Battle of Santiago de Cuba

Battle of Santiago de Cuba
Part of the Spanish–American War
Illustration of the July 1898 battle
Date July 3, 1898 Location Near Santiago de Cuba, Cuba Result Decisive U.S. victory
Belligerents
United States	Spain
Commanders and leaders
William T. Sampson Winfield Schley	Pascual Cervera
Strength
5 battleships 1 armored cruiser 2 armed yachts	4 armored cruisers 2 destroyers
Casualties and losses
1 dead 1 wounded	323 dead 151 wounded 1,720 captured Spanish squadron destroyed

The Battle of Santiago de Cuba was a naval battle that occurred on July 3, 1898 in which the United States Navy decisively defeated Spanish forces, sealing American victory in the Spanish-American War and achieving nominal independence for Cuba from Spanish rule.

The battle marked the culmination of a three-month war sparked by a series of conflicts waged by Cuban revolutionaries against Spanish imperial power in which the United States had political, economic, cultural, and ideological interests. Within this larger context, many American political leaders, pushed by interventionist public opinion, were outraged by the publication of a private letter by the Spanish Minister Enrique Dupuy de Lôme critical of President William McKinley and by the destruction of the American battleship USS Maine, for which a naval court of inquiry and American yellow journalism blamed Spain.

Cuban revolutionaries had staged revolts against Spanish colonial authority in the Ten Years' War (1868–1878), the Little War (1879–1880), and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). During the latter, Spanish General Valeriano Weyler established a policy called reconcentration, in which Spanish forces gathered Cubans who lived in the countryside and centralized them in camps where they could be monitored. As a consequence, many Cubans died of disease and malnutrition.

With outrage over Weyler’s seemingly brutal policy and sympathy with the Cubans’ struggle building, American public opinion pushed for war with Spain after the publication of the de Lȏme letter in February. Enrique Dupuy de Lȏme was appointed the Spanish Minister to the United States in 1892. In this capacity, it was his duty to refrain from allowing his personal beliefs to intervene with his public duty to support peaceful diplomatic relations between the United States and Spain. However, a letter that expressed his opposition to McKinley’s foreign policy decisions was exposed and the New York Journal translated and printed the letter. Many Americans considered it an insult to the nation and to the president.

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