The success of Commodore George Dewey's squadron in the Battle of Manila Bay on 1 May 1898 not only ensured U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War and made Dewey a popular American hero, but it also echoed through history, laying the groundwork for the continued role of the United States in that region of the world for the next century.

Background.

Born in Montpelier, Vermont, on 26 December 1837, George Dewey graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1858, and during the Civil War he served as a Union naval officer aboard the Mississippi, one of the ships under the command of Capt. (later admiral) David Farragut in the Battle of New Orleans in 1862. During the naval expansion of the 1880s and 1890s Dewey became chief of the Bureau of Equipment in 1889, president of the Lighthouse Board in 1893, and president of the Board of Inspection and Survey in...