"A Message to Garca": Elbert Hubbard's Paean to Perseverance

Abstract: The best-known image of America's 1898 war with Spain is that of Teddy Roosevelt on horseback charging with his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in Cuba. While the Rough Riders fired the first shot in the war and were the first to raise the U.S. flag in Cuba, their exploits were greatly mythologized. Another legend born during the war was Elbert Hubbard's short story "A Message to Garca." Published as a book in 1898, 40 million copies had been printed by 1913. Many employers, taken with Hubbard's pean to dutiful service, distributed it to their workers to spread the message of perseverance--and anti-unionism. Hubbard's story described the activities of U.S. Army Lieutenant Andrew S. Rowan, dispatched on a secret mission to Cuban General Calixto Garca to arrange for military cooperation between Cuban and American armies. Hubbard's mythmaking distorted the story of the war by erasing the contribution of the Cubans from the history of their own war for independence. By 1898, Cubans had already been waging an armed struggle for independence from Spain for three years.

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