Publication of the De Lôme Letter
Poet involved
What happened
A private letter written in Washington by Spanish ambassador Enrique Dupuy de Lôme was stolen in Havana and published by the New York Journal. It described President William McKinley as weak and politically opportunistic. The resulting outrage intensified anti-Spanish feeling shortly before the Spanish-American War.
Literary impact
The affair revealed how private prose could be stripped of context and converted into mass political spectacle. It belonged to the sensational press culture challenged by writers such as Mark Twain, whose anti-imperialist essays questioned the heroic language attached to American expansion.
Source: Wikipedia
