A Message to Garcia is a widely distributed essay written by Elbert Hubbard in 1899, expressing the value of individual initiative and conscientiousness in work. The essay's primary example is a dramatized version of a daring escapade performed by an American soldier, First Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, just before the Spanish–American War. The essay describes Rowan carrying a message from President William McKinley to "Gen. Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban insurgents somewhere in the mountain fastnesses of Cuba—no one knew where". The essay contrasts Rowan's self-driven effort against "the imbecility of the average man—the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it".
Publication history
A Message to Garcia was originally published as filler without a title in the March 1899 issue of The Philistine, a periodical which, at that time, was written entirely by Hubbard. His complaints about lazy and incompetent workers struck a chord with many corporate executives. One of these was George H. Daniels, a promotion-minded executive with the New York Central Railroad. Daniels reprinted the essay hundreds of thousands of times as part of the railroad's Four-Track Series of pamphlets. Hubbard's Roycroft Press, the publishing arm of an arts and crafts community he founded in East Aurora, New York, reprinted and sold the essay in a variety of bindings—suede, embossed, paperback, and so on—and as paid promotional literature for organizations as disparate as Wanamaker's department store, the Boy Scouts of America, and the United States Navy. It was also reprinted in many anthologies of inspirational literature. Modern editions are readily available today on the Internet.
Historical accuracy
In Hubbard's version of Rowan's journey, President McKinley needed to communicate with Gen. Calixto Garcia, a leader of the Cuban insurgents.
In fact, the only true statement Hubbard wrote was that Rowan "landed...off the coast of Cuba from an open boat". All the rest, including McKinley's need to communicate with Garcia and Rowan's delivery of a letter to the general, was false.
It was Maj. Arthur L. Wagner, head of the Military Information Division, who successfully petitioned Adj. Gen. Henry Clark Corbin for permission to send spies to Cuba and Puerto Rico to gather military information. Wagner selected 40-year-old 1st Lt. Andrew S. Rowan to join García, who led the rebel forces in eastern Cuba. On April 9, Rowan, posing as a civilian, boarded a steamer in New York bound for Kingston, Jamaica. With the help of the U.S. consul in Kingston, he connected with the Cuban Revolutionary Junta, some of whose members transported him by open boat during one of their trips to the southeastern coast of Cuba. They went ashore the morning of April 25.
Following an eight-day horseback journey with rebels through the Sierra Maestra Mountains, Rowan met with García in the city of Bayamo on May 1. Rowan's assignment was to keep the War Department informed as to "the strength, efficiency, movements and general military situation". His orders were to stay in Cuba, to "accompany the Insurgent Forces, and to send back dispatches". Disregarding his orders, Rowan said he was there to learn what García needed to cooperate with the U.S. armed forces during a possible invasion. He added that he was eager to return to the U.S. García, seeing an opportunity, sent him back to the U.S. within hours of his arrival. Traveling with him were members of García's staff to confer with U.S. officials. After a five-day horseback journey to Manatí Bay on Cuba's north coast, they "drew a little cockle-shell of a boat from under a mangrove bush" and set sail for Florida. A passing sponging steamer carried them to Nassau, and from there they eventually sailed to Tampa, arriving on May 13.
Rowan had no sooner landed in Cuba on April 25 than details of his secret mission were splashed across the pages of America's newspapers. It was learned that, while in Jamaica, Rowan had revealed this information to an Associated Press correspondent named Elmer Roberts. This was not what Adj. Gen. Corbin anticipated. Had the news reports not made Rowan a popular hero, however falsely, Corbin might have had him court-martialed. Instead he was deemed as popular as Buffalo Bill, lauded by Maj. Gen Nelson A. Miles, commanding general of the army, and temporarily promoted to lieutenant-colonel in the 6th Regiment Volunteer Infantry.