21 pages • 42 minutes read
Elbert HubbardA Message to Garcia
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1899A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Key FiguresCharacter Analysis
Elbert Hubbard
A soap salesman who became a leader in the American Arts and Crafts movement, Elbert Hubbard in 1895 founded an artist colony, Roycroft, that encouraged a revival of high craftsmanship and fine art in printing, bookbinding, furniture design, metalwork, and leatherwork. Hubbard published his own books as well as those of other authors; many of these editions were beautifully printed and finely bound.
In 1899 he included “A Message to Garcia” as an article in his magazine The Philistine to inspire readers to practice excellence in their own lines of work. Hubbard reprinted the article as a book in many formats, from bound leather volumes to paperbacks. The US Navy, the Boy Scouts, and a railroad, among others, bought and distributed masses of copies; Hubbard claimed that the total number ran to 40 million.
In 1915, Hubbard and his wife, noted feminist and suffragist Alice Moore Hubbard, perished along with 1,196 others aboard the Lusitania when it was sunk by a German submarine during World War I. The sinking caused an outcry in America and increased pressure on the US to enter the war.
Rowan
Rowan is asked by US President McKinley to “Carry a message to Garcia” (3), and he does so, traveling by sea to Cuba, hiking through jungle to find Garcia, and returning to the coast, his message delivered.
Rowan is based on First Lieutenant Andrew Rowan, a US Army spy who in 1897 traveled to Cuba on a mission to communicate with freedom fighters deep in the interior. His orders were to embed himself in General Calixto Garcia’s rebel army and send reports to the US military on Garcia’s activities. Instead, Rowan returned within a few weeks to America with a contingent of Garcia representatives, who began discussions with the US that led to coordinated efforts during the following year’s war between the US and Cuba.
Garcia
General Garcia, bivouacked deep inside Cuba, receives from Rowan the message from President McKinley.
Garcia is the Cuban freedom fighter General Calixto Garcia, who coordinated with US forces during the Spanish-American War of 1898 and won important victories critical to liberating his country from Spanish colonial rule. Garcia made a life of resisting Spanish colonial rule, spending many years in jail when he wasn’t leading troops against his colonial masters. He achieved a number of important military victories during the Spanish-American War but died later that year of pneumonia while visiting Washington, age 59.
President McKinley
During the war between the US and Spain, President McKinley must get a message to Cuban rebel leader Garcia: “The President needed a man” (1). The man is Rowan.
In fact, the war was still a year away when a US Army general assigned a spy, Lt Andrew Rowan, to gather intelligence on the Cuban rebellion. The “letter” stands in for Rowan’s first contact with Garcia.
