De Lôme Letter

The first page of the De Lôme Letter.

The last page of the letter.

The De Lôme letter, a note written by Señor Don Enrique Dupuy de Lôme, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, to Don José Canelejas, the Foreign Minister of Spain, reveals de Lôme’s opinion about the Spanish involvement in Cuba and US President McKinley’s diplomacy.

Publication

Cuban revolutionaries intercepted the letter from the mail and released it to the Hearst press, which published it on February 9, 1898, in the New York Journal, in an article titled "Worst Insult to the United States in its History." Much of the press in New York began to demand De Lôme's resignation, and Hearst's New York Journal began a "Go Home De Lôme" campaign. These campaigns did, ultimately, lead to De Lôme's resignation. De Lôme’s unflattering remarks about McKinley helped fuel the United States of America's aggressive, warlike foreign policy. Two months later, on April 11, 1898, McKinley delivered a war message to Congress asking for "forcible intervention" by the United States to establish peace in Cuba

See also

• Yellow journalism

Sources

• Our Documents
• W.A. Swanberg, from Citizen Hearst: A biography of William Randolph Hearst: (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1961)