to leave a door open behind himself while keeping on good terms with the jingoes of his party.” The letter, stolen in the Havana post office and published by William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal on February 9, 1898, under the screaming headline “WORST INSULT TO THE UNITED STATES IN ITS HISTORY,” could not have come at a worse time. Tensions had been growing between the United States and Spain. The conduct of Spain’s seemingly endless and brutal campaign to squash Cuba’s independence movement offended American sensibilities and threatened its economic interests in the island. At the same time Spain fumed at the inability of the United States to prevent arms from flowing from American shores to the Cuban rebels.
McKinley quite properly ignored the letter, realizing that to respond to insults was beneath the dignity of the office of chief executive. Actually, de Lome was mistaken about McKinley; he was a clever, effective politician who had survived four years of bloody Civil War battles and would not lightly go to war. De Lome realized he had blundered and resigned the day after the letter was published, sparing himself the indignity of being recalled. But the effects of the letter did not die down with the Spanish minister’s departure. Talk of resolutions to award belligerency status to the Cuban rebels and declarations of war were bandied about in the halls of Congress until Spain officially apologized on February 14. The apology, however, did little to curb the growth of anti-Spanish feeling among the American people.
Further reading: Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default: The Spanish-American War and the Dawn of the American Century (New York: Henry Holt, 1998); Joseph E. Wisan, The Cuban Crisis as Reflected in the New York Press, 1895-1898 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1934).
—Timothy E. Vislocky
World History
