Cast in deathless bronze
Subtitle: Andrew Rowan, the Spanish-American War, and the origins of American empire
By: Donald Tunnicliff Rice
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: West Virginia University Press
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9781943665433; 9781943665426
Subjects: Public opinion; Intelligence officers; Travel; Officers; United States; Secret service; Biography; Territorial expansion; United States. Army; Foreign relations; Spanish-American War, 1898
Description: "In 1898, when war with Spain seemed inevitable, Andrew Summers Rowan, an American army lieutenant from West Virginia, was sent on a secret mission to Cuba. He was to meet with General Calixto García, a leader of the Cuban rebels, in order to gather information for a US invasion. Months later, after the war was fought and won, a flamboyant entrepreneur named Elbert Hubbard wrote an account of Rowan's mission entitled 'A Message to Garcia.' It sold millions of copies, and Rowan became the equivalent of a modern-day rock star. His fame resulted in hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles, radio shows, and two movies. Even today he is held up as an exemplar of bravery and loyalty. The problem is that nothing Hubbard wrote about Rowan was true. Donald Tunnicliff Rice reveals the facts behind the story of 'A Message to Garcia' while using Rowan's biography as a window into the history of the Spanish-American War, the Philippine War, and the Moro Rebellion. The result is a compellingly written narrative containing many details never before published in any form, and also an accessible perspective on American diplomatic and military history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-350) and index.
Table of contents: title: 1. "It is meritorious to be a boy at West Point"; title: 2. Becoming an Intelligence Officer; title: 3. "A Most Perilous Undertaking"; title: 4. America Takes a Step toward Empire; title: 5. The Creation of an American Myth; title: 6. Exactly Where Are the Philippines?; title: 7. A Glorious Undertaking; title: 8. Captain Rowan in Command; title: 9. An Idyllic Spot to Spend the War; title: 10. Major Rowan in Love and War; title: 11. The Complexities of Retirement; title: 12. The Myth Lives On; title: Epilogue.